Agenda item

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance submits a report that provides an update on the progress made on Phase 2 of the Ward Community Meeting Improvement Project. The Neighbourhood Services and Community Involvement Scrutiny Commission is asked to note the report and to make any comments or recommend further action as appropriate.

The commission considered a report which outlined progress on the Ward Community Meeting Improvement Project (Phase 2).

The Chair referred to the attendance figures for community meetings and queried why some wards had better attendance than others. She noted that on some wards attendance had increased whilst on others, the numbers had decreased. The Project Portfolio Manager explained that some of the attendance figures did not correlate to the figures that the officers on the pilot scheme had recorded and she suggested that they could meet with the Chair outside of the meeting to discuss these further.

Officers stated that the ward community meetings were not necessarily the most productive way of dealing with issues and as alternatives, they had attended forums and patch walks. Officers were also currently working in the community, building up their local networks and intelligence.  They added that the whole idea of the pilot scheme was that the same model did not work in all the wards. In respect of the community meeting budget, they had streamlined the funding process and funding applications could now be dealt very much quicker.

The Project Portfolio Manager added that they were currently working on a number of issues such as developing the Communications Matrix, updating the Councillor Guide and also looking at how there could be better engagement with young people. A further report would be brought back to scrutiny in January 2014.

The Chair thanked the Project Portfolio Manager for the report and requested that in any future reports, there should also be input from the Head of Community Services given the transition on ward meetings to that division.  The Chair expressed concerns that the report focussed primarily on vision, but there was no evidence to add substance behind the vision, and previously in the agenda meeting, she had requested amendments to include details of achievements during the 18 months of the pilot scheme.  The Chair commented that patch walks were costly and time consuming and could also create significant amounts of case work for the ward councillors.  She had hoped that the report would contain more evidence to show whether or not the pilot scheme had been successful and expressed concerns that the report lacked information and detail.   The Chair added that community meetings were very important to the councillors, and she expressed concerns that the pilot was moving away from its original direction. She requested that the pilot scheme be re-focussed and stressed the need for clear communication with the ward councillors. 

Members mentioned that there had not been any dialogue with them on the objectives mentioned for each ward in the report. There was a request that there needed to be more engagement and dialogue about the progress of the project.

Members stated that residents had requested a range of different speakers at community meeting (for subjects such as dementia for example) to make the meetings more interesting, rather than the standard police, city warden and housing items.

The Project Portfolio Manager acknowledged some of the concerns and explained that in some wards, only one cycle of meetings under the new pilot scheme had taken place so there had been insufficient time to gather evidence. They had also hoped to have implemented some of the initiatives quicker (the involvement of young people, for example) but this had not happened.  In some wards, the councillors had wanted the community engagement officers to work in different ways; some of the patch walks that they wanted were smaller than the Eyres Monsell model and did not necessitate the presence of as many officers. The Project Portfolio Manager offered to talk to the Chair outside of the meeting to share evidence and discuss this further.

The Chair summarised the points raised by members as follows:

·         There were concerns that the pilot scheme had lost its overall focus.

·         A clear evaluation of the scheme was needed.

·         It was important to share good practice.

·         Clear details of the transitional arrangements were needed; such as who would administer the meetings and what resources would be available.

·         Members would like to see more exploration as to why some meetings were better attended than others.

·         There needed to be more involvement of all councillors during the transitional phase.

·         Scrutiny needed to see proposals before a final Executive decision was made.

·         Members acknowledged that there were good ideas and good communications taking place, but would like to see more evidence in the report.

The Project Portfolio Manager confirmed that a report would be coming back to the commission in January 2014 which would address those issues. The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance stated that information would be sent out this month to all councillors to update them on the direction of travel of the project.

RESOLVED:

that the comments of the commission be noted and that a further report be brought to scrutiny in January 2014 to incorporate the information requested.