You are viewing : Home » LOCAL COUNCILS UPDATE (view all editions) » 2024 Editions » May 2024

Our Community Matters

LEGAL MATTERS

Down in Little Tinkleton, the parish councillors find themselves at the coal face of our beleaguered local democracy – collared in the post office, harangued at the bus stop, chided in the hairdressers and besieged over a well-earned tipple in the Speckled Wig. It just never stops. Phone pinging at all hours with the latest stinging posts on the village Facebook site and the councillors’ WhatsApp group incessantly trumpeting the latest village disaster (or overflowing litter bin at the skatepark).
Through this never-ending democratic whirl, the redoubtable councillors go about their weary duty – sorting things out and keeping everyone happy. It’s as it has always been, and what, you may ask, is wrong with that? Well, absolutely nothing: nothing wrong with dealing with complaints promptly and effectively.
However, complaints are usually personal and a council deals with the needs of all residents not just the few. Chopping down a tree because it shades part of Mr Gavel’s veggie patch, might alienate 60 members of the local wildlife group. Things are not always straightforward.
Then, when the clerk suggests the need for a strategic plan, well, eyes roll and yawns are stifled. Not easy this parish clerking malarkey.
Let’s stop and think about that. Councillors pride themselves on resolving grumbles and fixing problems, right? So, why not find out what the locals are really bothered about? Not just the noisy few bellowing their self-righteous views across social media or firing off charmingly poisonous emails to our heroically downtrodden clerk, but everyone.
If there are things that a whole bunch of people are chaffed-off with, councillors can get stuck into resolving those that most people want to see sorted. That’s the logic and the start of your strategy.
So how does this play out in the real world? Somewhere like, say, Haydon Wick near Swindon? Glad you asked!
Haydon Wick is a progressive council with some well motivated councillors – but were they really in-tune with the views of the whole community? The clerk asked this question and the leader of the council liked the idea and the members agreed to appoint someone to help. Yep, that was me.
It’s important to understand that you can’t just dream up and impose a community strategy, it’s got to be a fully inclusive and consensual thing. No matter how ‘in tune’ you think you are, you need to know what others think too. Your world view and your lived experiences are different to everyone else’s.
At Haydon Wick the first step was to gauge the views of the councillors – it was critical to have them on board. A short member and officer survey was undertaken, and the results revealed the usual areas of agreement and disagreement but just enough common ground to provide a foothold.
What had emerged was a commitment to give residents far more say about the council’s direction – a genuine desire to put local people in the driving seat. Community leadership is often a slogan and rarely a reality. So, finding a practical way to empower the community became the main aim of the project, under the banner ‘Our Community Matters’ – a brand, a process and a genuine commitment to facilitate community leadership.
It was agreed to focus on the things that the council could influence – in the main its own services and responsibilities but also the council wanted to better understand the wider concerns that the council might address working with partners and others. A household and business survey was developed. Getting this bit spot-on is half the battle.
The survey was launched and things started to happen. Within six weeks the results were in, and the council waited with bated breath to see what the community had said. The survey results were published, and clear priorities were obvious – but not simple. For example, locals were upset about litter in the village, but what should the council do about this? What actions would best address the concerns? Where would money be best spent? This is where the next step in the process was crucial.
A community conference was convened (Our Community Matters) to discuss the priorities and agree actions. Again, residents were ushered into the driver’s seat. Four themed discussion groups (with eight residents at each) looked at the priorities and the ideas submitted by respondents. About 100 ideas were examined, each written on an ‘idea card’. Each card was placed on a priority sheet, and given a low, medium, or high action-ranking. By the end of the session the community had agreed the actions they felt would best address the priorities identified by the survey.
The four groups then flipped over their sheets and placed the top priorities on to a scoring grid. Each priority action was given a score according to cost, time and ease of implementation. By totting up the three numbers a final score was achieved indicating those actions most likely to be delivered in the shortest possible time at least cost.
Yours truly, wrote up the outcome and presented a very simple community action plan to the council (never a fan of the long glossy
report me), which was adopted unanimously.
Work turned to implementation, and, in the spirit of the process, the community came together as co-producers of their own wellbeing, by stepping up to help deliver the agreed actions. Some of the juiciest low-hanging fruit were picked first and celebrated as evidence that the delivery plan was rumbling into life. Volunteers came forward, discussions were started with partners and budgets for future years were recast to reflect the new priorities, and so the process began to deliver on the priorities with projects, campaigns and actions agreed by parish residents.
The process unlocked the amazing gifts and assets held in all communities, and these poured forth generously through volunteers, new and existing community groups – with so many shoulders to the wheel, not everything ends up draining the parish coffers.
Of course, this is a simple summary of an amazing and carefully structured process. There is much more to tell. Community engagement is often a very much derided Aunt Sally, but if parish and town councils are to reclaim democratic legitimacy and move away from the Vicar of Dibley and Jackie Weaver stereotypes, the ‘Our Community Matters’ approach is a good place to start.
Well, that’s all for now, catch up again sometime for a pint in the bar of the Speckled Wig in Little Tinkleton.
The ‘Our Community Matters’ action planning toolkit for local authorities has been developed by the Local Government Resource
Centre (LGRC) and is available for use anywhere in the UK. The toolkit is tried and tested, simple, and highly cost effective. If you would like to follow in the groundbreaking footsteps of Haydon Wick Parish Council, please get in touch.

Some useful tips

  • Tell everyone – Make sure everyone knows about the survey. People can only take part if they know about it. Stage a PR event to grab a headline, maybe a photo-op of the mayor delivering the first leaflet. Set up a stand at the village shop. Do something quirky and unexpected and follow this up with leaflets, posters, banners, email, social media, traditional print media, parish mag, the church news and other local networks – ‘scattergun’ is the word. Throw everything at it and get a buzz going.
  • Reach out further – Follow up your media campaign with a household leaflet to every property and business in your patch. Including a prize draw can help drive up response rates but check the rules carefully before you dive in. Include clear links to the online survey – QR code and web address. Set up a dedicated page on the website with more information. Make sure people know how to get hold of a paper or multi-lingual copy and where they can be collected or dropped off. Make sure you include cut-off dates.
  • Inclusion – There are many reasons why people do not or cannot engage with traditional consultations. Target something specifically at youngsters and other harder to reach groups.
  • Use simple words – Keep the survey language simple, in terms people will understand.
  • Get personal – The survey needs to gather some basic demographic information – respondent age range, gender, postcode, how long they have lived in the village. The essentials only. Include an option to provide an email contact so you can keep in touch – along with your GDPR policy statement.
  • Consistency – Make sure questions provide comparable results, if every question you include has a different scoring scale or ranking system then you will have no idea of the relative value of anything.
  • Brevity – Try and keep the survey brief.

There are lots more secrets but too little space here, email me if you want to know more: steve.milton@lgrc.uk

Steve Milton, FSLCC ACG, has spent more than 40 years working in local government at district, county, unitary and parish level.
He was instrumental in the development of Wiltshire’s community governance arrangements, has assisted the Government with the development of UK legislation, and spoken on devolution all over the world.
LGRC (Local Government Resource Centre) Associates Ltd is a company providing locum, consultancy and training services to own, parish and community councils. The company’s training offer includes bespoke member training to suit councils’ needs.
Visit: www.lgrc.uk and its social media channels @lgrcuk

************************************************************************************************************************
Written by Steve Milton, vice-chair, director and trustee, LGRC
As appeared in Clerks & Councils Direct, May 2024
© CommuniCorp