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THE SALFORD AGREEMENT 2007-10

Our Vision and the Agreement

  1. Our community plan, Making the Vision Real, shows how Salford will progress towards the vision adopted by Partners IN Salford’s, the local strategic partnership, that:

In 2016, Salford will be a beautiful and welcoming city, driven by energetic and engaged communities of highly skilled, healthy and motivated citizens, who have built a diverse and prosperous culture and economy which encourages and recognises the contribution of everyone, for everyone.

  1. Partners IN Salford recognise that achieving this vision demands the improvements in all of the following themes:

A healthy city • Improving health outcomes and reducing health inequalities

A safe city • Reducing crime and disorder and improving feelings of community safety

A learning & creative city • Raising education and skills levels and developing and promoting culture and leisure

A city where children and young people are valued • Investing and focusing resources and efforts into services, activities and opportunities that will support children and young people and help them to achieve their full potential

An inclusive city • Tackling poverty and social inequalities and increasing the involvement of local people and communities in shaping the future of the city

An economically prosperous city • Enabling local people to fulfil their potential and supporting the local economy by encouraging business development and economic investment in the city

A city that’s good to live in • Protecting and improving the environment and providing access to decent, affordable homes that meet the needs of local people

  1. In 2005, Partners IN Salford considered how the city may develop over the next ten to fifteen years and identified seven strategic imperatives. These are priority issues that it must address to achieve step-change and to drive progress in each of the themes. They are:

Imperative 1: Improving secondary school educational attainment.

It is vital to ensure that all young people are suitably qualified and skilled to progress to employment or further learning and ensure their future prosperity.

Imperative 2: Reskilling the adult population.

Adults in Salford need the skills to enable them to gain and sustain employment, to contribute to their communities and to support their children to achieve their full potential.

Imperative 3: Reducing polarisation and inequalities.

Partners IN Salford is working to address the social, educational and economic barriers that create inequality.

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Imperative 4: Raising aspirations / motivations.

It is important that the support and services are in place to enable citizens of Salford to achieve their ambitions and realise their full potential.

Imperative 5: Increasing community engagement.

Partners IN Salford recognises that the best way forward for Salford is in partnership with the citizens, people and communities who live here.

Imperative 6: Attracting newcomers.

The growth of the city relies on a reversal of trends in terms of the size of the population. People who live in the city need to be enabled and encouraged to remain, and newcomers need to be attracted into the city.

Imperative 7: Improving environmental sustainability.

Partners IN Salford is committed to the principles of environmental, economic and social sustainability which underpins its work.

  1. Two things became clear in working through the scenarios. Firstly, it needs to take action to ensure that citizens and communities are partners in making decisions about service delivery and responsible actors in making the vision a reality. Secondly, a fast pace of change with a rapid development in the city’s knowledge and skills mix is required to deliver the vision.

Our approach for the Salford Agreement 2007-10

  1. To deliver our vision we need to close the unusually wide gap in life opportunities between the most deprived people and places in the city and the rest, and between Salford and the north west of England and the country as a whole. Partners IN Salford’s commitment to neighbourhood working will contribute to closing this gap and to raising standards across the city.
  1. The community strategy highlights our aspirations for the city in the next ten years. The Salford Agreement is a three-year delivery plan for driving forward elements of that community strategy. We have adopted five objectives for the Agreement. They relate directly to the community plan themes and strategic imperatives and are based on robust evidence base using a variety of reliable data sources such as the IMD and what our partners have told us which re-affirms the need to prioritise the themes and imperatives, closely linked to the Governments prescribed block system. The objectives are to:
  1. Improve economic prosperity through educational attainment, skills, employment, and enterprise (imperative 1 and 2)
  2. Improve health outcomes
  3. Improve community safety
  4. Improve community engagement (imperative 5)
  5. Improve environmental sustainability (imperative 7)
  1. Partners IN Salford will continuously improve all services to achieve excellence so that the gap continues to close between Salford and the north west England and the whole country. However, we will use this first three-year Agreement to focus on groups of people, places and issues that we have agreed as priorities. We have developed outcomes for each one, relating them to the whole city and for individual wards and neighbourhoods to street level.
  1. Our priorities are:
  2. Children and young people, particularly those at risk and those living in poverty
  3. Adults with low or no skills and those out of work and claiming benefits
  4. Families and individuals living in the most deprived areas of the city
  1. We will initially concentrate on services to which we can add value through the Agreement, seeking to work with local people to do different things as well as improving what we do already. In this way, the Agreement will spotlight transformational change across the city.

OUR CITY

  1. Salford is a city in transformation, moving into an exciting future as a thriving cultural, economic and residential location. From its urbanised core to the greenbelt to the west, Salford is building on the diversity of its waterfront, urban and countryside environments to create places where people want to live, work, invest and visit.
  1. One of the world's first industrial cities, Salford has a modern outlook that reflects both a history of innovation and the major changes occurring in the city now. Salford covers an area of 37 square miles and includes the districts of Salford, Eccles, Worsley, Irlam and Cadishead and Swinton and Pendlebury and has a population of around 220,000 people.
  1. Salford's proximity to Manchester city centre makes it an integral part of the economic and cultural development of England's northwest. Salford boasts a renowned university, world-class architecture, a major teaching hospital in Hope hospital, a rugby league club, Salford Reds and in Worsley, some of the most sought-after housing in Greater Manchester. With homes, shops, offices, restaurants, a water sports centre, pubs, hotels and The Lowry, more than £400 million-worth of public and private sector funded developments at Salford Quays are almost complete.
  1. The city is at the hub of the UK's transport network with the M602, M60, M61 and M62 motorways all within the city's boundaries and the Metrolink tram system extends to the Quays and beyond to Eccles.
  1. The future looks bright in Salford - a dedicated Urban Regeneration Company has been set up to revitalise Central Salford and create a prime location where people and businesses will want to be. A series of regeneration programmes are also changing the city's most deprived communities. These programmes include single regeneration budget funding in the Seedley and Langworthy area of the city and a £53 million New Deal for Communities scheme in Charlestown and Lower Kersal.
  1. Despite our success in attracting significant resources many areas of the City still experience high levels of poverty and decline. Key issues such as housing, crime, education, health and employment are collectively worse in the most deprived areas.
  1. Recent major strategic work has focused on reversing decline in Salford and in the wider city region. Economic development is now driven under the Greater Manchester City Region Development Programme that will accelerate growth of the Manchester City Region. For instance, Salford is one of three areas that will deliver the Greater Manchester City Strategy, targeting people on work related benefits living in the worst performing wards in Salford.
  1. We have tailored our strategic approach to regeneration to two areas of the city - Central Salford and Salford West. This recognises the contrasting levels of deprivation in these areas.
  1. People in Central Salford have long suffered acute deprivation. This has demanded a focus on transformational physical change including the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder Initiative. Such comprehensive regeneration activity will contribute to a positive future for local communities.
  1. Salford West is comparatively more stable and contains some of Greater Manchester’s most popular and successful residential neighbourhoods. However, significant pockets of deprivation remain. In Salford West we are focusing on maximising market led opportunities and on increasing stability by tackling local deprivation.

Narrowing the Gap

Deprived groups of people

  1. In line with our approach to this Agreement we have identified groups of people experiencing some form of disadvantage which we will prioritise.
  1. Whilst there is an overarching commitment to prioritising children and young people and adults with low skills, there are others groups of people, such as BME groups, older people, looked after children, women and asylum seekers who we know are experiencing diverse inequalities in terms of educational attainment, unemployment, community engagement and poor health outcomes which makes them particularly vulnerable, both in terms of becoming the victims or perpetrators of crime and most likely groups to suffer poor health and reduced life expectancy rates. This evidence has led to some very specific targeting of people for example on issues such as worklessness, business start-up rates, people with heart and stroke related diseases and re-offending rates where we know specific interventions are required.
  1. In the next stage of developing the agreement, this process will be further refined, recognising that the most disadvantaged groups often have a complex range of problems that we will need to take a collective and targeted approach to address. The importance of this is underlined by the fact that Salford is the fourth most deprived local authority area in the North West and the 12th most deprived nationally, according to the Index of Deprivation 2004.

Deprived areas

  1. Our neighbourhood renewal strategy recognises that although deprived people live in many parts of the city, they are concentrated in particular areas of it. In line with this strategy, we have identified areas of the city experiencing the most severe forms of deprivation which are reflected in the outcomes framework. The next stage in our development of the Agreement will be to short list a number of wards and Super Output Areas where there is an identified need and where a commitment to joint working can bring most benefit. These areas are described in more detail below.

Indices of Multiple Deprivation

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Central Salford

  1. Central Salford forms the western gateway into the regional centre, with the River Irwell as a dominant feature. It is home to 72,721 people. Its seven wards rank in the top 7% of most deprived ones in the country. They are:

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Ordsall

Broughton

Irwell Riverside

Langworthy

Kersal

Claremont

Weaste and Seedley

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  1. Described as one of the most exciting regeneration opportunities in Europe, Central Salford will be transformed over the next twenty years. The Central Salford Urban Regeneration Company started in January 2005. It will co-ordinate regeneration and the implementation of the vision and regeneration framework that it adopted in March 2006.

Salford West

  1. Salford West is an area of mixed fortunes with extremes of affluence and deprivation. It contains a number of attractive and thriving neighbourhoods. It offers the best of both worlds as a suburban location on the edge of the countryside with easy access to the regional centre. However, severe pockets of deprivation persist in Little Hulton, Eccles and Swinton.
  1. Salford West has a total population of 143,383, in the twelve wards of:

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Little Hulton

Walkden North

Walkden South

Worsley

Boothstown and Ellenbrook

Pendlebury

Swinton North

Swinton South

Eccles

Winton

Barton

Irlam and Cadishead

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Twenty five super output areas in these wards fall within the 5% most deprived nationally for health, and 13 fall within it for crime. In contrast, 6 super output areas fall within the in the 30% least deprived nationally.

STATEMENT OF COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

  1. We are using the Agreement to implement the priorities and aspirations that the people of Salford have already alerted us to through numerous consultation and involvement exercises over the past couple of years in work on the community strategy, the Children and Young People’s Plan, the older people’s well-being strategy and the Crime and Disorder Strategy. What they want us to do now is to get on with delivering these strategies. So, we will focus our community involvement on the selection and delivery of activity, rather than on the process of compiling the Agreement itself.
  1. Community engagement is one of the overarching objectives of our Agreement, arising from the strategic imperatives in our community plan, Making the Vision Real:

Imperative 5: Increasing community engagement.

Partners IN Salford recognises that the best way forward for Salford is in partnership with the citizens, people and communities who live here.

Neighbourhood management

  1. At a neighbourhood level our system of partnership working which ensures that communities can have their say on the issues as they see them and on the solutions to problems.We have divided the city into eight areas. In each one a community committee brings together community, voluntary and faith organisations with local councillors.
  1. Each committee produces an annual community action plan that identifies the concerns of local people in a way that encourages agencies to respond, and each committee has a budget to spend on these priorities. In every area a neighbourhood manager leads a multi-agency team, which works in partnership to engage local residents in identifying local problems and improving services in the area.
  1. This consultation and involvement has lead to changes and refinements of Partners IN Salford’s work, and we have maintained this approach for our Agreement.
  1. Salford benefits from well established mechanisms for involving the community and the voluntary and community sector (VCS) in decision-making. We have used these mechanisms in developing the Salford Agreement.
  1. Partners IN Salford has developed the standards for community consultation and involvement. It will use them to guide involvement in the development and delivery of the Agreement. It is currently preparing a city-wide community engagement strategy that it will incorporate into work on the Agreement.
  1. Salford Council for Voluntary Service, the City Council and Salford Primary Care Trust have developed a compact that their approach to working together. Part of the shared vision of the compact is that it will help to ensure that:

the voluntary and community sector not only participates in joint working and partnership structures but exercises a real influence on the planning and development of local services and public initiatives.

  1. The codes of practice in the Compact will form the backbone of working with the community and VCS in the development and delivery of the Salford Agreement. We will regularly review them to maintain the quality and extent of involvement in the Agreement.

Decision making and management structures

  • Partners IN Salford Board

Representatives from the Community Committees, Salford Community Network, Faith Network and Salford Council for Voluntary Services have been part of the Partners IN Salford’s Board since 2005.

  • Partners IN Salford Agreement Steering Group

A community representative sits on this Group that oversees the development of the Agreement and that reports directly to Partners IN Salford

  • Partners IN Salford thematic partnerships

These are responsible for delivering the priorities identified within the community plan, Making the Vision Real, and for delivering the outcomes in the Agreement, and include voluntary and community sector representatives.

  • Agreement Management Team - responsible for managing its development.

Contribution to the draft Agreement

  1. City-wide, we have involved the voluntary and community sector and communities through Partners IN Salford’s structures. Similarly, for each of the five objectives in our Agreement we have used existing links to forums, partnerships and boards that all involved members of the sector and Salford residents.

Proposed consultation

  1. We will discuss the draft Agreement with representatives from communities across Salford before submitting the final version Government Office. We will develop specific consultation materials and activities based on the draft Agreement. Feedback opportunities will include:
  • LSP Annual Conference;
  • Community Committees;
  • Salford Council for Voluntary Services Compact Launch;
  • Salford Community Network
  • Community of identity events;
  • Regeneration trust events by Broughton Trust, Seedley and Langworthy Trust; Charlestown and Lower Kersal New Deal for Communities;
  • Central Salford Urban Regeneration Company,
  • University of Salford
  • Events on specific objectives and issues as appropriate.

Performance Management