Head of Communities, Glasgow City Council
Our place, our say, our way – Leading Glasgow’s Commitment to Place Based Planning – Involving community groups and organisations in community conversations leads to clear and often detailed plans for improving services, the local environment or the economy. Glasgow City Council and its Community Planning partners have a shared commitment to support local communities in deciding what matters and shaping what needs to be done.
Community Justice Glasgow adds a collaborative view of justice and is supported through the Council’s Chief Executive’s Department as part of the Communities Team. A recent Council Family Strategic Review brought new developments, and while some of those changes were driven by savings targets, there were also drivers arising from commitments in relation to:
- Elected Member engagement.
- Strategic Delivery of Community Empowerment legislation.
- Continued focus across statutory responsibilities.
- A fresh focus on outcomes and operational performance expectations in relation to the eradication of Family Poverty.
The review established a new Communities Team within the Chief Executive’s Department. The focus of the Communities Team is to support people to collectively take action on what’s important to them, helping communities to organise, and to identify the issues they want to address and the opportunities they want to explore. We will help build a collaborative approach across communities, public bodies and the third sector to ensure a shared vision and approach to local planning. This includes a focus on communities of place as well as communities of shared identity or interest.
We recognise that the way society and structures are organised results in some people, groups and communities being excluded and not able to influence local services. These are systemic challenges and part of the backdrop to local focus.
We will continue supporting communities to use their own assets to improve community life by helping people and public bodies to work together to shape and influence how services are run and how decisions are made. The work of the Communities Team runs across a number of collaborative areas of work.
Community Planning – The Communities Team supports the work of Glasgow Community Planning Partnership (GCPP), bringing together communities alongside public agencies, the third sector, and the private sector, to work to improve the city, its services, and the lives of people who live and work here. The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act in 2015 requires the Partnership to publish a plan that sets out our shared priorities for the city, where we plan to make improvements and over time show that we have made these improvements.
A new Community Plan was agreed in February 2024, drawing a collaborative commitment to address family poverty and reduce poverty and inequalities in Glasgow’s Communities.
The Communities Teams work alongside other teams within the Chief Executive’s Department, with GCPP partners and across the Council family, third sector organisations and community groups, providing support at a local and citywide level, including implementing locality planning and place-based approaches.
Area Partnerships – Local community empowerment remains a priority of the Council and its partners, in part realised through Area Partnerships. Communities Team staff work with Area Partnerships to prepare Ward Plans and engage local views on how the focus on the Community Planning commitment to address Family Poverty evolves locally. These local plans will identify Council as well as partner contributions and will be reflective of community needs.
Community Councils – The new Communities Team supports Community Councils, both in terms of the local authority’s statutory responsibility, as well as to ensure Community Councils are empowered to serve as a representative voice of their communities. Each Community Council has a named Communities Support Officer, as well as being supported from the Team for elections and development needs.
Community Justice Partnership
Community Justice Glasgow’s focus on the Community Justice Outcomes Improvement Plan, is an important Communities resource. The Improvement Plan is wide reaching, with four specific Improvement Plans, all of which impact on communities.
The Team works closely with statutory (as set out in the Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016) and other partners including a range of Third Sector services. The Community Justice Team has also given support to improving outcomes in relation to partnership working in the 4 Corners area of the City.
City-Wide Engagement Forum – For the last two years, officers have been supporting an informal city-wide community engagement working group, comprising of Council officers and the community and Third Sector. One of the challenges for the group has been the volume and depth of engagement (from consultations to more co-productive methods) coming out from the Council to communities.
The service reform has highlighted the need and the opportunity to take a joined-up approach to this. Part of the role of the new Senior Officer (Communities) is to look at internal community engagement requirements and practice across the Council, with the aim of co-ordinating engagement practice and finding ways to work together, so that we can make better use of our resources and make participation easier for communities. Another element of the role is to look at the training and development needs as we work in a more collaborative way.
Neighbourhood Infrastructure Improvement Fund – Two community engagement prototypes were developed to support local input to the allocation of the Neighbourhood Infrastructure Improvement Fund in Wards 3 Greater Pollok and 9 Calton. This was the start of a Participatory Budgeting approach for the City.
The prototypes allowed Area Partnerships to make decisions on how the Fund is spent based on the opinion of as many citizens as possible within the two identified wards. The intention has always been to learn from the pilots and expand the offer to other areas across the City.
Between June and October 2023, the partners carried out engagement within Calton and Greater Pollok. A total of 600 new ideas were identified by local residents over a three-week period, with 950 final votes and 41 new ideas being funded. A detailed report on the process undertaken is available, covering the design stage, implementation, lessons learned and recommendations. The recommendations are wide ranging and ambitious, considering the resources required and the timescales.
The new GCC/Family Community Engagement Working Group have agreed to use the NIIF as a test project to develop better ways of working collaboratively across the Council in engaging communities and to avoid duplication of engagement themes.
Our Structure and Key Contacts –
Head of Service – Tom Jackson
Community Justice Manager – Margaret Smith
Programme Manager – Gerald Tonner
Senior Officer (Communities) – Judith Hunter
Communities Managers – Derek Speirs, Patricia Boyce