Community Plan Performance Report 2006-2007

Foreword

Welcome to the North Lanarkshire Partnership's third annual performance report 2006/07 highlighting a number of our key achievements across the community planning themes.

The achievements and actions reflected in the report highlight our successes to-date in addressing a wide range of issues that affect our communities; and importantly show how we are contributing to our long-term community planning objectives and vision for North Lanarkshire.

The actions identified are only a snap shot of some of the valuable work undertaken across partners.  However, what they clearly demonstrate is that through better joined up working we can impact more on the lives of our communities and ensure positive outcomes now and in the future.

I hope you find the report interesting and informative and if you have any questions or comments on its content, you will find details on how to contact us at the end.

Councillor Jim McCabe

Chair of the North Lanarkshire Partnership

Introduction

The North Lanarkshire Partnership is the overarching strategic partnership responsible for taking forward community planning in our area. Community Planning is about engaging with people and communities about services that affect them, and public sector and other agencies working together to make sure these are as effective as possible.

The Partnership Board is responsible for Community Planning and is made up of senior representatives from the organisations and sectors that working together can make Community Planning successful. These are

·       The council

·       North Lanarkshire's Voluntary Sector

·       NHS Lanarkshire

·       The Further Education Colleges

·       Communities Scotland

·       Jobcentre Plus

·       Scottish Enterprise Lanarkshire

·       Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, and

·       Strathclyde Police

In 2003 the North Lanarkshire Partnership produced a Community Plan for 2004 to 2008. This set out a long-term vision to 2015 and identified a number of principles that would guide the way the partnership does its work. It then set out priorities with targets over a four-year period that aims to move North Lanarkshire forward towards achieving this long-term vision.

The purpose of this Performance Report is to give information on progress over the last year from April 2006 to March 2007 on a range of actions in place that reflect these priorities and targets.

The Community Plan priorities and targets are organised around five strategic themes. These are:

·        Health, wellbeing and care

·        Community safety

·        Jobs, business and the economy

·        Learning through life

·        Housing and the environment

Within these broad themes there are a wide range of actions although it is recognised that almost all of our activities help achieve the priorities.  Steps have also been taken to ensure that the links between the various themes are made thereby improving joint working. 

A Programme Planning Group made up of relevant representatives from partner agencies is responsible for developing and managing a yearly Action Plan for each theme. Some of the targets laid out in the Community Plan are based on activities that can be easily measured but others are about putting in place arrangements that help partnership working.

Building on the work that will be carried out under the key themes partners are clear that there are a number of cross cutting themes that need to be addressed, if they are to achieve positive outcomes for our communities.

The Partnership agreed to develop and include additional action plans to capture the range of cross cutting themes i.e. transport, sustainability, community engagement and financial /budgetary issues. The cross cutting issues will provide a key focus for Community Planning partners as they plan, develop and implement services.

A number of developments have taken place to progress the cross cutting themes.  For example, six Community Engagement Officers have been appointed to support the implementation of the Partnership's Community Engagement Strategy and provide additional support to drive and develop the local Community Forums.

The partnership aims to avoid organisations doing the same thing and to make sure that we use all the Partnership's resources as effectively as possible.  The NLP Resources Working Group was established in order to progress the cross cutting theme of Joint Finance and Resources.  This included the following three key actions:

• To undertake feasibility work into potential joint long-term financial planning
• To review partners approaches to funding bids
• To review common issues arising from a review of Risk Management arrangements across the partner agencies

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