Local Government and Transport Committee, 20 Jan 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Official Report 202KB pdf

---

Community Planning Implementation Group

We move on to the next item on the agenda. I welcome Chief Constable Willie Rae of Strathclyde police, who is here in his capacity as chair of the community planning implementation group, and invite him to give us a progress report on the group's work.

Thank you, convener. We have submitted a paper for members' information, which I will briefly summarise.

The community planning implementation group was established by the Executive to support the implementation of community planning under the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003. The group was set up in March and is scheduled to end its 12-month term this April. Our 11 members have been drawn from across the public and voluntary sectors in Scotland. They include some of the main contributors to the original community planning task force, which assisted in the development of the legislation.

We have met in five full sessions over the past 10 months. Much of our work has been done in small sub-groups or by individual members of the group. Our remit and our work programme have largely been based on the 11 recommendations that were made by the task force in its final report, which was published in April last year. Those recommendations have been distilled into five key areas. The first was the maintenance of progress in the implementation and development of community planning. That has meant working with Audit Scotland to develop a performance management framework, examining the role of the private sector in community planning and looking at data sharing, regeneration, young people's issues and the like.

Another key area was raising the profile of community planning. That involved all the members of the group speaking at events and conferences and meeting ministers to keep them apprised of developments. Providing guidance was also key. This committee assisted in that process, because you were consulted on the draft documents that were prepared. Statutory guidance and advice notes have been drawn together after extensive consultation with community planning partners. That information will shortly be circulated around Scotland. We maintain an on-going research programme to assist partnerships in their work.

We felt that it was important to promote the good practice that we had seen. It is difficult to describe anything as best practice, so we stick with the phrase "good practice" and try to promote that through a website that has been developed and by creating links between practitioners and partnerships.

The final key area is maintaining an independent focus to the process. Like the task force before us, we have been able to work in ways that have given us direct access to, and support from, the Executive and other key decision makers. At the same time, we have had the freedom and independence to express our own views. That has allowed us to come to a balanced conclusion on the issues and to present that balanced view at various groups that we have addressed.

Over the past 10 months, the community planning implementation group has forged positive links with community planning partnerships across Scotland. We try to act as champions of community planning, at national level and within our particular sectors. We have endeavoured to embed the principles of community planning in the departmental management boards within the Scottish Executive and we have developed a project to improve the links between the Executive and the partnerships. We have constantly reminded partnerships of the importance of putting communities first and of engaging them in the whole process. We have worked jointly with Communities Scotland to produce a toolkit to enable partnerships to review their progress and effectiveness. We have encouraged leaders of organisations to step out of their silos and to adopt a joined-up approach to planning and service delivery.

We are considering our exit strategy and the further steps that will be required to maintain momentum. We intend to include options in our final report. It is important that community planning partnerships should continue to be supported beyond the implementation group's lifetime.

Your submission refers to an on-going research programme. What will happen to that when your organisation finishes its work? Will its funding continue? I presume that the research is of practical use to those who are involved in community planning.

We will have to comment on that to the Executive. One hopes that a programme continues. We have an on-going project on rationalising partnerships. One aim of community planning was to clear the clutter of some of the existing partnerships. That is no easy task, but we commissioned research, which is being finalised.

The community planning task force produced several documents that gave fledgling partnerships advice. It is important for that process to continue. That is in our minds, but we have not reached conclusions about the matter. The outcome will depend on the entity that exists beyond the implementation group's lifetime.

I can well see that clearing the clutter and ensuring that people have clear goals are essential to ensure that some benefit is felt at the end of the process. The group says in its submission that it has developed frameworks and has been involved in presentations, developing projects, themed meetings, improving engagement with the private sector through seminars, issuing advice notes and discussing progress and priorities. You are an implementation group and those tasks all concern theories, but surely the end product is practice. After the year—which is a short time—what has the group achieved in practice? Has it simply left guidance towards end-products?

We must understand that community planning has always been considered to be a long-term process. It involves winning hearts and minds. We did not start with a blank canvas. The partnership ethos of community planning already existed in some form in parts of the country. The community planning approach brought coherence to that.

The aim is to change work practices that have been instilled in many organisations for the past 20 or 30 years. The idea of achieving a joined-up approach sounds simple, but we have found it to be complex and demanding—it is certainly challenging for some institutions to conceive. We are conscious that we are trying to put community planning on the right track.

Community planning partnerships are not passive players. Many of them—in particular, those that were involved with the five pathfinder authorities that were established five years ago—have been energetic in driving forward the concept of community planning.

Our task is largely to help partnerships to find their direction and to identify good practice and what works. We try to be the champion and to raise awareness. The practice of community planning is down to the partnerships.

I stress that, as the committee might be aware from our guidance document, community planning is built on trust. That was the Executive's message when it launched community planning. That trust is in a framework of best value and the power to advance well-being. Going forward in that way was a brave step by the Executive. Community planning empowers partnerships to seize the local agenda and to progress national priorities as well as local priorities. That represents a significant change in direction and work practice, which will take a little while to achieve.

I see that you are dealing with a difficult area of operation involving attitudes, work practices and pre-existing mindsets. Has your work come to an end? If you finish in April 2004, what happens then? Is the system now self-sufficient? Will any other group or individuals co-ordinate and encourage such participation or will your year's work simply disappear? In other words, what lasting legacy will your work have produced?

In our final report, we will make recommendations to ministers on what should exist beyond the lifetime of the group. All the members of the group believe that there has to be an infrastructure to support community planning into the future. What shape that will take is clearly a matter for ministers to decide, but we believe that it is important to have a strong network in place throughout Scotland to support community planning. It is important to identify champions in the sectors to drive forward community planning. That is true of the Executive as well; it must have a champion within the civil service working within the departments to drive forward that agenda. The Executive structures have changed, given the modernisation agenda, which will be helpful.

Rest assured that there is a great deal of sympathy in our group for the point that you made. We have a 12-month lifespan. That is what we were given and we will certainly recommend that the work should continue in future. The group would welcome the support that the committee could give on that.

On ensuring that we can enforce the community planning process, which we all embrace, is there a need for local co-ordination for areas such as Sighthill and Ruchazie, which we both know well? How will we ensure that the process is enforced? You have said that things should happen on a voluntary basis, but will the people of Sighthill be dancing in the streets and saying, "We now have this community planning process that has made such a fantastic and significant difference to our lives"? The document will be technical, so how do we ensure that it is embraced locally?

I could use the term "policed" in a non-police sense. One of the important features of the 2003 act, which places a statutory requirement on a number of bodies to take forward and support community planning, is that it gives local authorities the lead role in that process. In my experience, the act has brought home to the key players the fact that community planning cannot be ignored—it is not simply another initiative that will disappear in a short space of time, but a way of working and a vehicle by which we expect the Scottish Parliament to deliver changes in public life in Scotland. It is important that that is supported by everyone.

The contribution that bodies are making to community planning is subject to audit. Rather than having the process enforced, we want individuals who have a contribution to make to community planning to see the benefits of it to the community, to improved services for the public and to their organisations. The issue is about winning people round so that they acknowledge those benefits. Provisions are in place to allow ministers to intervene if they see that that is not happening. From my perspective, however, there is no suggestion that it is not happening.

Performance across the country is mixed. The process is a long-term one and it is taking a little while to get established. We have had 32 community planning partnerships in place for three years now, excluding the five pathfinders. There was little guidance initially. The concept was a fragile one—it would be easily broken if people did not like it. Indeed, it was not necessary for people to sign up to it. Since the legislation has been in place, however, the fact that the initiative is real and that the Executive is genuine about it has been brought home. Duties are being placed on chief constables, local authorities, the health service, Scottish Enterprise and the like. Undoubtedly, that focuses the minds of the organisations concerned.

Since the legislation has come into effect, the various partnerships have been taking stock of where they are. The Glasgow Alliance, which has been established for some time now, has been fulfilling a role similar to that of community planning. The transition has been difficult for it to make, but its work is now moving forward apace. All the other well-established partnerships have been considering their priorities and the themes that they are pursuing, as well as their structures. The big challenge for them all, particularly for those that cover large rural areas, is how best to represent the communities of interest that exist in their geographical areas. They also have to determine what substructures need to be in place.

The legislation is in place and the partnerships have got off the ground and are taking stock. New documents have been coming from them and new plans have been evolving. At this stage in the partnerships' development, there is no suggestion that we need to go in heavily with an enforced approach.

That takes me to my next point, which is about realigning the relevant organisations' budgets. I have never seen any evidence of organisations being willing to realign their budgets as a result of the community planning process or of any partnership process—social inclusion partnerships in particular. Is there any evidence from around Scotland to show that Communities Scotland has decided to realign its budget as a result of the joined-up approach?

There are lots of projects throughout Scotland that are joint ventures with the various players. Much has been learned from the SIP experience about involving communities and I would say that organisations are prepared to put funding into joint ventures in that way.

There is no suggestion of a change in the budget structure in order to support community planning. As you will probably be aware, a number of pilot projects throughout Scotland are focusing on community budgeting. That is a difficult process, but it is continuing and will perhaps develop into what you are describing.

Do you agree that ensuring that relevant agencies are willing to realign their budgets is the main point that we have to address in relation to the community planning process?

The important thing in these early years is to ensure that trust is built up between partners and that relationships are developed. As well as budgetary misalignments, there are structural misalignments. Overlaps in organisational boundaries are not particularly helpful. However, although we could spend a long time trying to get all those boundaries aligned, that would not necessarily end up benefiting the community.

When the community planning task force was first set up, we looked at the criss-cross of boundaries on the maps and considered how we could make sense of them. I suspect that the committee has done likewise. Once we get into the matter, however, we realise that the overlapping should not be an excuse for not improving services or, in relation to budgets, for not trying to improve service delivery in a community.

It is within the capacity of the partnerships to focus their efforts on the regeneration agenda that we are trying to drive forward. As you know, the plan to move the SIP programme into community planning partnerships is about trying to ensure that the key partners are bending the spend in relation to the regeneration agenda. Such measures will perhaps achieve the outcome that you describe.

Ministers have a duty to promote and encourage community planning. To what extent have you been monitoring their activities in that regard? Is the Scottish Executive genuinely pursuing a joined-up approach?

Probably one of the strongest messages that came from community planning partnerships was, "It is all right to scrutinise us, but what about the Executive?" To maintain that independent line, it was—and continues to be—important that the Executive should respond to community planning and the changes that are involved.

From my perspective and that of the implementation group, I can say that the Executive has pursued a joined-up approach with vigour. The Minister for Finance and Public Services has supported community planning, as have ministers who held the job before him. We are aware that changes have taken place in the Executive. I am sure that members are familiar with the Executive's changing to deliver agenda. The Executive has created a public services group, which deals with performance, improvement, modernisation and reform. Part of that structure is about supporting community planning in all its guises.

I am also aware that the management team within the Executive is considering how best to support individual community planning partnerships. That support should not necessarily come from someone who sits in an office in Edinburgh and speaks to people down the phone. How can we bring the Executive and local practitioners together? An exercise is going on throughout Scotland to create clusters of partnerships and to enable some of the heads of service to link in with those partnerships, so that the Executive gains a better understanding of the local agenda and so that the partnerships have an opportunity to articulate their priorities. From my perspective, I can say that the Executive seems committed to the joined-up approach. That can be difficult for the Executive, but it is happening.

Let me digress slightly. That approach is being taken right across the Executive, not just in relation to the organisations that are listed in the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003. In my world, I single out the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, which would not ordinarily spring to mind in relation to community planning. However, there is no doubt that the Lord Advocate and his team have embraced the concept of community planning, problem solving and engaging with local communities. That approach is filtering right through the fiscal service.

The approach is also being taken by Communities Scotland, which took a little time to set its new direction but which has now firmly done so. I have noticed, especially during my past few meetings with Communities Scotland, that the organisation's support for community planning is getting stronger. I do not doubt that there has been a big buy-in on community planning across all the arms of the Executive. That is the result of a lot of work to ensure that there is political clout to encourage senior management in the Executive to recognise that community planning is important and that it is how we will do business in the future.

Have you identified any specific work that the Executive still needs to do?

I have identified none that I would care to identify. Although it is not within the Executive's gift, I believe that there are some issues to do with the future leadership of many of our organisations. When I speak about community planning, I describe the chief executives—if we can use that term—of many of the public sector bodies. The heroes of today are those who go into meetings and protect everything that they went into the meeting to protect, without allowing any of their resources to be eroded: if there is anything on the table, they come back with the biggest share. Such individuals cannot be the chief executives of the future. We need chief executives who understand the big picture and the dependencies across the sector. I wonder what is happening to develop that mindset in the up-and-coming generation.

Leadership development has been traditional within particular sectors. For example, future police leaders are trained with other future police leaders and future chief executives in the health service are trained with other future chief executives in the health service. I think that, if we are to fulfil our aspirations for community planning, we will have to find a way of growing people who understand cross-sectoral impacts.

As chief constable of Strathclyde police, it is important for me to know what is driving the local economy in Glasgow, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, because I have to know about crime figures. I have to understand the health of that community and the demands on the local housing authorities if I am to provide better services. That sort of joint working is critical for the future, so I hope that the Executive will provide some leadership in the thinking on that.

We have spoken before about training elected members; the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has taken a lead in trying to develop some training programmes in that area. However, if community planning is to deliver on the potential that it offers, there is a lot more to be done.

In your first answer, you mentioned the balance between the Executive and individual community partnerships. Do you think that the Executive's expectations of individual community partnerships are unrealistic? Are those expectations too high or is the balance right?

I think that everyone in the Executive understands the local issues and realises that achieving coherence is complex. When you have an enthusiastic and willing group of people who face a legacy of separate service plans, it is challenging for them to bring those plans together to create a vision for a local area. Their approach needs constantly to be refined. I believe that members of the committee will well understand that because, at some point in your lives, you have probably all been in the position of trying to achieve consensus in such situations.

On the future relationship between the Executive and local partnerships, it is important that there is a clearly articulated set of priorities for Scotland, because there is an expectation that the partnerships will drive forward with those priorities. That trust in the framework is part of the deal, so the Executive must articulate those priorities as clearly as possible. Although the partnership agreement that emerged after the last election is a good starting point, it still leaves many different priorities that are difficult to rationalise at local level. In future, I hope that there will be a mechanism that will bring together local and national priorities so that we have one set of priorities that represents a vision for Scotland and that brings to the process a coherence that is not quite there yet. I know that that is quite an ambitious aim.

I want to continue with the points that Paul Martin was making, because I have had similar experiences. The other day I visited a project in Raploch, where it was obvious that people are coming to terms with and finding out more about how SIP funding will change under community planning and about the types of structures that will be put in place.

Are you finding out about best practice in terms of how communities can be made aware of what is happening? Obviously, councils have a critical role to play. I suppose that I am asking what sort of best practice is in place at council level. I understand that timescales for delivery are reasonable, but are there measures that we need to grapple with that will not be in place as quickly as we first thought they would?

In terms of the SIP transfer, there is guidance and there is a timetable. In my travels, I have not heard anyone say that they had any great difficulty with the initial stages of the process, including the setting-out of their plans. I do not know enough about the programme to say whether it is over-ambitious. No one seems to be saying that, however. There seems to be sufficient flexibility for community planning partnerships to say when they are ready. That is the case particularly in Glasgow, because of the move from the Glasgow Alliance, which oversees the SIP programmes there at the moment. I think that there is a good understanding of how the transition might operate.

Communities Scotland has issued guidance on how the transfer should be progressed. As I said earlier, my personal view is that although Communities Scotland has taken a little while to get a sense of direction, it now knows where it is going and it has a clear sense of purpose. I believe that the support that Communities Scotland can provide to the partnerships will be an important factor—it can hold their hands as they go through the transition stage.

With a change programme of such a scale, it is inevitable that some people will be apprehensive. As members will be aware, some of the SIP projects are pretty small. Their funding streams are fairly tight and some are due to expire at various stages in the process. Of necessity, that creates apprehension about continuation of programmes. It is inevitable that concerns such as those that Dr Jackson heard will emerge during the change process. However, from speaking to the Executive and the community planning partnerships, I sense that the pace of transition will be dictated by the level of readiness of the partnerships.

I have a quick supplementary question. I know that one of the members of the implementation group is the chair of a local community council. That will be helpful to us. Is a guide—although I am not sure whether you would call it a guide—to be prepared that sets out the stage-by-stage development of how community planning will affect those who are in community councils or local community projects? Have you thought about how you might develop something like that?

A number of guidance documents have been issued. Many organisations, including my own, have issued guidance to staff about community planning. Such guidance is built into some organisations' core training. I understand that individual authorities have plans to develop training not only for their own council members but for community council members. They are trying to develop some sort of capacity building in their communities. The implementation group has a draft guidance document for the voluntary sector. Loosely, that might include some of the people who serve on community councils.

In issuing such guidance, we are conscious that the voluntary sector members of our group have made it clear that they serve on our group to represent the unique community view that they can bring, and that many voluntary sector people are involved in service delivery. It is important to recognise that the voluntary sector plays a huge role in delivering a range of services in Scotland. We must ensure that guidance is pitched at the right level; we are working on that.

Guidance documents are being issued at individual partnership level. We use our website to try to ensure that everyone is aware that that is being done so that we do not end up reinventing the wheel time after time. We want to ensure that the documentation is picked up and circulated around the networks. COSLA does a fair amount of work on such documents through its own network groups.

I want to follow up on what Sylvia Jackson asked about. I listened to your presentation and have read the documentation and much of what you say seems to focus on the top ends of organisations working together. I am interested in what the implementation group is doing about the bottom end and about getting communities involved to ensure that there is community planning at ground level as well as at board level.

The Executive has issued two tranches of money for capacity building across partnerships. Some £1 million was issued last year and £750,000 was issued recently. That funding has been well received by the partnerships and is designed specifically to consider capacity building either in the community or in organisations.

A very broad label was attached to how the money should be spent and partnerships have taken fairly innovative approaches. Some money has been used to grow a pot of money that has been used to develop capacity building in organisations, whereas other sums have been used to develop training programmes that can be shared by organisations. A number of authorities have clustered together to find out whether they can share training programmes that have been developed. Such Executive investment is welcome. The implementation group is considering investment for the recommendations in its final report. What has been given so far cannot be all—investment must continue.

Partners in the community planning arena have a responsibility to do something themselves: I will revert to policing. When new recruits to the police service go to the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan, there is input on community planning, which has gone down well. I will take a little step aside for the moment. I chaired a Scottish Association for the Study of Delinquency conference at Peebles, at which there were seven Scottish law lords, I think. For the group work, we brought together the trainers from the Scottish Police College and put them through a community planning exercise that involved problem solving in scenarios that had been created. The experience was enlightening for them and for others at the conference in respect of joined-up approaches.

In one scenario, an individual was seen walking along the high street. The individual picked up a street litter bin and threw it through a window. One of the eminent gentlemen at the conference questioned why the bin had not been screwed to the ground and why the window was not a strengthened window. When people start to think about such matters, the solutions that are found are not always straightforward enforcement responses. Through bringing people together and working jointly, we can find solutions to problems, even from the most eminent quarters of Scottish public life.

One problem that communities face is consultation overload. Either a blank sheet of paper is provided on which people are asked to say what they want, which is impossible, or thick documents such as policing plans, health plans, local plans, structure plans and every other type of plan in the world are provided, with which it is almost impossible to deal. Is community planning intended to cut through some of that and allow communities to say where they want to be in five years' time? Is it also intended that community planning will find out what they need to do to get there, and that it will undertake more simple joined-up activities such as ensuring that buses run to surgeries when surgeries are open?

You are right. I mentioned clearing the clutter. All the organisations involved are intent on securing communities' views in order to influence their priorities. We have urged organisations to work together on that and to have a single visit, whether that be through a paper exercise, such as a survey of an area, or through a community forum—many partnerships are creating those in order to obtain representative views.

At the most recent implementation group meeting, we heard that the business community in Stirling is electronically linked and that the internet is being used to draw out the business sector's view. The message is that the point that Iain Smith made should be addressed; partnerships are conscious of that. In my own patch, Glasgow City Council has undertaken an extensive audit in its area and has invited all the key partners to piggyback on that exercise, so that there is only a single visit and we ensure that we do not duplicate questions.

I am heartened that people want to find out communities' views. The way in which that is done might be fairly clumsy and be more likely to turn people off than switch them on, but the intention is right. However, we must find the right mechanism, although I do not think that a single approach will be appropriate. We have the assembly approach, meetings of community groups, focus groups and a range of other approaches, which I am sure the Executive uses, too. It is important to reach the hard-to-reach groups rather than just the usual suspects.

Communities of interest are another consideration. We tend to focus on geographical groups, but I was interested in the committee's previous evidence on transport because, as members will be well aware, in the partnerships—particularly those in rural communities—integrated transport systems are highlighted as being critical to allowing some smaller communities to sustain what they have and grow their local economies. Some groups cut across communities.

Another of our aspirations is greater link-up of partnerships. We do not want to create 32 little islands that all do the same thing in different ways. Partnerships must share best practice. When it is sensible to work as a region or a distinct group, partnerships should do that and be encouraged to do that. The cities review has been an interesting development in the drive to achieve such working. Consultation with community planning partnerships has been one criterion for access to cities review funding. That has been a good hook with which to pull together surrounding partnerships and I am heartened by what I have seen in that regard. I am involved in the Clyde valley partnership for the area that surrounds Glasgow, which is pursuing interesting strategic issues that affect the whole area and talking about sharing its approaches.

That brings us to the end of our questions. From the questions and answers, I gather that the implementation group has made considerable progress on improving the way in which community partnerships work, but that a continuing need to develop that further is recognised.

We look forward to the implementation group's final report. I suspect that, overall, committee members agree with you that a continuing means by which to develop partnerships will be needed to ensure that engagement takes place with communities and that communities see the value of the community planning process, which is important. I thank you for your evidence.

I very much appreciate the committee's support on that point. I thank the committee for listening to me.

Meeting continued in private until 16:45.