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Key Docs
ODPM publication Local Area Agreements- Guidance for Round 3 and Refresh of Rounds 1 and 2
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Towards a Level Playing Field
Towards a level playing field - toolkit
Cabespace - open space strategy guidance
Big Lottery: Planning for Play
At the highest level locally are the Regional Strategies, usually written by high level regional partnerships such as the Regional Development Agency, Assembly/Chamber or Regional Planning Body. Below this, sub regional strategies are emerging, such as Milton Keynes and South Midlands. One of the established sub regional groups is The Thames Gateway partnership which deals with planning issues, design issues and economic / development policies.
In theory, Local Authorities would always sign up to the objectives of these higher level strategies, they do, after all, have to deliver a lot of them. In reality, they often don’t. This is not as surprising as you might think. For example, a regional aspiration will often include finding a site or waste disposal. Locally, that might not go down too well, if the regional strategy envisages putting it in your patch. The Thames Gateway partnership identifies key roles for all the district councils in the partnership area, those roles don’t always reflect local and political priorities for those councils.
Other regional strategies are less wide ranging and are focussed on a particular issue, for example, the Regional Transport Plan, or our own Regional Sports Strategies. This type of issue specific strategy usually enjoys more support locally, as there is often a high input from local Councils in putting them together. A lot of these are statutory requirements, and have time frames attached for their completion.
Although the DTI has responsibility for Regional Development Agencies, overall responsibility for regional policy rests with DCLG
Each RDA has a national lead remit, for example North West RDA lead on regeneration and South West leads on culture. It is useful to know this because each RDA will be interested in the contribution of sport to its own national lead.
Below this regional level we see Community Strategies. Again, they deal with a wide range of issues, but there is more consistency here, every Council has one, and they are always owned, if not actually written by, the Local Strategic Partnership.
The titles of these documents don’t always include the words “Community Strategy”, often they will be given aspirational names, but they follow the same basic pattern. There is usually a vision, supported by a set of values, followed by a set of aims, objectives or priorities. (The terminology varies, but they tend to be concrete objectives) These documents are very significant, and councils usually reflect Community Strategy aims in their own Corporate Plans
Corporate Plans are wholly owned by the Local Authority, although they will have consulted widely on them. Again they have a vision, a set of priorities, usually performance information expressed as progress against Performance Indicators. They are a mix between a business planning document, and a reporting mechanism to enable local people to judge a council’s performance. They may include an action plan, or this might form another separate supporting document.
There is a parallel set of strategic documents that all councils have to produce, at regional and local level. These are strategic planning documents undertaken under the new (or fairly new) Local Development Framework (see Local Strategic Planning).
These will eventually replace the local existing development plans known as the Unitary Development plan or the Local Plan, depending on the type of local authority. The important change here is that now the new land use plan (the local development framework) has to be led and informed by these wider corporate strategies and in effect “determine the land use implications and polices for delivering the wider corporate plans and strategies of the local authority.”
Joining up service based planning, with corporate and forward planning in this way means that our plans for delivering sport can influence future provision in a truly integrated way.
Sport needs to be engaged in corporate planning in two ways;
See Value for Sport
If you are not part of the corporate planning process then your service stands to miss out in direct provision, and the community stands to lose out because the council could fail to use the resources it has i.e. your service, to deliver it’s social objectives.
In some ways it can be easier for Leisure trusts to engage in the community and corporate planning process, than it is for the in house team, but it is still essential that this happens.
Service based Strategies
Under the Corporate Plan, we now get down to a raft of separate and related strategies. Broadly these might be operational and essentially internally focussed, for example a Corporate Training Strategy, Operational but customer focussed, for example a Customer Relationship Strategy, service focussed, a Libraries Strategy, or more broad ranging, a Cultural Strategy.
The hierarchy of these is sometimes hard to establish. An Open Spaces Strategy may have the same status as a Sports Strategy, but might include a Play Strategy and Playing Pitch Strategy under it. A Sports Strategy might be a sub strategy of the Cultural Strategy, but then it might not! CABE Space have produced a set of Guides for those wishing to develop strategies for Open Spaces, visit Green Space Strategies – A good practice guide. CABE is due to provide guidance on play provision later in 2006. CABE Space is currently providing enabling support for strategy development to approximately 60 Local Authorities. If you are interested in contacting CABE Space to ask about getting some strategic support for open spaces management they can be reached at info@cabe.org.uk
A fairly recent development, and one that is likely to become more common, is the requirement to undertake assessments of Strategies for particular cross cutting issues. All strategies, for example, must now be assessed in terms of their impact on race.
Many also have to have a Sustainability Appraisal undertaken, and / or a Strategic Environmental Assessment, see Guide to Local Development Frameworks).
Any assessment has to be undertaken before the proposed strategy is submitted to Cabinet or Council for approval. Elected members can’t be asked to adopt strategies without being aware of their impact.
Example - Local Strategies Hierarchy
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