Stirling Local Outcomes Improvement Plan (LOIP)

Community Planning is about how public services work together with the community to plan and deliver services that will improve long term outcomes for people. Community planning is based on the principle that by working together, partnerships can resolve the complex and deep-rooted issues in communities much more effectively than individual partners could achieve by themselves.

In 2015, a new Act came into force called the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act which provides a new vision for community planning which is ambitious and challenging. Under the new Act, community planning became a statutory requirement with a specific duty being placed on five key partners to own and lead community planning and ensure that it works effectively. These five key partners are local authorities, NHS board, Scottish Enterprise, Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. These partners will play a key role in shared leadership, governance and accountability.

A requirement of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, is that a Local Outcomes Improvement Plan (LOIP) is produced to outline how community planning partners will work with communities to improve outcomes for individuals, families and communities.

Challenges

  • The LOIP is not an aspirational statement for the future but a document which takes into account the needs of communities.
  • There needs to be clear understanding that the LOIP is a shared document between the Council and all partners.
  • Stirling partners have had discussions around the content of the first draft of the LOIP, highlighting there should be a more in-depth focus and reference to the college and university, the city region deal, inclusive growth and place-based work.

Support given

Members of the Change Management Team had an initial discussion about areas for support with Stirling colleagues. Following the above, a face-to-face meeting was arranged with key members of the Community Planning Team. The Change Management Team took a critical friend role and reviewed the LOIP draft document and suggested potential areas for further development and improvement.

A workshop was held with the CPP Leadership Group on 24th January 2018. It was agreed that the objectives of the workshop were to reach agreement on the governance structure and also to encourage participants to open discussions around developing an approach to joint resourcing.

To set the scene at the beginning of the day, a member of the Change Management Team did a presentation on Community Planning, LOIP, Locality Plans, Participatory budgeting and the Local Democracy Bill. The workshop was then split into two parts:

Part One

Focused on the CPP governance structure, the group were asked to consider the following questions:

  1. What are your views, in principle, on proposed governance arrangements?
  2. Are there any elements you would change? State why and what’s the alternative?
  3. What do you think of the broad remits?
  4. What would you amend and why? There was broad overall support for the proposed arrangements, the group shared their thoughts and ideas about improving.

Outcomes of part one:

  • The CPP Leadership Group agreed to continue to provide strategic direction and leadership for the Partnership.
  • Four area based ‘Place Based Partnerships’ will be established to enhance community participation and development.
  • There was agreement that the existing thematic partnerships would continue in the short term but would be reviewed to see how they link into the new CPP approach and would be streamlined if possible.
  • Performance will be reported through the LOIP reporting framework (PHAR).
  • Broad remits of the four new place based partnerships (Urban North, Urban South, Rural North and Rural South) were proposed.
  • Benefits of the proposed structure were identified.
  • With regard to the remits, the Leadership Group suggested that communities and people could be represented in the governance structure to emphasise the participative nature of the proposals.

Part Two

For the second part of the workshop, the Leadership group were invited to consider the following:

  1. Are you (or your host organisation) willing to develop a joint participation plan?
  2. Are you (or your host organisation) willing to develop a joint communications strategy?
  3. Are you (or your host organisation) willing to enter into discussions on taking forward joint resourcing?

Again, the feedback was positive. The Leadership Group agreed that it should seek to develop a joint participation plan to ensure a coherent approach across the Partnership, whilst at the same time exploiting the opportunities that will come from utilising the existing expertise and skills around community engagement and participation in partner organisations.

There was also agreement around developing effective communications. However, thought needs to be given as to the most appropriate mechanism to engage with all communities.

The Leadership Group also agreed to develop an approach to joint resourcing. There is a recognition that the outcomes within the LOIP cannot be achieved unless all partner agencies are able to contribute.

Results

The presence of the Change Management Team has further emphasised the fact that the LOIP is a shared document where all partners are accountable for the content and actions rather than a Council only effort. It is clear from the workshop that there is broad agreement from the Leadership Group on the proposals. The workshop has led to the formation of a multi partner officer working group to implement the LOIP in Stirling.

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