Podcast transcript: Community Planning report (June 2006)

This is Anne McCubbin here to talk with Miranda Alcock about our community planning report. First of all Miranda, could you just tell us what community planning is?

It’s the process where local authorities, health boards, enterprise bodies and voluntary organisations and members of the communities themselves all work together to improve services within their communities.

Why is it important?

In today’s world, a lot of the problems that need solving need organisations to work together. 

So, for example, if you want to improve the safety of local communities you might want the police working with the local council to provide activities for young people to take them off the streets. And then you might want the enterprise body coming in to give advice to those young people on training opportunities or business start-ups. And then you could have the health board coming in and providing some advice on drug misuse. So you get all those organisations working together to really solve the problems at a local level.

So what did your report find?

This is the first study we’ve done on community planning. Community planning has been a statutory responsibility for local authorities and other bodies since 2003. So this is really reviewing the early progress that’s been made.

We found that community planning is progressing, but it’s very complex and that complexity makes it difficult to really achieve the aspirations that were in that legislation.

And how much money is being spent on this?

Community planning doesn’t necessarily mean that extra money needs to be spent. It’s sometimes about doing things differently with the same resources. 

However, increasingly money is being intended for partnership working. For example last year over £600 million was spent on partnership working at a local level. And it’s really important that money is spent effectively.

And what kind of difficulties did you find?

There is a range of problems really. At a local level different organisations are set up and work differently. And that provides some challenges for local community planning partnerships.

But also the Scottish Executive have a huge range of policy initiatives and funding streams that are meant to be delivered locally through partnership working. And that adds to the complexities.

So what needs to happen next?

Across Scotland both national and local organisations need to talk to each other about what community planning can and should be delivering. 

Then at a national level the Scottish Executive can do more to support community planning by rationalising the funding streams and giving more flexibility to local delivery of policy objectives. 

At a local level community planning partnerships themselves need to focus on a few key priorities which are based on the needs of the area. And they also need to show how their services are improving from the work that’s being put in.