Community Strategy

The Community Strategy is intended to bring together all those who can contribute to the future of communities within a local authority area, to agree on the key priorities for the area and pursue them in partnership. The Community Strategy is the over-arching strategy for each local authority area. It must provide a long term strategic vision to promote or improve economic, social and environmental well-being, based on set of shared ambitions and values, discussed and negotiated with local citizens, communities and their leaders. The statutory guidance for the development and delivery of community strategies states,

"The overarching partnership structure should ensure that the diversity of the third sector is reflected in all partnerships that support the development and implementation of community strategy objectives…"

The overall strategic direction and priorities of the Community Strategy should then be reflected within the other statutory and non-statutory strategies, with all four plans being interlinked and cross-referring to one another. The plans or strategies (or elements of them) that may have been subsumed into this, or must be aligned to this in some way include:

• Local Housing Strategy

• Local Transport Plan

• Crime and Disorder Reduction Strategy (Community Safety Plan)

• Local Substance Misuse Action Plan

• Strategy for Older People (Local Action Plan)

It is also relevant here to note the importance of Local Delivery Agreements that are put together by Local Service Boards (LSBs). They set out the joint actions that partners will take on a small number of challenging projects that need leadership, problem-solving and support by the LSB. The projects will be grounded in the community strategy priorities and will form part of the community strategy action plan.