Community Partnerships
Community partnerships are an innovative new way for the council, partners and communities to work together to ‘bring ideas to life’ by taking a solution focused approach to local priorities.
Why?
- During the consultation on forming the new East Suffolk Council (ESC), concerns were expressed about the 55 councillors covering larger geographical areas, more town and parish councils, more people, and becoming disconnected from local residents.
How Many?
- There are eight Community Partnerships (CPs), based on natural groupings of communities, using the new ESC ward boundaries as the ‘building blocks’:
Who?
How?
- Informal bodies with a solution-focused workshop style, rather than a formal board or committee
- Focused on priorities identified at annual workshops and based on data (facts and figures) and local insight
- First Community Partnership meetings from the end of January 2020
- Each CP will have a simple terms of reference and report annually to the ESC Cabinet
- All eight CP Chairs will sit on the Community Partnership Board, alongside key partners including the CCGs and Police, ESC, SCC, Suffolk Association of Local Councils, Community Action Suffolk and the East Suffolk Greenprint Forum
- CPs will evolve organically in each area to reflect local distinctiveness
- Annual forum bringing representatives from all eight CPs together
Resources
- Each CP will have a £10,000 budget in 2019/20 and then £25,000 per year for the next three years to be spent against the agreed priorities. This funding is from New Homes Bonus
- There will also be a strategic budget of £150,000 in 2019/20 and £300,000 a year for the next three years, overseen by the Community Partnership Board, that CPs can bid into
- Each of the 55 East Suffolk councillors has an Enabling Communities Budget of £7,500
- CPs will be supported by a range of ESC staff, including from the Democratic Services, Communities, Communications, Economic Development and Funding teams
