Manchester City Council have established ward coordination meetings in each ward across the city. These meetings allow elected members the opportunity to access intelligence about their ward, set local priorities, and engage with council and wider partners, residents and communities to make progress in their neighbourhoods.
Background
The Our Manchester Strategy has recently been refreshed and sets the vision for the City over the next ten years. It recognises that ‘no single organisation – including the Council – can deliver this strategy alone. It must be a shared mission, owned and driven by the whole city – residents, businesses, voluntary and community organisations, and public services – all working side by side.’
Manchester is organised into thirteen neighbourhood areas, which are based on populations of between 30-50,000 residents. This is used to guide delivery in communities, focused around the concept of the Team Around the Neighbourhood. The team brings together stakeholders from across the local authority and wider public sector partners such as Greater Manchester Police, Registered Providers and the NHS This enables the Council and partners to offer holistic and integrated service delivery, which considers the needs of residents and communities in the round.
Structure
The system of ward coordination has existed in Manchester since 2000. Each ward coordination meeting corresponds to an electoral ward within Manchester, meaning that there are thirty-two across the city. As such, there are three elected members per meeting. There are four meetings per municipal year.
The core attendees at each meeting of the ward coordination are elected members, the Neighbourhood Manager and Officer, Greater Manchester Police and the Registered Provider for the ward. In addition, other representatives can be invited to enable detailed discussion on a key theme or emerging data.
Funding and resources
Each ward coordination forum is managed by the Neighbourhoods Directorate. Each ward has an identified Neighbourhood Manager and a Neighbourhood Officer. Alongside the formal meeting, these officers speak to elected members at regular intervals to track progress. The Council have determined to maintain this level of resource in each ward over recent years.
In addition, a Ward Dashboard has been created for each area, which contains key information for the previous quarter on Service Standards and Key Performance Indicators, with a core focus on place management and community engagement. Elected members also receive bespoke dashboards for individual services, such as highways, compliance services and GMP.
As part of the Neighbourhood Investment Fund, each ward in Manchester is allocated £20,000. This fund is open to applications from community groups and is designed to enable local projects that make neighbourhoods a better place to live. Ward members determine how the Neighbourhood Investment Fund should be spent.
Further, each ward can access £100,000 per year as part of the Neighbourhood Infrastructure Renewal Fund. This funding was made available over a 3 year period where Members can determine what this capital fund is utilised on, with examples including new benches, bins and new play facilities.
Each ward also has its own Climate Change Action Plan and they are all published on the Council’s website. They demonstrate the Council’s commitment and action to tackling climate change at a local level.
How they work
The ward coordination approach is driven by the following purposes:
- Providing a proactive / reactive focus on how neighbourhoods ‘look & feel’;
- Focus on an operational approach – dealing with day-to-day issues and working quickly to resolve them;
- Encouraging residents to take a pride in and responsibility for their neighbourhoods (their own behaviours, reporting and getting involved); and
- Ensuring that residents’ voice is heard / acted upon through links with tenant & resident associations / community groups, requests for services and Members.
The role of ward coordination as an advocate of place is in alignment with the Our Manchester Strategy and its ambitions to:
- Place Management: ensuring the neighbourhood management basics are effective, and places are clean, green & vibrant (here & now / growth perspective);
- Zero Carbon: catalysing communities to reduce their carbon footprint, including the annual production of a Ward Climate Change Action Plan;
- Improving the Quality of Life of residents: tackling the social determinants of poor health so residents can take advantage of what the city has to offer (how places ‘look & feel’ also impact on a residents’ health and wellbeing); and
- Harnessing the Strengths & Assets of Communities: engagement with residents / communities so they are influencing actions & decisions that affect themselves and the places they live, sharing their ideas / insight for change, and getting involved e.g. volunteering.
Each ward coordination produced a Ward Plan. This includes a background to demographic data alongside key ward priorities (determined by elected members in consultation with local residents). The priorities are grouped around key themes: Clean, Well Maintained Neighbourhoods; Safe; Connectivity and Investing in Highways, Resident & Place; A Place Called Home; Tackling Vibrant Communities; and Young People.
Lessons learnt
- It is vital to develop strong relationships with partners in order to deliver a well-rounded and integrated approach to neighbourhood governance. Both Ward Coordination and the Team Around the Neighbourhood concept has embedded partnership working.
- Ward level data via the dashboard enables citywide trends to be reviewed and supports deploying resources in the best way.
- Engagement and promoting the role of residents and the community is key- they are the eyes and ears on the ground, and support improvements locally.
Useful links:
What neighbourhood investment funds are | Neighbourhood investment funds | Manchester City Council
https://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/100003/people_and_communities/8653/local_climate_action
Contact [email protected]