WRITTEN EVIDENCE
SUBMITTED BY
NORTH DORSET
DISTRICT COUNCIL
(LOCO 69)
THE SUBMITTER
OF EVIDENCE
North Dorset is a: rural area with a population of
64,000 dispersed over a large geographical area including four
market towns and many villages. There is an acute shortage of
affordable housing, poor access to services, below average incomes,
poor transport links and an economy based on agriculture and micro
businesses. North Dorset District Council has one of the lowest
district council tax rates in the country at £105 per annum
for a Band D property. The Council's make up is 17 Conservative,
13 Liberal Democrat and three Independent Members. Localism has
been delivered over the last four years by cross party co-operation.
The localism approach is based on the core principle
that people who live locally know best what is needed to build
sustainability. Community partnerships and partners are given
the money, trust and autonomy to commission projects and influence
policy. They are engaged as partners in the process. The Community
Partnership Executive for North Dorset is a "partnership
of partnerships", an executive group led by the community.
It coordinates community partnership activity across the district
with the input of the Association of Town and Parish Councils
and the third sector partner, Dorset Community Action.
Localism is transforming the face of North Dorset.
Our community partnerships and parish councils representing their
market towns and surrounding areas come together to decide what
services are important and take responsibility for safeguarding
those services whilst improving the quality of the service and
reducing the cost to the tax payer. This has been independently
evaluated as the best and most coherent community planning model
looking at local community, district and county level, helping
the area to buck the trend of rural decline and maintain a resilient
economy.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
¾ The
District Council and Partnerships have a four year experience
of decentralising services and enabling neighbourhoods to determine
their own future. Over 12 incorporated companies or social enterprises
have been set up, designed and run by local volunteers to deliver
services and projects, using a variety of governance models suited
to each venture.
¾ It has
gone beyond place based budgeting to grant aiding capital to community
organisations to commission and build major facilities themselves.
Over 190 projects have been delivered successfully.
¾ District
and Parish Councils have found new ways of working together with
services delegated as close to the frontline as possible. Begun
as a cost cutting exercise, it soon became clear that this way
of working delivers high quality services and high calibre social
involvement and interaction. It has proved to be far more than
simply achieving efficiency savings.
¾ The
Council seeks to build capacity in the community through the partnerships
and they in turn build capacity in the Council, for example, they
have attracted resources and commissioned town design statements
of sufficient quality to adopt a supplementary planning document
to shape the future of towns and villages.
LESSONS LEARNED
¾ It takes
time and commitment to set up, to win hearts and minds and to
build two-way trust.
¾ It takes
investment in the third sector to provide community development,
expertise, to build project management skills and to train volunteers
in business planning skills and governance.
¾ It takes
commitment and hard work from local councillors and a willingness
to spend time listening, providing information and planning together.
¾ It is
useful to have the local knowledge and local connections of a
district council and if one does not exist, that local connection
must be built.
¾ People
will volunteer if investment is made in the service to be transferred,
ie, they are not interested in run down buildings and neglected
services.
¾ It will
need continual nurturing to make links with new volunteers and
sustain those already working hard in the community.
¾ Large
community theatres and facilities can be self sustaining without
subsidy if the volunteers and community are involved from the
outset in establishing the vision.
¾ Even
small projects such as new play areas, if given to the community
to drive, can bring new people into the democratic process, for
example, people in a local housing estate have now stood for election
at the Town Council.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
ACTION
¾ North
Dorset Scrutiny Committees have done effective inquiries into
access to health services but find it difficult to influence decision
making in acute services and the PCT, although the resulting contacts
with GP surgeries and. dentists have been beneficial to a wider
contribution to the neighbourhood. The local Scrutiny role could
be established.
¾ Current
VAT regulations on capital expenditure and charity legislation
create barriers for community based trusts and usefully could
be reviewed, eg introducing the planned secondary legislation
to enable charitable incorporated organisations.
¾ "Competing"
initiatives from Government Departments confuse what happens in
neighbourhoods: eg Police PACT panels were set up in a prescribed
way which .cut across· other community forums.
¾ JobCentre
Plus operates at too great a distance from benefits authorities
and the advice voluntary sector such as the CAB. Its services
could be decentralised to benefits authorities and regulated by
DWP.
¾ A great
deal of time and resource is given by local authorities and the
voluntary sector to advising people about what Benefits are available
and where/how to access them. The high volume of different Benefits
and different criteria are confusing and create a barrier. They
are also inequitable: ... two people living side by side may qualify
for a different level of Housing Benefit because of the date they
became eligible, even if their outgoings and situation is exactly
the same. If less resource was given to managing the complexity,
more resource could be given locally to return to work initiatives.
FACTUAL INFORMATION
1. North Dorset is a rural area with a population
of 64,000 dispersed over a large geographical area including five
market towns and many Villages. There is an acute shortage of
affordable housing, poor access to services, low average incomes,
poor transport links and an economy based on agriculture and many
very small and some highly skilled small businesses. North Dorset
District Council has one of the lowest District Council, Council
Tax rates in the Country and smaller than many Town Councils at
£105 per annum.
2. What sets North Dorset's approach to Localism
apart from others is the degree to which it influences long term
sustainability. The Council gives genuine power to the community
to shape its own sustainable future. The partnerships deliver
award winning, ambitious schemes involving people in the continuing
prosperity and appearance of their towns, .attracting .about £15
million in the last five years. The partnership model has proved
its capacity to deliver and has been commended by the Local Government
Chronicle/Health Service Journal: winning "Best Community
Partnership, 2010".
3. It is at the cutting edge of community improvements.
Our partnerships have been proud to showcase their achievements
as exemplars of good practice to other Councils.
4. The core principle is the belief that people
who live and work in the area know best what is needed to build
a sustainable future. By giving power to local residents and putting
them in the driving seat, the Council has ample proof that this
approach can succeed.
The role of local government in a decentralised
model of local public service delivery, and the extent to which
localism can and should extend to other local agents
5. North Dorset believes that our community partnerships
are our eyes and ears and are best placed to ensure that the public
sector really takes on board what matters most to our communities.
The Community Partnership Executive for North Dorset (CPEND) is
the partnership of partnership made up of four community partnerships,
representatives from the County Council, Town and Parish, the
Dorset Strategic Partnership and Dorset Community Action.
6. There are four community partnerships which
cover all parts of North Dorset district centred on the four largest
towns of Shaftesbury, Blandford Forum, Gillingham and Sturminster
Newton. The objectives of the partnerships are:
¾ To involve
as many local people and community or voluntary groups as possible
in the towns and the surrounding villages to plan the future of
their market town areas.
¾ To commission
developments to regenerate the towns.
¾ To deliver
social, economic or environmental projects, involving volunteers,
that enhance and care for the towns and villages and their local
communities' well-being.
¾ To create
opportunity to take community ideas up into strategic levels.
7. Dorset Community Action (DCA) supports the
four community partnerships and, with dedicated funding and support
from the District Council, employs a small team of community resource
workers that are based in each of the market towns, working directly
with the community partnerships to define priorities, strategies
and action plans, achieve the partnerships' work programmes, identify
and secure funding opportunities and implement projects.
8. The involvement of DCA is a key element, which
enables the District Council to support the partnerships both
with officer time and specialist knowledge but also financially
(through an annual grant), whilst at the same time DCA providing
independent advice and support to the partnerships, a step removed
from the local authority.
9. Working in partnership, the community, local
Town and Parish Councils and the District Council have secured
over £3 million per annum of savings whilst safeguarding
those services that are critically important to the community.
We believe that our approach provides one blueprint for Localism
and shows how Councils can successfully work differently to improve
the quality of local services, engender greater community responsibility
and become more efficient.
10. The District Council's Tough Choices Programme
was an instrumental part of achieving Localism in North Dorset,
which involved all North Dorset community partnerships and local
councils. Tough Choices also enabled the District Council to respond
to the financial pressures of having its Council Tax increases
"capped" in 2006.
11. Tough Choices built on the Vision for North
Dorset[24]
With the aim of safeguarding services that were decided by the
local community to be important, improving the quality of service
and improving cost effectiveness. The Programme focused on three
areas: Local Delivery, Focused Resources and Business Transformation.[25]
The District Council achieved a 25% reduction on its net revenue
budget between 2006-09.
12. The services that were included within Local
Delivery included leisure centres, public conveniences, funding
for the Citizens Advice Centre, Countryside management service,
sports development, arts grants, tourism promotion, maintenance
of public open space, car parks, markets and street cleansing.
Local Town and Parish Councils and the community partnerships
were consulted and asked which of these services were important
to their communities and, if important, would they be prepared
to work with the District Council to safeguard their future provision.
13. The relationship of the unelected people
that constitute the community partnerships and the elected District,
Town and Parish Councillors is critically important. The elected
Councillor role is critical for community leadership, which we
believe is best provided at district level. Of course all these
people are to a lesser or greater degree, volunteers. North Dorset
now has a significant number of volunteers, a strength that has
been deliberately encouraged and expanded through:
¾ putting
volunteers and local Councillors at the centre of decision making;
¾ taking
responsibility for services; and
¾ providing
resources: revenue and capital funding, transferring assets, training,
technical and professional advice and skills development.
14. Relationship management has at times proved
critically important to gain an understanding of each partner's
role and contribution, ensuring that existing roles and responsibilities
are protected and not considered as being undermined. That requires
involvement from the District Council and support from DCA including
mediation and brokering agreement between organisations and individuals.
15. Community partnerships work side by side
with locally elected Councillors.
16. In addition, co-ordination across public
service including County, Districts, Police, Fire, health services,
housing associations and the business community is achieved through
officer and Member liaison.
17. The approach in North Dorset is different
because it:
¾ is in
lieu of a district wide LSP;
¾ works
across local authority boundaries (into Wiltshire, for example);
¾ influences
policy and strategy and informs Council service business plans;
¾ engages
in decision making on which services considered important locally
and should be retained through new working arrangements;
¾ has
experience and track record in engagement in the delivery of substantial
programmes and projects;
¾ goes
beyond participatory budgeting towards trust and managed risk.
Substantial budgets are passed to partnerships to deliver large
schemes with technical support and financial risk management from
the Council;
¾ has
CPEND representatives on various steering and working groups in
the council;
¾ included
the vision for each community partnership and the priorities identified
through CPEND in the Draft Core Strategy of the Local Development
Framework (LDF);
¾ provided
training to support partnerships and professional resource through
the Community Development Workers (COW) and administration team,
who are employed independently by the Third Sector on behalf of
the partnerships, funded by the Council and partners eg training
on legal implications of the roles and responsibilities of directors
in partnerships, trusts and charities, and on project development
and management principles; and
¾ proper
engagement, devolution and trust. The partnerships have a tremendous
track record—we believe they will deliver and give them
the tools to do the job.
18. The North Dorset approach has enabled the
District Council to improve whilst at the same time achieving
its financial challenges and improving the quality of service.
19. However, the story does not end there; we:
¾ have
achieved the Best Community Partnership in Britain 2010 celebrating
the work of the community;
¾ have
a huge army of volunteers without whom, this journey would not
have been possible;
¾ have
completed a review of the community planning model in early 2010
to further strengthen the arrangements, delivery and measurement
of outcomes;
¾ are
well placed for the future through our long track record of local
community engagement and commitment to take advantage of the new
Localism and Big Society agenda;
¾ have
given community partnerships and partners the tools and trust
to be autonomous; and
¾ have
Members that demonstrate long term commitment.
The extent to which decentralisation leads to
more effective public service delivery; and what the limits are,
or should be, of localism
The impact of decentralisation on the achievement
of savings in the cost of local public services and the effective
targeting of cuts to those services
20. Local delegated services including street
cleansing, tourist information centres, public conveniences, maintenance
of open spaces, town markets and leisure/community centres are
now operated at a lower cost to the taxpayer. This is achieved
not least through lower overhead costs, use of volunteers and
business rates relief. Equally important, the customer service
standards have improved through the extra care and attention provided
by local councils and community charitable trusts taking responsibility
for the success of the local services as businesses, which are
dependent for survival on customer demand.
21. Locally managed services have proved to be
more responsive services to local demands and better placed to
be reduce bureaucracy and processing/communication of work requests;
immediately tailor the service to respond to priorities. By doing
so, again efficiencies are achieved to the taxpayer and customer
service is improved.
22. Working across organisations (eg local councils)
and with the voluntary/community sector takes time; to win hearts
and minds can take two to three years, as we found with the Local
Delivery programme.
23. It is essential that local decisions (eg
of Town/Parish Councils and community partnerships) need to be
respected and decisions cannot be imposed, although the consequence
of local decisions need to be clearly explained and understand.
For example, the decision of a local community to agree that there
is little importance of a leisure/community centre, is likely
to lead to that service being lost to the community. Such a closure
has been made with full local agreement.
The lessons for decentralisation from Total Place,
and the potential to build on the work done under that initiative,
particularly through place-based budgeting
24. There appear to be significant opportunities
arising from the interventions to reduce later demand for services.
For example the Dorset "Total Place" study highlights
early intervention through fitness/leisure activities may reduce
demands on acute health services. Our experience demonstrates
the difficulties in achieving this; it is unlikely that health
services will be able to support fitness/leisure services, because
of annual budget pressures, to provide funding of preventative
measures (eg investment in leisure activities) in the short term
with the expectation of longer terms health benefits and their
commensurate cost reductions.
25. We agree that Total Place aims to improve
services that are locally important and needed to the benefit
of local people holistically. Local councils should work with
other public agencies (eg Jobcentre Plus), the voluntary and business
sectors (eg Federation of Small Businesses) to maintain people
in work; re-organising the benefits framework; promoting voluntary
work; managing debt; avoiding homelessness; promoting start-up
businesses; and developing jobs growth.
How effective and appropriate accountability can
be achieved for expenditure on the delivery of local services,
especially for that voted by Parliament rather than raised locally
26. Government Grant supports part of the costs
of statutory services only and locally raised income supports
local decisions and services and contributes to the statutory
services cost.
What, if any, arrangements for the oversight of
local authority performance will be necessary to ensure effective
local public service delivery
27. Accountability and performance should be
locally decided and the locality responsible for the success or
failure. Local PIs agreed and monitored by locally elected representatives
(working with the community and voluntary sector) with audited
accounts.
What were the Outcomes and how were they measured?
28. Practical outcomes now form a remarkably
long and diverse list, from major regeneration projects to smaller
ones such as a fishing platform for wheelchair users, from big
community events to regular activities. Over the last five years
the partnerships have been instrumental in attracting and delivering
about £15 million worth of projects in the area. Projects
are "delivered in partnership", and outcomes include:
¾ "The
Exchange", a £2.6 million redevelopment of a major site
in the centre of Sturminster Newton with a large and impressive
community facility, health centre, supermarket and community offices.
Run by volunteers, the centre has broken even in its first year
of operation. It has taken on a full time manager and is attracting
national performing arts to the area. It has transformed the town,
generating more visits to the town and increased social activity.
The Sturminster Cheese festival attracted 13,000 visitors this
year and huge sales of local products. The town has also won "Cittaslow"
status, the first town in the South West. The SturQuest Partnership
has recently been a regional winner for partnership and strategic
working in the National Market Town awards.
¾ Newly
refurbished public toilets have been transferred by the District
to the Town Councils together with Town Orderlies and the District
pays the Towns for keeping the town clean. We now have a multi
skilled response to cutting grass, clearing litter, sweeping the
streets, cleaning the toilets, removing graffiti, and the rapid
removal of fly tipping.. The overall look of the towns has improved
hugely. The Town Councils now offer cleaning services to some
of the parishes.
¾ In Gillingham
the community partnership has taken over an old leisure centre
building and is commissioning its own refurbishment to create
a new leisure centre, community hub and community centre. The
District has helped to train and develop expertise to do the business
and project planning and has granted the partnership £4 million
capital funding. The partnership has business plans to run the
facility without District Council revenue funding.
¾ The
"Exchange" community complex and the new Gillingham
facilities both incorporate renewable energy sources.
¾ A community
communication: Unity.Com magazine delivered free to over 3,000
homes - not subsidised.
¾ In Shaftesbury
and Blandford Forum the community are successfully running Tourist
Information Centres in each town and have won business funding
to help to support them. A small community pool is being run by
volunteers in Shaftesbury following an asset transfer and assistance.
¾ The
District Council was the only authority awarded "Liveability"
funding to use it to create a community "challenge fund"
and skills development, to help build capacity in partnerships
to deliver sustainable projects based on their own ideas. Over
190 projects have been delivered to improve the access to open
space, all community generated and community run.
¾ 15 play
areas have been developed by the community and are now looked
after by the community, parish and town councils.
¾ A high
level of volunteering in North Dorset shown in the Place Survey
(top quartile). New people are coming forward to Town Councils
and to community partnerships.
¾ Increased
democratic capacity/engagement from hard to reach groups, eg families
were engaged in the provision of a long needed large play area
in their recreation ground, therefore felt empowered, became less
cynical and sceptical about having their voices heard and have
subsequently joined a Town Council.
¾ Increased
democratic engagement Local Delivery -number of important services
and facilities retained in the area.
¾ 48 Parish
Plans have been produced and four community action plans.
¾ Town
and village design guidelines written by the community, and facilitated
by the District, are now adopted as planning policy documents;
the District wrote a toolkit to share good practice and assisted
in the process.
¾ The
district was top in two of the five categories in the Ecosgen
study of economic resilience in the South West and was in the
top five overall.
¾ CPEND
and the AONB Partnership have been .awarded £2.85 million
Local Action for Rural Communities funding for community led projects
deriving economic benefit from the environment to improve the
quality of life. This programme is being managed by the community.
¾ CPEND
is working with the Senior Management Team and Cabinet of Council
as part of Team North Dorset. Members see community partnerships
as part of the solution for the future and a voice for the community.
¾ The
Dorset Strategic Partnership (the County and District LSP) and
the Community Strategy for Dorset are influenced by and informed
by evidence and ideas from the Community Partnerships and the
County provides a small contribution to the financial resources
and the DSP provides small grant funding of £38,000 to CPEND
for local community projects.
¾ North
Dorset is selected, alongside Newcastle, as one of two national
pilots to undertake a "green map"—a Climate and
Action Community Map, funded by the Green Alliance.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
Community Partnership Awards: Community Partnership
Executive North Dorset—Building Strong and Inclusive Sustainable
Communities, date 2010.
October 2010
24 North Dorset District Council Vision: where thriving,
balanced and environmentally responsible communities in our market
towns and surrounding villages build economic prosperity while
safeguarding our unique and diverse surroundings. Back
25
Local Delivery: supporting local communities to take ownership
of discretionary service provision, Focused Resources: prioritising
our services, focusing resources on our highest priorities and
reducing what we do. Business Transformation: making best use
of the Council's investment in ICT through increasing efficiency. Back
| 
