Christmas shopping all done? Presents all wrapped? Tired of listening to Slade and Wizzard? Then why not spend ten minutes helping to identify what your North West Locality should be like in 5 years time!
The 2017-22 North West Locality Improvement Plan (LIP) will help coordinate how key partners – the Council, NHS Lothian, Police, the third sector and community organisations – best use available resources to meet changing demands across our communities. The LIP will also help towards the delivery of the new Edinburgh City Vision 2050.
Everyone that lives in, visits or works in the North West area can now help shape what the LIP should focus on. The link below will take you to a brief questionnaire where you are asked to identify what you feel is important to you, your family and your neighbours:
https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/north-west-lip
Paper copies will be available in January, but click on the link (above) if you just can’t wait to have your say!
Forth and Inverleith Voluntary Sector Forum held a session to talk about LIP priorities at North Edinburgh Arts earlier this month. The event was well-attended given all the competing time pressures at this time of year and a lively discussion ensued. See below for a summary of the morning:
FORTH & INVERLEITH VOLUNTARY SECTOR FORUM : 2ND DECEMBER 2016
FORTH & INVERLEITH PRIORITIES
- Support for community organisations – five year plans, five year funding agreements
- Properly funded youth provision – commitment to after school activities for all children 5-16 inclusive (music, sport, art)
- Street cleaning & road maintenance to the same standard as Stockbridge or Barnton
- Increased funding to address mental health issues – delivered by professional NHS staff
- All organisations and agencies – public, private and voluntary sector to pay living wage
- Increase household income – set targets for the number of households
- Use imaginative ways to create well-paid service employment/maximise benefit take-up.
- Asset transfer – income generation
- Childcare – free, flexible, high quality (early years centres?)
- Social space for people to meet, make grow
- Mental health services for young people – accessible, flexible and more responsive
CITYWIDE PRIORITIES
- Anti-poverty measures implemented over a generation
- Transport improvements for older people – help getting access to community and voluntary services
- Decentralise all services out of central area
- Access to food for all
- Prevention, investment in general, including: homelessness, health, food, unemployment, employability, conflict
- Asset transfer from City of Edinburgh Council
- Get rid of arms length development corporations/companies
- Housing and homelessness prevention
- Lack of supply relative to population growth – issues with tight planning regulations, green belts, NIMBYism etc, private sector supply blocked from meeting demand, leading to high rents & inflated house prices. – Supply of Housing is a key issue citywide.
- Employment/economy
- Voluntary sector too stretched to provide a safety net in the face of council cutting services
- A genuine commitment to community engagement participation when developing community planning structures.
HOLYROOD
- Council tax bands poorly structured, no relation to land value
- Business rates too high, decreasing employment and business presence
- Decade long council tax freeze has cut council funding leading to reduction in services
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