Skip to main content (1)

Select match ALL words or ANY word: Match ALL words Match ANY word Search words:

Making the Structures Work

To engage effectively with communities, partnerships could consider the following:

Holding Regular Meetings:

In addition to holding the types of meetings set out in the statutory requirements, partnerships can hold many other meetings. They provide an opportunity to listen to community concerns, inform communities about action taken in response to local priorities and engage the community in action to tackle local problems. These meetings provide only a minimum level of community engagement and must be positioned within a wider culture of effective public-facing services.

While how these meeting operate is dependent on local flexibility, partnerships are encouraged to consider the following issues:

• Location – venues should be accessible to diverse community members. The partnership may consider locations such as community centres, public parks, schools and shopping centres and varying locations to meet needs.
• Format – these meetings may take place as public forums, drop-in sessions, surgeries or be aligned to local campaigns (e.g. 100 Days Clean-Up, Week of Action or Citizens’ Jury).
• Need – the partnership may consider holding more regular events in areas where there is greater need, such as more concern around local issues or higher crime rates.
• Knowledge – in order to respond to community concerns, the partnership should ensure that it is clear on the community safety priorities, performance against these and other key targets, potential risks, work that has been delivered and future planned initiatives.

The process of regularly holding public meetings also supports the process of delivering the Respect programme. The Respect programme is a comprehensive approach to tackling and preventing anti-social behaviour. The process of encouraging more open dialogue between communities and agencies that have been established to protect the public, reduce crime and anti-social behaviour sits at the heart of the Respect programme and is an important part of promoting open and accountable leadership

Feeding Back Information to the Community

It is important that the communities are able to access the information on what partners are doing to address crime and anti-social behaviour. If local communities are to have an informed view and actively engage in partnership working, they need to be better informed about how the partners will deliver the identified priorities.

Providing this form of information to the community is also important as it supports the process of ensuring that the partnership is accountable and transparent to the public including individuals who comprise ‘hard to reach’ and ‘hard to hear’ communities.