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"UNDER THE SKIN" OF COMMUNITY PLANNING
CHAPTER SIX: ASPIRATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF COMMUNITY PLANNING
6.1 Stakeholders were asked how they would like to see Community Planning develop over the next 2-3 years. The vast majority said that they would hope to be able to build upon the solid foundations that had already been established. The general view was that Community Planning would continue to develop and mature but that to achieve its full potential it would have to be seen increasingly as part of the mainstream business of all partners, rather than just another new initiative.
6.2 Many stakeholders expressed their aspirations for the future in terms of policy outcomes in relation to the main objectives outlined in their Community Plan. They argued that the "success" of Community Planning as a concept would be determined by the extent to which it could lead to positive policy outcomes particularly in relation to cross-cutting policy issues such as health improvement and community safety.
6.3 While it is undoubtedly true that the impact of Community Planning will ultimately be determined by the extent to which it can make a positive impact in key policy areas there are also a number of process related issues that will need to be addressed in order to achieve these outcomes. Stakeholders identified a number of key issues which they perceived to be important priorities that would need to be addressed by their Community Planning partnership over the next few years: -
Community Participation
6.4 The issue that was most frequently mentioned by stakeholders was the need to establish and develop mechanisms to ensure that communities can play a central part in the Community Planning process. There was a fairly uniform view that partnerships were committed to greater community involvement but that they would need to do more to translate this commitment into reality. Many stakeholders said that they wanted to move to a position where communities were the main drivers of the Community Planning process and that they felt they had genuine opportunities to influence partner's decisions about issues that affected them.
Broader Involvement
6.5 There was general agreement that there was a need to increase the number of people in partner organisations who were involved in the Community Planning process. This was seen as being important to ensure that Community Planning was seen as being relevant to all aspects of each partner's activities and that people were aware of the overarching strategy within which they were expected to operate.
An Accepted Way of Working
6.6 Many stakeholders said they hoped that Community Planning would increasingly set the agenda for collaborative working as an accepted way of working within and between partner organisations. There was a clear expectation that this would lead to more partnership projects, greater use of pooled budgets, co-location of staff and a general "blurring of the boundaries between organisations".
Less Fragmentation
6.7 Many stakeholders expressed a desire that as Community Planning developed it would become increasingly easy to rationalise and simplify other partnership and planning arrangements. This was seen as being one of the key benefits that could be achieved by Community Planning and would help to reduce the fragmentation associated with the current pattern of a "patchwork" of multiple and often uncoordinated requirements to establish partnerships. However, the ability to rationalise and simply the partnership structures may depend on being able to demonstrate that Community Planning can be an effective vehicle for delivering collaborative initiatives.
Learning from Experience
6.8 Given that partnerships are still developing it is important that they continue to learn from experience and be able to adapt to changing circumstances. This is seen as being essential to ensure that Community Planning does not become another time limited initiative but is sustained as a durable and permanent part of the system of local governance. A number of stakeholders expressed a strong desire that partnerships should be allowed the flexibility to continue to evolve in response to local circumstances and not be "forced into a straight jacket" by an over prescriptive and ridged national framework.
Resourcing the Process
6.9 A number of stakeholders felt that for Community Planning to progress it would require to have more resources devoted to it. There was a feeling that the resources available to support the development of Community Planning were minimal compared to those available for other partnership initiatives. In some ways this is a challenge to partners themselves to make more mainstream resources available to support the Community Planning process. However, there was also a strong view that the Scottish Executive should make more resources available to support the development of Community Planning to demonstrate that it regards it as a key aspect of the modernisation agenda.
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