VENUE Huntingdon Room, Kings Manor, University of York

WITHOUT WALLS PARTNERSHIP

Minutes

DATE 4 March 2008

VENUE Huntingdon Room, Kings Manor, University of York

PRESENT Board Members: Liz Burdett – Director, LSC (North Yorkshire)

Sir Ron Cooke - Chair

Pete Dwyer – Director, Learning, Culture and Children CYC

Cllr. Steve Galloway – City of York Council

Cllr. Ian Gillies – City of York Council

Rachel Johns – Chair, Healthy City Board

Keith Jones - Dean of York & Chair, York@Large

Jane Marshall - Chair, YorOK Partnership

Bill McCarthy, Chief Executive - City of York Council

David Rees – York Environment Partnership

Iain Spittal, Chief Superintendent – North Yorkshire Police

Cllr. David Scott – City of York Council

Colin Stroud, Chief Executive – York Council for Vol. Service

In Attendance: Dave Caulfield, Head of City Development, CYC

Secretariat: Roger Ranson, Asst. Director, Econ Devt. & Partnerships

Denise Simms, Senior Partnership Support Officer

Bill Woolley, Director of City Strategy

APOLOGIES:

Brian Cantor, Vice Chancellor - University of York

Len Cruddas, Chief Executive – Chamber of Commerce

Chris Hailey – Norris – Inclusive York Forum

Clare Suddaby, External Relations Manager – Jobcentre Plus

1 WELCOME AND APOLOGIES

Apologies were received from Brian Cantor, Len Cruddas, Chris Hailey-Norris and Clare Suddaby.

2 MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING

Minutes of the meeting held on 28 January 2008 were agreed.

3 LOCAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK – PROGRESS AND KEY MESSAGES

Dave Caulfield, Head of City Development CYC, attended to give a presentation on the key messages arising from work on the Local Development Framework Core Strategy to date (Slides attached at Annex A). This included findings from the Festival of Ideas 2 consultation, including the citywide questionnaire, responses to the consultation document and evidence from other recent studies.

It was confirmed that the original Community Strategy Vision had been taken into account in developing the eighteen spatial planning objectives. Of these, six had emerged as top priorities:

1.  York as a regional economic driver;

2.  Regional centre for retail;

3.  Preservation of York’s character and setting;

4.  To establish a permanent Greenbelt;

5.  Protection of bio-diversity and environmental quality; and,

6.  Delivery of appropriate housing to meet local need.

Partners were informed that, in response to the all house-hold questionnaire, residents’ top three priorities for the future were:

·  Reduce our impact on the environment (63%)

·  Developing the economy, jobs and skills (59%)

·  Improving travel within, to and from York (55%)

The following spatial messages were highlighted as key to include in the Sustainable Strategy:

·  There should be a focus beyond York’s administrative boundaries;

·  Acknowledgement that surrounding villages would have some role to play in meeting future development needs;

·  Protection of York’s character and setting as paramount;

·  A long term view on the Green Belt boundary;

·  Focus on neighbourhoods and communities, not just the city centre;

·  Acceptance of the importance of addressing transport and access issues.

Other key themes, which had emerged during consultation on the spatial strategy, that should be referenced in the SCS were:

·  Historic environment

·  Housing

·  Economy

·  Transport

·  Open space

·  Retail

·  Sustainability.

Comments from Partners regarding the presentation included:

·  The Environment Partnership welcomed confirmation of these issues as key drivers for SCS and LDF;

·  York@Large echoed this view and were pleased that the findings didn’t underplay the city’s special character and national / international significance. In fact they highlighted York as an opportunity for the whole of Yorkshire.

·  The detail resonated with the work of community safety partners, particularly the importance of understanding suburban areas and villages;

·  It was confirmed that 2,300 residents had replied to the LDF questionnaire, making it statistically viable;

·  Plans to establish a Green Belt boundary effective for the next 30 years may backfire;

·  It was crucial to set Green Belt for the required period, in line with Regional planning processes;

·  It should be recognised that children and young people need more structured facilities and places to go rather than just more open space;

·  The dimensions that make York special should be specified in order to build them in to the SCS and LDF;

·  It was important to ensure a better balance between focus on the historic centre and residential areas / villages;

·  Planning implications of the rise in online shopping and retail tourism had not been considered.

Action – Partners’ comments would be taken into account and used to inform development of the SCS and LDF.

4 SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY STRATEGY – NEXT STEPS

Delivery Partnerships were asked to report back progress in updating SCS theme sections, feedback on the proposed strategic ambitions and views on key cross-cutting issues or tensions. In support of this item, and to provide background context, a first draft evidence base had been circulated to Partners. Partnership feedback was as follows:

Healthy City Board - The SCS was discussed at the last Healthy City Board and their theme section was currently being updated to take into account achievement of many of the key actions set out in the original document. HCB felt that the strategic aims were still valid but needed to be reworded to reflect the increasing focus on personalisation, choice and self care and the potential for change in the way in which care may be provided in the future. The revised theme would reflect the direction of travel for the PCT, Foundation Trust, York Health Group and CYC as they related to the achievement of a healthy city.

Key health priorities that were identified in the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and discussion around the SCS included obesity, alcohol, smoking, stroke, long term conditions and preventing avoidable hospital admissions. Where data was strong these priorities had been fed into the LAA process. Where the data was not strong SCS priorities would recommend evidence based actions and seek to improve our local quantitative knowledge (e.g. smoking).

Regarding the strategic aims, the following issues were identified:

·  Use of the words ‘Strike a healthy balance’ in aim 4 should be changed since it wasn’t health considerations that would be used to determine balance;

·  Aim 6 could be more explicit about what benefit means – e.g. "Work in partnership to achieve the best outcomes for the people of York"

·  Under challenging choices it was implied that we had a choice whether to minimise the inequalities gap? Also we should use better language than the 'haves' and the 'have nots'.

In terms of cross cutting themes relating to health, housing and community engagement (in order to develop service provision) were important.

Safer York Partnership – SYP had reviewed their theme section using the Executive Summary of the new Community Safety Plan, which was based on a Joint Strategic Assessment undertaken Nov 2007. The main priorities within the theme would be Safer Neighbourhoods, Violent Crime, Drugs / Alcohol and Volume Crime. The revised section would be signed off by the SYP board in April.

The data set highlighted a lag in the performance information, e.g. page 20 – in 2004 18 of York’s SOAs were included in the high crime quartile, however, there had been a 36% reduction in overall crime since then.

Overall, there was a strong read across between the SCS and the new Community Safety Plan and no tensions to report.

York Environment Partnership – Discussion at the ‘What makes York special’ workshop had helped inform direction in the re-write of the sustainable city theme.

The strategic ambitions fit well with the theme, particularly the references to York’s distinctiveness, balancing physical growth and sustainability and improved partnership working.

Regarding cross-cutting issues, the emphasis on sustainability and balancing growth was obviously key, with maintaining York’s special qualities. In addition, development of the next generation of historic buildings was an opportunity in terms of the environment.

The importance of the built and natural environment were demonstrated through the LDF presentation. YEPs role in advising on a low carbon economy would protect York’s special character.

York@Large - The partnership have prioritised development of high quality spaces as York provides extraordinary opportunities, which are currently underutilised. There was a need to draw more areas into the dynamic sense of York.

In terms of the cultural data, concern was expressed regarding the assertion that York lacked cultural diversity and resident museum visits were low (page 20). This was a universal problem, as most museums were not visited by locals. However, City of Festivals had made real progress over the past four years and there was an astounding range of local cultural organisations.

Inclusive York Forum – A small sub-group had met to update the inclusion SCS theme and develop LAA indicators. The group had agreed that the majority of aims from the original document were still relevant. The group had also included a section on achievements since the last strategy was produced.

Cross-cutting themes identified were to reduce barriers for those identified as at most risk, i.e. geographic communities and communities of interest e.g. carers, homeless etc. Also to narrow the gap between the most and least deprived. Additional issues related to the availability of affordable housing, the need to respond to the city’s changing demographic profile and the needs of young people and families.

The group were unsure as to how other themes had tackled the section on success measures and requested guidance as to whether none, some top level or all LAA indicators would be included.

Comments from Partners regarding this issue included:

·  The SCS should include some overarching indicators where trends could be measured over time;

·  It was crucial to include measures that wouldn’t necessarily be reported through the LAA;

·  The SCS was a strategic document and therefore it was important not to include excessive detail.

YorOK – The partnership were making good progress and had examples of achievement from evidence collected for the JAR review. The challenge now would be to develop more bespoke and innovative solutions to issues as a means of taking achievement to the next level.

Significant challenges within this theme would be to tackle childhood obesity, reduce alcohol related harm and teenage pregnancy rates. There would also be focus on road safety, bullying, attainment levels, children as carers and narrowing inequality gaps. (CYP Plan reconfirmed priorities in Dec 2007)

In terms of cross-cutting issues, user engagement was highlighted and the difficulties of children and young people being meaningfully involved in consultation.

Lifelong Learning Partnership – Key drivers for this theme were the LEA 14-19 agenda and LSC adult learning and skills programme. Targets within the adult skill theme were based around developing higher level skills and improving basic literacy / numeracy levels. Both were challenging areas and would require new service delivery models to make a difference.

The work of LLP reflected the strategic ambitions, however, there was concern that they were perhaps not ambitious enough.

With regard to challenging choices, maintaining a thriving economy was an ambition, not a choice. In terms of skills, Partners needed to guard against a twin-track economy, where some didn’t have the skills to access success. The Future York report was being used as a driver regarding the skill requirements of business, however ongoing dialogue was currently missing.

The ‘narrowing the gap’ agenda cut across themes. It would be important to brigade effort on certain areas of the city to make a difference and include as part of the SCS.

Economic Development Partnership Board – The revised thriving city theme would be reviewed by EDPB on 11 March. The local economy had flourished over the last 10-15 years and the pace of change would continue with investment in developments on Foss Islands, Hungate, Nestle South and Terry’s. In addition, work on University expansion had commenced, Derwenthorpe and Germany Beck developments would soon start, there would be new headquarters for CYC (with knock on effect for freed up city centre buildings) and the new Coppergate owners were keen to submit a planning application for Piccadilly. This level of investment, plus the York Northwest site, highlighted change that would take place over the next 15 to 20 years.

Balancing environmental sustainability (particularly in terms of transport) and social inclusion would be a major cross-cutting challenge.

Action – it was agreed that:

1.  The secretariat would consider the issue of SCS success measures when collating the revised partnership returns;

2.  The secretariat would continue to refine the data source document.

5 LOCAL AREA AGREEMENT 2008 - UPDATE

Partners received an update on progress regarding production of the Local Area Agreement, including the revised short listed indicators. It was reported that detailed definitions relating to some of the individual indicators were still emerging from central government. The final technical guidance, which would clarify collection methods, could impact on the final list. Delivery partnership input to the process had been excellent and partners were currently considering targets for the indicators selected. It was confirmed however that, since the LAA was a three year delivery plan, the Executive Delivery Board would still need to oversee indicators that tracked longer term change.

Action – it was agreed that Partners would feed any further views on the LAA to Roger Ranson.

6 KEY MILESTONES AND FUTURE MEETINGS

Partners received a schedule that set out Partnership meeting dates through to March 2009. It was confirmed that the SCS text and LAA would be signed off at the next meeting, on 29 April. However, there would be opportunity to comment on the draft document before the meeting as part of an iterative editing process.

Action – it was agreed that the secretariat would circulate the first draft SCS for comment before the next Partnership meeting on 29 April.

7. ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Partners were informed that the North Yorkshire Improvement Partnership had agreed to fund for a third Action Learning Set for Community Cohesion, which would be delivered by OPM. Two possible themes for the set had been suggested as Consultation & Participation (with BME/Migrant Workers) or Economic Impact of BME/Migrant Workers. The LSP were asked to consider whether they would like to nominate a representative to join the set.