Adrian Chapman, Head of
Neighbourhood Services gave a presentation on the outcomes from the
2012 Parish Conference. The key points
raised were:
- This
was the inaugural conference and was attended by around 75% of the
parish councils.
- The
conference was the beginning of a new relationship between the
council and parish councils, including the relaunch of this meeting.
- Philip
Blond had offered to broker with the Department for Communities and
Local Government (DCLG) a pilot project involving an end to end
review of parish council operations.
- The
future of the Rural North Neighbourhood Committee was currently
being discussed.
- The
conference planning group would continue to act as an agenda
setting group for this meeting.
Feedback from each of the
sessions was:
Session 1: Localism
- Delivery of local services
- Management and/or ownership of community assets
- Potential role in providing care and social support
services
- Community engagement and involvement
- Supporting the skills agenda e.g. apprenticeships
- Building volunteering opportunities
- Greater understanding needed of what potential exists through
Localism
- Greater co-operation between councils
- Greater co-operation with wider partner networks –
business, faith, voluntary sector
- Need
to ensure the right skills are in place
- Training and technical support facilitated by and provided
through PCC
- Campaign to raise the profile of councils
- Need
to map services and facilities in parishes
Session 2: Planning
- Shapers as well as consultees
- Too
many ‘plans’ – not enough clarity
- Rural
plan or strategy needed
- More
feedback needed from planning officers
- Two
tiers – local (feel of the parish), citywide (deliver the
vision)
- Real
choice needs to be offered
Session 3: Shared
Services
- Bigger
and better things can come from it
- Could
support local services to remain
- Intra
and inter boundary working
- Community assets, timebanking,
volunteering
- Parish
clustering – sharing employment, liabilities
- Larger
parishes supporting smaller parishes
- Need
ideas and options from PCC
- Need
data and intelligence
- Need
to understand liabilities, legislation, time commitments
etc
- Need
to overcome barriers – health and safety, insurance,
cashflow
Session 4: Open
Discussions
- Lots
of ideas for owning, building or managing assets
- ‘Youth’ parish councillors or local youth
councils
- All
parishes to have we sites, use social media etc
- Direct
access to relevant expertise – central support
hub?
- End to
end review of parish council operations
- Welfare role within parished
areas
- Co-ordination of local groups
- Working with schools to develop volunteering, work experience
and apprenticeships
- Greater use of technology to communicate – including
webcasting meetings
- Local
currency
Actions were now being
developed to move this work forward.
Phase 1 actions were:
Simon Machen, Head of Planning, Transport and Engineering gave
an update on the planning pilot. Four
of the parish councils had formed a working group and were
currently looking at neighbourhood planning. The forthcoming Community Infrastructure Levy
(CIL) would entail 15% of CIL income going to parished areas and where there was a neighbourhood
plan in place that figure would be 25%
Two
officers had been allocated to work on this area.
- Potential for parishing in other
areas
The
council would support those areas who wanted to parish.
- Parish
marketing and promotional campaign
Nurun Ahmed,
Marketing Officer gave an update on a possible campaign to raise
the profile and awareness for parish councils. A number of tools could be used including
Facebook, Twitter and websites and a portal was being considered
where parishes could network and share skills. A Marketing Plan would be developed for sign off
at a future meeting.
Councillor
Martin advised that within Caster Parish Council a lot of
engagement was already happening and he was happy to work with
Nurun about their
experiences.
- Pilot
with DCLG – end to end review of parish
processes?
Philip Blond had offered to work with parishes, DCLG ministers
and civil servants around parish councils and how they
worked. It would be for this meeting to
decide the scope of any review.
Councillor Bartlett asked whether there was a will from the
Administration for the whole of the city to be parished. Councillor
Hiller advised that it was his personal view was that all of the
city should be parished.
- Parishing other areas – DCLG consultation
The
outcomes of the DCLG consultation would be brought to a future
meeting when available.
A
discussion on the Neighbourhood Committee would be held at the next
meeting.
ACTION
– Adrian Chapman to work up a
brief/scope for a review and circulate to the meeting.