Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 - Community Planning Guidance and Regulation

Yes we agree with these in principle.

• Should there be any others?
No.

The principles are not new and have been part of the “ask” of community planning for some time. However, when considering the range and ambition of the expectations within the guidance, it is important to recognise that these expectations are not always within the sole gift of CPPs to deliver.

We note that Audit Scotland, in successive reports, has indicated that although CPPs have made considerable progress, they have yet to affect change at scale and to bring about the transformational change envisaged by Christie. It should be acknowledged that the large scale changes introduced over the past few years, e.g. Health and Social Care Integration, Police, Fire and Rescue service reform; and Community Justice Authority restructure provide the building blocks for large scale preventative approaches, but the results will not be evident in the short term.

There is an expectation that the public sector as a whole, including Community Planning partners, will adapt to meet the challenges ahead. These challenges include the on-going pressure on budgets and the requirement for a decisive shift to prevention. It is anticipated that there will be a change in emphasis from cost reduction to redesign in the years ahead, and that this is likely to include moves to minimise duplication and overlap and eliminate silo working, so that “form follows function”. A culture of innovation and two-way engagement with service users will have to be developed to ensure continual reform. This should include the development of an understanding among service users of what can be done given resources available, and an understanding of the advantages of moving towards preventative action.

The introduction of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 is a welcome addition to the range of instruments which Partners are able to utilise by ensuring that communities and stakeholders are involved in making the difficult decisions in relation to on-going funding pressures. Community buy in and awareness that services will have to change is one of the key areas which the Partnership is progressing towards in the longer term.

We do not believe that there are common short- or medium-term targets that all CPPs should meet. The focus within the 2015 Act on reducing inequalities of outcome is sufficient to allow CPPs to identify and act on the issues which matter locally.

The South Lanarkshire SOA, when taken together with the Performance Improvement Plan, already contains a wide range of short- , medium- and long-term targets. Many of these reflect “national” performance expectations, e.g., HEAT targets, the National Health and Wellbeing Outcomes. This illustrates a natural tendency to align local targets with national requirements where appropriate. We do not believe additional centrally-driven performance expectations would add anything to this process.

We believe that since the outcomes within LOIPs are to span 10 years (per the Act), it would be appropriate to undertake a mid-term review after 5 years.

Other than this, we believe that the period of revision for a LOIP and locality plans should be left to the discretion of CPPs. This autonomy would allow CPPs the flexibility to review the plans as required to suit changes in local conditions and priorities.

The South Lanarkshire CPP has in place an established reporting and review framework for our current plans, which includes an annual review of the actions taken to achieve outcomes. We do not believe further statutory guidance would add to this approach.

Performance reports on an annual basis would be sufficient. This would fit with existing reporting expectations and processes.

At an operational level, CPPs and individual partners will monitor their delivery of actions on a monthly/quarterly/bi-annual basis as appropriate.

It would be helpful if the guidance was more explicit about the expectations on Community Planning Partners in terms of “taking account of the LOIP” and “contributing such funds, staff and other resources as the CPP considers appropriate”. This clarification would be particularly welcome in the light of the national focus of some partners, which limits their flexibility at the regional level to deliver against local CPP priorities.

Clarity would also be welcome on the duties to support shared leadership and collective governance which fall to specified CP Partners, i.e., the local authority, NHS, Police Scotland, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Scottish Enterprise.

Individual partners have, in the past, raised concerns that they could be held to account for sharing particular information therefore, guidance in relation to information sharing would be helpful and would support the development of CPP information sharing protocols whilst serving to mitigate all concerns.

CPP boundaries will vary significantly in terms of geography and there will be pre-established boundaries (geographical or otherwise) that organisations currently work to. There may be a requirement for localities to be joined together which would mean that the population could exceed the 30,000 limit. CPPs should determine the appropriate size and population of a locality and justify that decision within its reporting. The most important consideration is that the locality and population is defined in terms of the scope and scale of the work that is required and that it is meaningful to the communities involved.

The South Lanarkshire CPP believes that the localities chosen for the purposes of locality planning should make sense to local communities and also be in line with existing organisational structures and arrangements. The Integration Joint Board has defined localities in South Lanarkshire which considerably exceed the 30,000 limit proposed – and as a partnership we would wish to be able to use these localities more generally. Rather than define a limit for the population of a locality, we believe it would be more helpful to allow locality plans to be developed for larger (more populous) areas, but with the expectation that specific inequalities should be identified and targeted as required within them.
As indicated by the National Group on Community Planning, inequalities tend to cluster within communities, and be found in small geographical areas. The nature, scale and geographical pattern of inequality requires a detailed analysis – potentially to the level of streets or groups of datazones. The principle should be to target resources where the need is greatest, rather than to meet specific criteria for population size.
In this context, we believe that localities under the 2015 Act should be flexible enough to fit with existing (or developing) localities at the local level, so that planning and delivery can be joined up effectively. We believe that this approach facilitates aligned planning models and will simplify reporting and governance arrangements.

No.

There should be more explicit mention of making community planning, engagement and co-production accessible to all members of the community by ensuring the methods used properly take account of individuals’ physical, language and communication support needs. This should be done as part of the aim to reduce the inequalities that communities face by removing the barriers to participation there will be if people’s needs are not properly understood or catered for. A more active offer of engagement needs to be made to ensure representation is fair and appropriate.
Aside from the obvious equality considerations regarding community consultation and access to reports, involving the disenfranchised elements of the community presents a challenge. Those members of the community that are the subject of the greatest amount of crisis intervention by community planning partners tend to be those that are least likely to engage with formal bodies.