Wiltshire Community Area Partnerships

A few days ago, I wrote about all the new structures at Wiltshire Council; I was having trouble working out what they all did, and I don't think I am the only one having trouble understanding it. (See that article). I got stuck at "Community Partnerships" or "Community Area Partnerships" which seemed to be missing from the various official body lists.

Well ... I sorted it out last night, when I attended a meeting that (it turned out) was to launch the setup of the Melksham Community Area Partnership. And it should work like this:

The County is split into 18 Area Board - groups of around half a dozen councillors who look after their own patches, dealing with more local issues themselves and coordinating the inputs from there area to full council. It is proposed that each Area Board should have a Community Area Partnership associated with it - the role of the CAP being to involve and consult with the community in the area, and to feed back those views to the area board with the purpose of helping to set and steer the agenda.

Everyone who lives in, works in, or otherwise has a legitimate interest in an Area is considered to be a member of their local Community Area partnership, although many people will be inactive and perhaps oblivious to the fact that they're even a member. It's completely up to each area how they set up their CAP, within some very general guidelines, and around 38k of the area board's funding is to be made available to them, of which up to a fifth can be on admin. CAPs have already been setup in many areas - Melksham is one of the last, although few of the recent ones associated with the new Unitary setup have been going long enough for them to have a track record to report.

Typically, a CAP will have a steering committee of around 8 to 16 members who will meet from time to time, channel information to and from the area board, community members and community organisations. They must be formalised to the extent of having a constitution, but the intent overall is that they should be as free as possible to represent the community - they are intended (according to Joanna who was running the meeting) to be independent of the area board. And this independence and local delegation is, we were told, a key factor in why Wiltshire's Unitary bid was accepted.

Melksham's Area Board (and therefore Community Area Partnership) includes Melksham Town, and the parishes of Melksham Without, Atworth, Broughton Gifford, Semington, Seend, Great Hinton, Keevil, Bulkington, Poulshot and Steeple Ashton. The six councillors are Jonathon Seed (Conservative, Summerham and Seend) who chairs the board, plus the five "Melksham" councillors - town and without - listed here. Rod Eaton (also Conservative) is deputy chair of the board.

The stuff above is more or less 'official' ... now would you like to know about the meeting, which will be much more personal views and heresy? I'll add that on in the next 'tranche' in a short while. Added - see here

Update - December 2009. The inaugral AGM took place on 20th November, and I stood for / was acceped for the steering group for the next year. [report]. the first meeting of this steering group took place on 9th December; I have chosen NOT to file a report yet on my blog.
(written 2009-07-15, updated 2009-12-19) 8e90

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