To Leicester City Council (B Block, New Walk Centre) for the second day running, this time to attend a meeting of the Stronger Communities Partnership.
A big part of the remit of the Stronger Communities Partnership has been oversight of one of the key National Indicators - NI140 (fair access to local services). It was confirmed at this meeting that central government has decided to do away with NI140 (among a few other National Indicators) on the grounds that it's too hard to obtain reliable evidence that it's being met. There were a few raised eyebrows (mine included) as NI140 has been at the core of so many meetings. I've become rather attached to the old thing; it was the first National Indicator that I understood and memorised - and the first I ever heard myself quoting out loud at a meeting. But rather than mourn its passing, it's easy to see abolition of NI140 (fair access to local services) as a good thing, since it will spread responsibility for assuring such fair access to all the Strategic Partnership's theme groups, rather than having it sit with Stronger Communities alone. So that takes some weight off this group and should allow it to be distributed more evenly. Of course, such joint responsibility should always have been the case, but it became easy to tag it on to realted responsibilites and pigeonhole it with this one group.
In case this makes it look these meetings are dominated by obscure beauraucratic language, I should unpack some of the topics covered here, especially in relation to Neighbourhood Working. This topic today involves (in no particular order) matters of hate crime, anti-social behaviour, immigration, graffiti, fly-tipping, vulnerability, estates maintenance, street cleaning, spikes in community confidence. These issues have to be rolled up into an effective strategic approach rather than a shopping list of "quick wins". We discuss ow to move away from a "command-and-control" model to being "needs-led". Sorry if that lapsed back toward beauracratic language there, but I'm sure it's not too hard to follow, faithful reader.
An interesting linguistic interlude here: we're told that some of the proposals related to this work are still going through the process of "stormin'n'normin". Eh? I've never heard this one before (have you, faithful reader?) and puzzled over it for some time. We try our best to eliminate beauracratic double-speak and gobbledeegook. This Stronger Communities Partnership agreed a code of conduct with EDP for accessible communication, to be adopted across the Strategic Partnership. But creativity is a wonderful thing and it'll find its way out through every available crack. "Stormin' Norman" was, of course, the nickname given Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who was in charge of Operation Desert Storm in the fist Gulf War. So, what might "stormin'n'normin" meaan in this context? That these processes are still being "brainstormed" and being systematised? ("normed"?). Who knows ...
Jim McCallum, from Voluntary Action Leicester, presents a draft paper on volunteering for our discussion. There's a call round the table for volunteers (ironically) to take the paper forward before the next meeting of Stronger Communities. Since I got some experience in this area when helping with Volunteeering England's "Volunteering and Faith Communities" project last year, I put myself forward. That and the fact that there's no real acknowledgement or promise of engagement with the faith communities in this document, an ommision that I'd like to help put right.
We discuss the goal of "talking up Leicester", in which context I mention the recent high level media contacts we've received at the Council of Faiths. There's agreement that the City Council, the Strategic Partnership and the Council of Faiths should develop a strategy for joint response to such enquiries.
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