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

The Moray Council agrees with the principles and the broad ambition of the Act in relation to effective community planning, however, the Local Improvement Outcome Plans will present organisational challenges. The Moray Council and the Community Planning Partnership will agree an approach with all community planning partnership board members. We note the expansion of public sector bodies subject to community planning duties. We seek guidance on whether or not all 10 bodies should have a seat on the community planning board (which we would oppose) or will it suffice to have them represented on one of the seven community planning partnerships which sit below the CPP board. For example the Cairngorm National Park Authority is represented on our Economic Development Partnership. We also note that there is no mention of the voluntary sector in the list of public sector bodies or the list of additions whereas in Moray the local Third Sector Interface has a place on the Community Planning Board.
We have established a senior officer group (Community Planning Officers Group CPOG) which is instrumental in driving an agenda leading to the contribution of funds , staff and resources for specific outcomes. The advent of Integration Joint Boards is considered a major step forward towards a more general pooling of the community planning partners’ budgets

The Moray Council would commend the model adopted in Moray of a ten year rolling plan which has been agreed and adopted by all partners in the Moray CPP. The plan contains improvement targets for each of the seven partnerships (economy, public protection, health and social care, children and young people, community engagement and employability) and the board holds each partnership to account in the delivery of these targets.
We welcome the acceptance that there will be local flexibility to meet the ambitions of local communities.

In Moray we have worked with partners to develop a system that allows review and updating of our Moray Plan on a two yearly basis . This model can be adopted for LOIPs, but their effective introduction will take time, consultation and resources.
Government joint inspections are increasingly being carried out at a CPP level so the opportunity to monitor the progress of community plans are being reviewed and revised. We therefore can see no reason to compel review and revision, but instead clear and supportive advice should be provided within the guidance.

This response is based on the assumption that we agree with the limited timescales for response. In Moray the CPP has a Moray 10 year plan in place. This has been reviewed and updated and this process will continue on a two yearly basis .The four and six month suggestions would be overly bureaucratic and would encourage a ‘tick box‘ approach rather than effective review and target update.
The model of either 4 or 6 month review is, rejected as, unworkable.

The key factor in the development of community planning must be local flexibility and acceptance that there are geographic and population differences as well as a broad range of differences in CPP implementation.

Moray, like many other authorities in Scotland, is a hugely diverse area. So are our main conurbations. Localities have little to do with population size and therefore, setting this as a criteria is likely to misdirect the public and public services attempting to interpret and implement the Act. The guidance should go no further than highlighting the importance of addressing disadvantage and deprivation, not necessarily those identified through SIMD or other Government measurements. It will be important to allow CPP’s who will apply an understanding of local circumstances and can best implement locality plans in their area. We would also take this opportunity of highlighting concerns in relation to the resources required for the successful implementation of locality planning, this is a significant and largely new commitment for public services and this should be recognised by the government when setting its budget.

As noted in the previous response any limit set in the guidance is likely to be misleading and should, therefore, not be included.

We disagree with setting of the population criteria at a Government level, Moray has a ten year rolling plan and we are aware of localities of varying population size where locality planning would be appropriate and would benefit from a targeted input of consultation and resource. This will take time but it is essential that this is done with local knowledge.

No

We disagree with setting of the population criteria at a Government level, Moray has a ten year rolling plan and we are aware of localities of varying population size where locality planning would be appropriate and would benefit from a targeted input of consultation and resource. This will take time but it is essential that this is done with local knowledge.