www.wiltshire.gov.uk
Equality Impact Assessment - Community Planning
Partial Assessment
1. What is the name of the function, policy or service that is being assessed?
Community Planning
2. What are the aims of the function, policy or service? Whose needs it is designed to meet? What are the current priorities?
Aims of Service
The Local Government Act 2000 placed on local Authorities the duty to promote the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of their community and charged them with producing a Community Plan as a long-term framework to improve the quality of life in their area.
The Local Government White Paper (2006) further sets out responsibilities on Local authorities
- to give local communities and local people more influence over the delivery of public services and power to improve their lives
- to rebalance the relationship between Central and Local Government and local people, recognising that people want choice over the services they receive, influence over those who provide them and higher service standards
- To strengthen the role of elected members as community leaders.
Community planning:
- Is a powerful tool in helping local communities voice their aspirations
- Seeks to tackle issues that affect people's quality of life
- Provides direction for connecting the work of local organisations
- Helps to enable organisations to secure greater efficiency and effectiveness in their services
- Provides public sector organisations with sound information about local needs and wishes, to enable them to make better informed decisions
- Provides an opportunity to share and learn from everyone's experiences
In Wiltshire community planning It is the process whereby local communities across Wiltshire have the opportunity and are supported to
- come together to identify need in their local areas
- work to develop solutions to identified need in partnership with service providers
- consult with local people to ensure that local needs and priorities are reflected in service planning
- develop community plans for their areas
- hold service providers to account for the delivery of services in their local areas
Current Prioirities
WCC Corporate Plan (2005-9) states that we will build on the Council’s Beacon award for ‘Getting Closer to Communities’ by:
a) Extending the Council’s support for Councillors as community leaders
b) Supporting communities to deliver local priorities identified in the 20 community plans
c) Continuing to support and listen to young people through the Assembly of Youth
d) Consulting more with older people and other client groups
e) Devolving some powers and decisions to local communities
Achievements 2005/06:
- Though Beacon Status for ‘Getting Closer to Communities’, established national profile for work on community engagement, working with the ODPM, Home Office, Young Foundation, IDeA, Audit Commission’s Innovation Unit.
- Published full coverage of 20 community plans and profiles and supported Councillors in the delivery of over 20 local projects
- Continued programme management of successful Smartplace e-Communities projects
- Support to 4 district area Community Strategies and LSP’s.
- Successful ODPM capacity building bid for member training and development.
- Secretariat and project management support to the Compact board including publishing Compact Codes of Practice.
- Draft Corporate Equalities Strategy.
- Assessment of WCC functions and policies in relation to the Equalities Agenda.
We are Working towards:
- Implementing pilots for strengthening 3 tier area working and establishing new governance arrangements for local decision making.
- Developing the community capacity ‘Stronger’ elements of the LAA.
- Developing partnership arrangements for the roll out Neighbourhood Policing in Wiltshire.
- Continuing to support County Councillors to deliver local projects in line with the Corporate Goal.
- Achieving Beacon status in round eight for ‘Community Leadership’.
- Publishing Corporate Equalities Strategy.
- Support and guidance to WCC on the implementation of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act and the Disability Equality Act.
The targets that have been set reflect what is considered to be a reasonable level of project activity and achievement across the 20 Community areas.
Development Services is supporting County Councillors and Community Planning Partnerships to achieve 80 local projects by 2009.
This enables the Council to demonstrate continued commitment to listening to communities and responding to local priorities. There is a focus on achieving at least 3 successful projects in each of the 20 community areas over the next three years so that we can demonstrate a good geographical spread. It is anticipated that some of the more active communities will exceed this number of projects and that an additional 20 is a reasonable expectation.
Projects are being achieved by influencing service delivery, joining up and combining existing resources and successful bidding from a range of external funding sources. Community Project Monitoring will be reported on an annual basis, with quarterly reporting in place.
3. In what ways might this function, policy or service affect some groups of people differently? Might some groups find it harder to access the service? Do some groups have particular needs that are not well met by the current policy or service?
Community Planning seeks to be an inclusive process which takes active consideration of the needs of all sections of the community, actively engaging local people in defining local needs and priorities.
Consultation events towards the development of the 20 community plans were designed with this in mind.
However within all communities there are some groups of people who may be harder to reach, communicate with or engage on an ongoing basis, than others. Examples of these people may be
- Lone parents
- Older people
- Younger people
- Women
- Disabled People
- Black and Minority Ethnic |groups
- Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, BiSexual People
- People living in isolated rural locations
- Migrant workers
- Faith based groups
- Gypsy and Traveller groups
- People with Mental Health difficulties
- People with learning difficulties
These people may be less likely to
- attend community meetings
- participate in consultation activities
- receive information
- make complaints
This can be for varying reasons e.g.
- childcare responsibilities,
- access issues,
- lack of information in languages or formats which are accessible
- fear of discrimination,
- lack of transport,
- timing of meetings and other activities etc.
4. What evidence do you have for your judgement? Is there evidence of public concern (e.g. complaints)? Have staff raised concerns? Is there local or national research to suggest that there could be a problem?
Experience of community planning and partnership working in Wiltshire shows a nixed record of engaging with these groups. The profile of community activist tends towards white middle-class articulate members of the community.
There is further a wealth of research at national levels to suggest that some of or all of these groups may be marginalised in different ways within communities and within service planning processes.
At a local level there is research evidence e.g. Hidden Voices 2002, which indicated that many respondents from BME communities had experiences within communities which they considered to be racist, that there was often fear of reporting racist incidents to the police, that problems arising from a language barrier were common among a number of the older respondents, that a sense of isolation was experienced by particularly female respondents, access to public service was often hampered by childcare difficulties, religious and cultural factors and further, that people often felt discriminated against in terms of securing employment.
Research by Tom Frost (2006) into possible methods of consultation with BME Communities found that
- The BME population is dispersed, hard to locate and not always amenable to consultation
- Language is a major barrier to participation and engagement
- Face to face consultation methods collecting qualitative data work better than surveys collecting quantitative data
- Trust is an important issue and using external agencies to facilitate consultation is recommended
A migrant workers conference held in South Wiltshire in 2006 further highlighted the increased numbers of migrant workers in Wiltshire and some of the issue faced by them including exploitation and poor housing and welfare amenities.
A report on Wiltshire’s Minority Ethnic Residents and Access to Services, (Wiltshire County Council Trading Standards Passenger Transport Unit and Registration Services), (Begum, March 2004) found that the majority of respondents found it difficult to access information about services and that more could be done to ensure information was made available in appropriate formats.
The Wiltshire Improvement Partnership (a partnership of all 5 councils in Wiltshire), in recognition of shared weaknesses around equality and diversity, has commissioned the IDeA to develop ideas and projects around development of more consistent approaches to equality and diversity, ensuring equality and diversity is better mainstreamed within organisations and that access to service is enhanced for equalities groups.
A key part of this project is member development and training inequality and diversity which is vital if members are to effectively fulfil their roles as community leaders.
The Disability Equality Pilot Survey, towards the Development of Wiltshire County Council’s Disability Equality Scheme (2007), highlighted common issues currently faced by Disabled people in Wiltshire such as
- physical access to amenities such as banks, pubs, shops
- conditions of roads pavements and kerbs
- transport costs and problems with disability badge system
- general lack of awareness in the community about different types of disability including hidden disabilities.
In terms of gender issues, research shows that whilst much progress has been made over the last 30 years in advancing gender equality in many aspects of life in the UK, significant inequalities between the sexes continue to exist most notably with regard to
- The level of pay and pensions of women compared to men and the proportion of women compared to men working part time
- The distribution of men and women in certain occupations
- Educational achievement and career choices of boys and girls and young men and women
There are also seen to be more complex gender inequalities relating to women those who are disabled or from BME communities.
A recent report into the needs of over 50’s in Wiltshire (Beyond the Immediate, December 2006) found that the over 50’s greatest concerns were about
- Staying independent fit and healthy
- Maintaining social contact and overcoming loneliness
- Coping with everyday life and feeling safe
- Being able to enjoy learning and benefit for IT
- Have flexible work and retirement futures
- Keep financially secure in retirement
- Seeing older age as an opportunity
These findings are already been used to underpin short term priorities in terms of service planning in Wiltshire and to develop longer term plans.
Tomorrows Voice a survey of young people in Wiltshire aged 11-18 Winter 2006/7, sought young people’s views on a range of issues. Some of the key findings show that young people feel regularly unable to get to where they would like because of a lack of access to transport. Anti-social behaviour was considered by respondents as the most important issue for Wiltshire police to deal with. Vandalism and Bullying were also key concerns for half of respondents.
Wiltshire County Council has responded to the needs of minority and underrepresented groups in many ways. A review of work undertaken with hard to reach groups was published in 2006
This shows work with
- BME families to facilitate increased employment applications
- Libraries to supply dual language books
- Inter-faith Women’s groups
- Ethnic Minority achievement service, including outreach worker and mentoring scheme
- Projects with young disabled people
- Work with young people at risk of exclusion
- Work with young people with learning disabilities
- Work with gypsy and travellers
- Consultation tools to reach different groups e.g. tomorrows voice
- Work with homeless young people
Community Planning, as a key interface between the Council’s and local communities needs to identify and respond effectively to equality and diversity issues outlined above and continuing to arise.
5. Who have you consulted with as part of your assessment? What were the results? Have you published the results of that consultation? If so, where?
Wide ranging consultation was carried out in terms of the research detailed above and indicates a need for further work in this area. This research is published on the Wiltshire Intelligence Network and is available on request.
- Further Consultation to determine key issues will now take place with
- Community Area Partnerships
- District councils
- Equality and Diversity based organisations e.g. WREC, Age Concern, People First etc.
- County and District Council Service managers
- Local partnerships e.g. Social Inclusion Partnership
- Local Strategic Partnerships
- Other local authorities
- Audit Commission
6. If you have found that the function, policy or service might have an adverse impact on a particular group of people, can you justify this?
Adverse impacts would not be justifiable
7. If the impact cannot be justified, what do you intend to do about this? Are there changes that you could introduce which would make the function, policy or service work better for this group of people? Is further research or consultation required?
Anticipating One Council for Wiltshire there will be a need to review community area working.
Community area partnerships and area working arrangements are variable at present, some partnerships work well to ensure the effective engagement of all sections of the community, others are less well developed and will need higher levels of support.
Current proposals under One Council for Wiltshire, are for the development of Area Boards of Unitary, Town and Parish Councillors, (plus police, PCT etc if they agree to participate) within Community Area Partnerships. Area Boards will be responsible for ensuring that public services respond effectively to the partnerships and communities concerns.
One Council for Wiltshire will need to ensure that local partnerships are well equipped, with the appropriate knowledge and skills base to address equality and diversity issues and challenges within communities they serve.
Elected members will need to ensure that One Council for Wiltshire meets its legal and regulatory responsibilities currently around Race, Disability, and Gender equality with other equalities legislation pending.
Under One Council for Wiltshire, Community partnerships will need to
- Demonstrate commitment to equality of opportunity for all, enshrined in their constitution or terms of reference
- Undertake equality and diversity training
- Undertake at least level 1 equalities impact assessment of community projects and initiatives
- Work with community planners to develop and utilise an equality and diversity checklist for community planning and consultation activities
- Ensure the effective engagement of voluntary sector agencies in their local area with an equality and diversity remit e.g. Age Concern, WREC etc.
- Monitor and report on the engagement of different groups within community consultation and other activities and develop plans for ensuring engagement of under represented groups.
If One Council for Wiltshire is not approved then a review of current practice within community area partnerships will be carried out and recommendations, in line with the above, will be made and progressed.
8. How will you monitor the take-up or impact of the function, policy or service in future?
Monitoring will take place of
- Community planners trained in equality and diversity
- Elected Members trained in equality and diversity
- Community partnerships trained in equality and diversity
- Community partnerships demonstrating commitment to equality and diversity within constitutions and terms of reference
- Equalities impact assessments carried out on community projects
- Equality and diversity checklists developed
- Involvement of voluntary sector agencies and other representative groups within community partnerships
- Representation of different groups within community activities
- Progress around LAA targets and activities relating to equalities groups within community areas
- Results of People’s Voice and Tomorrow’s Voice consultation mechanisms and relevant follow up activities/actions by community area partnerships
- Percentage of people who feel that people in their community get on well together (community cohesion mandatory indicator)
9. What actions do you plan to take as a result of this equality impact assessment? Please state any resource implications.
Following One Council for Wiltshire decision, there will be
- Development of clear criteria for operation of community area partnerships/boards
- Audit of engagement of different groups within community area activity and identification of key gaps/ under-represented groups
- Review of Community Partnership consitiutions/terms of reference and development of model constitutions
- Training needs analysis of community area partnerships around equality and diversity issues
- Development of Equality and Diversity Checklists for community planning activity
- Audit of voluntary sector groups and current engagement with community area partnerships
- Evaluation of links between LAA targets and community area plans, particularly outcomes related to under-represented/disadvantaged groups
- Regular reporting of People’s Voice and Tomorrow’s Voice findings to Community Area Partnerships
- Regular reporting of community cohesion indicators to Community Area Partnerships
Resources will be required for training and progressing this agenda within Community Planning staff resources.
10. There is a legal requirement to publish the outcomes of Equality Impact Assessments. Please outline how / where this will happen.
The results of the full equalities impact assessments will be published within community areas and on the WCC website.
This work will begin in Autumn 2007 and run until Spring 2008.
11. Name of person completing form
Senior Development Consultant
Date assessment completed:
7/6/09
12. Senior manager approval
Assistant Director Development Services
Date:
26 September 2007
Contact Details
By Post
Equality & Diversity Team
Development Services
Wiltshire County Council
County Hall
Bythesea Road
Trowbridge
Wiltshire
BA14 8JN
By Email
By Telephone
01225 713510
By Hand
County Hall, Trowbridge
Opening Hours
Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm
