Local Area Boards: Wiltshire Council

Wiltshire Council has 18 Local Area Boards with delegated powers and devolved funding. This model, which includes community engagement, partnership building and meetings, enables residents and local businesses to engage with their local councillors, and who in turn can actively work with their community.

When Wiltshire went through reorganisation in 2009, combining the four districts with the county, the new council took the opportunity to establish a series of Local Area Boards. These were set up to ensure that decisions were made as close to the population of 500,000 residents as possible. 18 Boards were set up, serving community areas that were defined through research and borders that residents identified as being locally meaningful. These areas were adjusted in 2021 to align to changes electoral division boundaries.

Each Local Area Board is made up of the councillors for that area; this can be as few as three, or as many as ten, councillors depending on the area. Each Board holds devolved funding and delegated powers from Wiltshire Council to facilitate community action at a local level.

Each Area Committee operates through three main strands of work: quarterly business meetings; community engagements such as events, workshops and surveys; and working groups.

The Boards also develop collaborative Area Board networks through regular communication, partnership activities and sharing of data and intelligence. Members can include (but are not limited to) town and parish councils, voluntary and community sector organisations, the police, health, fire and rescue services, businesses, schools, housing associations and residents. 

Working groups are linked to priorities set by the Board, which in turn must relate to the Council’s priorities. These working groups can be run in partnership with existing local groups. Each Board also has a Local Highways and Footpath Improvement Group. Supported by Highways officers, these groups make recommendations to the Area Board to determine priorities and levels of expenditure required for small-scale highways improvement schemes in the community area.

Each Area Board receives an annual allocation of devolved funding from Wiltshire Council to invest in community-led projects and initiatives. This funding is across three funding streams: community grants capital funding; youth grants; and older and vulnerable adults grants. Some of this funding is devolved to working groups. Analysis has shown that for every £1 spent in community grants, the equivalent of around £6 additional investment is achieved, such as through volunteering, further fundraising or in-kind contributions.

The Chair of each Area Board also receives a Special Responsibility Allowance.

The Boards are supported by engagement and partnerships officers who help to facilitate the work of the Board and democratic services officers who ensure meetings run effectively and legally.

Importantly, Local Area Boards are not just meetings; they are a model through which local engagement takes place. All of Wiltshire’s Local Area Boards work towards four key outcomes:

• Community engagement
• Local partnerships with local organisations
• Resilience in communities
• Local leadership and decision-making

Quarterly meetings provide a vehicle for decision-making and distributing funding, however a significant amount of work is carried out between meetings including via working groups and community engagements, both in person and digitally.

Chairs of the Boards come together regularly to share learning in a meeting chaired by the responsible cabinet member.

• Enabling Boards to award grant funding to community projects has been very successful in helping to build resilience in communities, and empowering local councillors. Establish tracking mechanisms for this funding from the beginning so that you can monitor what is being invested where, and its contribution to the council’s overarching priorities.
• Dedicated Highways working groups are popular with councillors, enabling them to have input into and ownership over initiatives and to work directly with Highways officers to deliver for residents.
• Consider how to co-produce the model with the community and with council officers. The former will have views on how they want to engage with the council at a local level, while the latter will need to support Boards if they are to be successful, and may have views on how to make this effective.
• Be clear from the outset what success looks like to communities, to councillors and to officers. What can you measure delivery against?
• Clarity around the delegation of powers to Boards is vital to ensure that all councillors and the community understand the extent of decisions that Boards can take.

Wiltshire Council: Local Area Boards (April 2025)

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