Agenda item

To consider the report on City for All.

7.1       Mark Ewbank (Scrutiny Manager) presented the report which outlined the Council’s City for All Strategy and how it aligned with the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy and the North West London STP. City for All was a three year vision and strategy and now in its third year. For 2017/18, three priorities had been set to help achieve the vision, these being:

·                     Putting civic leadership and responsibility at the heart of what the Council does

·                     Promoting opportunity and fairness across the city

·                     Setting the standards for a world class city.

7.2       Mark Ewbank explained that the three priorities would be delivered through five programmes, these being titled as below:

·                     Civic leaders

·                     Building homes and celebrating neighbourhoods

·                     Greener City

·                     World Class Westminster

·                     Smart Council.

7.3       Mark Ewbank added that the Council was also guided by the delivery principles set out in the ‘One Front Door Standard’ as defined by the Leader of the Council in her speech to Full Council on 1 March 2017 and he drew the Board’s attention to the contents of this speech as set out in the report.

7.4       The Chairman emphasised the importance of collaboration between partner organisations and Housing and the role they played in optimising use of estates to improve access to preventative services. She welcomed Members’ comments and suggestions in identifying further areas for collaboration.

7.5       A Member welcomed City for All’s vision, however she felt that the level of representation from the voluntary and community sector was lacking and could result in a number of missed opportunities to help achieve City for All’s goals. She suggested that the Council make more mention of the role that voluntary organisations, residents’ association, churches, mosques and other places of worship play in civic life and to engage and collaborate more with such organisations. More investment in community asset building should also take place to strengthen the community. The Member stated that the community and voluntary sector had been heavily involved in the response to the Grenfell fire and had prevented the situation from being even worse.

Another Member stressed the need to have the ability to intervene in order to prevent inequalities in the community increasing. Members commented that the voluntary and community sector could make a major contribution to building community assets and people should be empowered to build community resources and improve community resilience.

7.6       Dr Joanne Medhurst commented that there should also be an emphasis on providing safe, as well as affordable, housing. Chris Neill sought comments on how health and care could help complement City for All and further details on the new care hubs.

7.7       The Chairman advised that the care hubs were virtual hubs that would involve working together with NHS Central London and NHS West London CCGs to help implement the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy, which City for All was totally aligned to. She advised that there would be collaboration with the voluntary and community sector in respect of building civic leadership and empowering local communities which was a key element of City for All and this area of work would be highlighted more in future reports, as well as activities being undertaken to help local people into employment. Mark Ewbank added that the Council had set a target to of 2,400 volunteers to be recruited in the borough.