Edinburgh Partnership Review and Consultation of Governance and Community Planning Arrangements

Overview

Community planning brings together public agencies, the third sector and communities to work together to plan and deliver services which make a real difference to people's lives.  The Edinburgh Partnership involves these partners in overseeing this work for the city. 

The Edinburgh Partnership recognises that we can improve community planning processes.  In this consultation, the Edinburgh Partnership would like to hear people’s views on:

• how communities and community groups can more effectively influence decisions about their community.
• how the governance arrangements can be improved to:
  • make it clear how decisions are made, and who is making them, by improving the groups and structures involved
  • make partnership working stronger 
  • make better connections between the different levels of partnership working in the city.

Why your views matter

In Scotland, the law says a range of public bodies must take part in community planning. This is set out in the Scottish Government's Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. The act was designed to strengthen the influence communities have in making decisions about their area - this is known as community planning.

Below is the current governance structure in Edinburgh, which forms the basis of the consultation. It shows many partnership and advisory groups feed into and from the Edinburgh Partnership.

There are other bodies in the city which link to and/or have a role in these arrangements but they are not part of the governance structure. These include community councils, Council committees, the Edinburgh Association of Community Councils and the Equality and Rights Network. They provide the city-wide perspective for community and interest groups. These are not included in the consultation.

To help develop the consultation the Edinburgh Partnership carried out a review with the people involved in the current partnerships and groups shown in the governance structure (as above).  Their views on what is working well and what could be better have shaped the proposals and questions in this consultation.

We would now like to hear your views as we recognise that this consultation is relevant in different ways to a wide range of organisations.

Timescales

You can let us know your views between Monday 16th July 2018 to Sunday 9th September 2018.