LOCAL STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP - EXECUTIVE BOARD

Minutes

DATE15 March 2005

VENUECommittee Room 3, Guildhall

PRESENTBoard Members:David Atkinson, Chief Executive - City of York Council

Jeremy Clough, Chief Executive – S & Y Primary Care Trust

Ian Collins, Yorkshire Forward - Substitute for Geoff Needham

Ken Dixon – Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Mike Galloway, Principal – York College

Cllr. Stephen Galloway – City of York Council (Chair)

Cllr. David Merrett – City of York Council

Liz Page, Managing Director – York & County Press

Simon Stanley, Archbishop's Adviser for City Centre Ministry

Colin Stroud, Chief Executive – York Council for Vol. Service

Jonathan Tyler, Chair – York Environment Forum

Cllr. Andrew Waller – City of York Council

Bob Wood, Chair – Safer York Partnership

In Attendance:Rachel Johns, Director of Public Health, Selby & York PCT

Laura Paterson, Transport Research Officer, CYC

Mark Finer, Principal Transport Planner, CYC

Secretariat:Laura McGillivray, Deputy Chief Executive, CYC

Denise Simms, Senior Partnership Support Officer, CYC

APOLOGIES:Brian Cantor – Vice Chancellor, University of York

Ron Cooke – Co-opted Partner

Len Cruddas, Chief Executive – Chamber of Commerce

Tim Madgwick, Chief Superintendent – North Yorkshire Police

Geoff Needham, Head of North Yorkshire – Yorkshire Forward

1INTRODUCTIONS AND APOLOGIES

Apologies were received from Brian Cantor, Ron Cooke, Len Cruddas, Tim Madgwick and Geoff Needham. It was reported that Cindy Benton and Simon Stanley had submitted letters of resignation to the Chair. Cindy and Simon were thanked for the contribution they had made to the work of the Partnership and Partners passed on their best wishes to both for the future. Board Members were asked to consider future faith sector representation on the Board and suggestions for a replacement were welcomed.

Action – Partners were asked to send suggestions for faith sector representatives to Laura McGillivray.

2MINUTES OF MEETING HELD 27 JANUARY 2005

Minutes of the meeting held on 27 January were agreed, subject to the amendment that Jonathan Tyler had submitted his apologies for that meeting.

MATTERS ARISING

Sub-Regional Investment Plan – Copies of the latest SRIP newsletter were circulated, containing details of the York and North Yorkshire Development Board, Social Inclusion Partnership, forthcoming events and an update on current projects. Ian Collins confirmed that York based SRIP projects were being progressed through the approval process. He also circulated details of the 2005 review of Regional Economic Strategy (RES) and the issues that had been identified as key for the RES consultation.

IDeA Peer Review – Laura McGillivray thanked Partners who had given up their time to speak to members of the IDeA peer review team. She explained that the review team had already given initial feedback and a full report was expected in April.

Regional Spatial Strategy – Partners were informed that formal consultation on the draft RSS would now take place from September 2005 for a 12-week period up to Christmas.

3REDUCING SMOKING IN YORK

Rachel Johns, PCT Director of Public Health, gave a presentation outlining the proposed approach to reducing smoking in the city (Slides attached). Rachel explained that smoking was the single greatest cause of preventable death and accounted for approximately 300 deaths in the York / Selby region every year. It was noted that, within the sub-region, only Scarborough had a higher smoking attributable death rate than York.

It was estimated that 26% of the population within the Selby/York PCT boundary smoked and that the government had set a national target to reduce adult smoking rates to 21% by 2010.

The strategy to reduce smoking rates would include:

  • Smoke-free environments – this was likely to have the biggest impact on rates of smoking. The NHS wanted to lead by example in ensuring that their premises and grounds were smoke-free (SYPCT policy would be updated by Oct 2005 and the York Hospitals NHS Trust policy was under consideration). Liz Page also reported that staff at York and County Press had been given three months notice regarding closure of the ‘smoking’ room. Support to carry this through and encourage smokers to change their behaviour had been available from the PCT.
  • Clean air campaign – the PCT and Yorkshire Evening Press had been working together on a campaign, which would be launched in April, aimed at supporting workplaces to become smoke-free zones.
  • Support / information – support would be available for employers / employees who wished to get involved in the clean air campaign.

Implementation of the strategy would be monitored by the Healthy City Board, which would in turn report back to the Executive Board on progress.

Comments following the presentation included:

  • Smoke-free areas could displace smoking activity onto the street and increase littering. It would be important to inform the Street Environment Service of areas likely to suffer from increased levels of litter throughout the campaign;
  • This would be an opportunity to gain commitment from organisations represented on the Partnership, particularly large employers such as the council;
  • Scarborough, Whitby and Ryedale Health Authorities had committed to become smoke-free environments on No Smoking Day. The next No Smoking Day would be 1 Oct 2005;
  • The smoke-free campaign would focus on organisations and their smoking policies.

Action – Partners wishing to commit to the smoke-free environment campaign would contact Rachel Johns or Liz Page.

4LOCAL TRANSPORT PLAN 2 AND ACCESSIBILITY STRATEGY

Laura Paterson gave a short introduction to the forthcoming renewal of the city’s Local Transport Plan (LTP2) and the new requirement to include an Accessibility Strategy as part of the next LTP. Laura explained that all Local Authorities were required to produce their Transport Plan by March 2006.

The Accessibility Strategy would form a key component of the Transport Plan and aimed to improve the quality of life of York residents through increased accessibility to transport services. The council’s Transport Planning Unit would liase with service providers across all seven Community Strategy themes to produce a strategy for the city. The five stages of the accessibility planning process included:

  1. Mapping work – identify priority service and geographic areas, stakeholder groups and existing problems;
  2. Local themes – audits of local needs and objectives;
  3. Option appraisal – work with partners to identify options;
  4. Plan preparation – produce action plans;
  5. Monitor and evaluate – Implement and monitor the LTP.

The Transport Planning Team were currently working on a draft Accessibility Strategy and this would be available for Without Walls Board Members to comment on by May 2005. The team were using mapping software to assist in identifying areas of poor accessibility and had held five themed workshops on access to health, education, work, retail and leisure / culture.

Information generated through these processes would be used to develop the Accessibility Strategy framework.

Comments following the presentation included:

  • It would help to identify key services, e.g Youth Clubs, and use the accessibility software to map whether they were on bus routes;
  • Disseminate availability of the software to enable key resources / services to be mapped;
  • The team could consider taking a general approach to accessibility for all and then overlay issues relevant to socially excluded groups, e.g. high prevalence of student accommodation or areas of high unemployment;
  • Partners would be required to identify issue(s) considered most important e.g. journey times, cost or distance;
  • Gaps in the commercial network could be improved through consultation/partnership with providers;
  • The recent equalities conference highlighted that there were many issues concerning the accessibility of transport services;
  • The Inclusive City Reference Group would be key to involve in accessibility planning consultations;
  • Partners should consider this issue within the context of the theme areas in order to tackle inequality and achieve Community Strategy aims.

Action – it was agreed that Partners would contact Laura Paterson if they had any further comments and that the Transport Planning Team would circulate further information on the process / strategy in early May.

5CHANGEUP

Colin Stroud gave a presentation on ChangeUp, the Government’s initiative to improve infrastructure support for the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS). He explained that Government had high expectations of the sector with regard to public service delivery. This followed a review by the Treasury in 2002 on the role of VCS and the subsequent £93 million fund established by the Home Office to implement recommendations to improve infrastructure.

Colin explained that the ChangeUp Vision was to regenerate the good citizens agenda and to ensure that by 2014:

  • Efficient and good quality voluntary and community services would be available nationwide;
  • Services would promote diversity and reflect BME / Faith / Rural communities;
  • Funding should be sustainable and promote social enterprise

ChangeUp funding had to be spent by 2006, although, as yet, no funds had yet been made available. The Government Office was responsible for distributing the money, however there had been delays in the Yorkshire and Humber region. The Regional Forum was in the process of developing mechanisms to distribute the £1.1 million available to the York and North Yorkshire area.

The investment plan for York and North Yorkshire included provision for:

  • Capital projects
  • ICT Support (i.e. support for groups in using and maintaining their own IT equipment)
  • HR guidance and advice on employment legislation
  • Accountancy advice (Community Accounting Scheme)
  • Common database
  • Volunteer centres (one per district)

York CVS had made a bid to the ChangeUp fund for £380k to complete development of the Priory Street site. A total of £1.1 million was being invested in Priory Street, funded mostly by the sale of Community House. The development would increase office accommodation for groups and meeting rooms / conference facilities.

Comments from Partners following the presentation included:

  • Could the extent of structuring by government make it more difficult to attract volunteers – i.e. with money came conditions and that could put people off;
  • JRF had recently completed research into the local BME voluntary sector and could make their database / address list available to CVS;
  • Voluntary Groups did not want to work as sub-contractors of the local authority due to onerous financial monitoring procedures;
  • The Compact code of practice for funding would ensure that monitoring arrangements would be proportionate to the amount of funds granted.

Action - It was strongly agreed that the Executive Board would back York CVS’ bid to the ChangeUp fund.

6DRAFT CRIME AND DISORDER REDUCTION STRATEGY 2005/8

Partners had received a draft copy of the Community Safety Plan 2005/8, which contained the six strategic priorities of:

  1. Drugs
  2. Dwelling burglary
  3. Violent Crime
  4. Anti-social behaviour
  5. Vehicle Crime
  6. Road Safety

Laura McGillivray explained that the draft Community Safety Plan had been amended several times since Partners had received their copy (version 8 was now the most up to date copy). She explained that we would now need to identify public priority outcomes and agree actions / performance measures required to deliver improvements.

There had been a heavy bias in the existing draft towards government targets. This was because York was in the top quartile for crime figures and there had been a requirement to set targets to improve performance.

Comments from Board Members on the draft Community Safety Plan included:

  • It was disappointing that the links to Without Walls theme areas had not been made. The main focus of the document was on the 6 specific priority areas and no links had been made back to the different strands of the Community Strategy.
  • No high level targets had been included in respect of perception measures for the Safer City;
  • The section on Road Safety had been added late and was still extremely narrow in that it only looked at major accidents and deaths;
  • It had been difficult balancing the views of 20-30 organisations to produce the plan, in particular because of the heavy hand from Government Office in setting out what the priorities would be;
  • We would need to think across agencies in order to tackle low level offences, as we could be more creative with the resources available;
  • The nature of the targets meant nothing to anyone and could in fact de-motivate people as they did not understand them;
  • Partners should use data and work together more to resolve problems e.g. work with the health service to get a better picture about violent crime in the city.

Action – it was agreed that Partners would contact Laura McGillivray or Jane Mowat if they had any further comments on the draft Community Safety Plan.

7WITHOUT WALLS FORWARD PLAN AND FUTURE WORKING ARRANGEMENTS

Partners had received paperwork that set out:

  • The suggested cycle of Partnership Board and Strategic Monitoring Group Meetings for 2005/6; and
  • Issues / challenges facing the city that could require Without Walls support / input;

Board Members were asked to consider whether there were any further issues that would require Without Walls consideration in the forthcoming year. These could be dealt with as agenda items for scheduled meetings or could involve arrangement of separate one-off consultation events.

Board Members comments on the forward plan included:

  • There would be an Anti-Poverty Seminar that Board Members were invited to attend on 25 April, 2-4pm at the Priory Street Centre;
  • The Regional Economic Strategy was currently under review and should be included in the Without Walls work programme;
  • Board Members should be given ample notice of seminars / events;
  • Consider development of an annual conference that would bring stakeholders together, test Community Strategy aims and report on progress.

Action – It was agreed that the secretariat would confirm 05/06 meeting dates in an e-mail to Partners. Partners also agreed to inform the secretariat of any additional issues / challenges that should be included in the Without Walls forward plan.

8WITHOUT WALLS PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

Partners received an update on preparations to gather Without Walls performance information for 2004/5. In addition, Board Members were informed of a proposed ‘scorecard’ approach to performance monitoring.

Partners heard that the Council’s Performance Improvement Team were arranging workshops for the Responsible Officers within each of the themed partnership areas. These sessions would be aimed at ensuring progress against headline outcomes and success measures were reported to the first Strategic Monitoring Group meeting in July.

The scorecard proposed would comprise performance data backed up by narrative on successes and areas for improvement / joint working possibilities.

Action – It was agreed that Board Members would contact the secretariat with suggestions regarding the scorecard format.

9ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Ken Dixon referred to the RSS consultation comments that had been submitted to the Regional Assembly by the Environment Forum and City Council. He was concerned about acceptance of York as a Sub-area of Leeds and felt that this should be resisted.

Comments from Board Members on this issue included:

  • York was included as a sub-area of Leeds, but also as a sub-area with its own sphere of influence;
  • The City Development Team could be commissioned to analyse the issues relating to the Leeds City region and the impact it might have on York;
  • The consultation period for comments on the pre-draft had closed which would make it difficult to influence the draft RSS.
  • The City Development briefing could incorporate an Environmental capacity study;
  • Significant issues had emerged in terms of the housing figures, as they seemed to suggest that build rate would be substantially reduced. This would affect ability to meet demand for housing.

Action – it was agreed that the City Development Team would bring a discussion paper to the next Board meeting in May on the Leeds key city region and the impact of its acceptance on York.

There being no other business, the meeting ended at 18.15pm

Date of next meetings (to take place 4-6pm in Committee Room 2 at the Guildhall):

Partnership Board Meetings:Strategic Monitoring Group Meetings:

26 May 200518 July 2005

28 September 200526 January 2006

23 November 2005

30 March 2005

Seminars:

25 April 2005 – Anti Poverty Seminar 2-4pm at Priory Street Centre