Derry City and Strabane District Council
Report of Community Information Event held in Brooke Park Leisure Centre on Thursday 29th January2015 at 1pm.

Section 1: Record of attendance:

1.147in attendance:

  • 31 Members of the Public
  • 3 Councillors and
  • 13staff

1.2Recorded attendance:

  • John Mahon (Western Trust)
  • Martin Monaghan
  • Karen McLaughlin
  • Brenda (Holywell Trust)
  • Denise Grant (Time to choose)
  • John Donnelly (Time 2 Choose)
  • Rosaire McLaughlin (Rosemount Resource Centre)
  • Lisa Marie McDaid (Rosemount Resource Centre)
  • Colin Devine (N/W Community Network)
  • Carol Wright (N/W Community Network)
  • PJ O’Neill (Rosemount Resource Centre)
  • Catrina Kyle (C.A.B.)
  • Michael Kivlehan (Rosemount Resource Centre)
  • Eileen Kivlehan (Rosemount Resource Centre)
  • Jacqueline Gallagher (C.A.B)
  • Aileen Lynch (Resident)
  • Dalton Kehoe (Rosemount Resource Centre)
  • Hugh Brady (Rosemount Resource Centre)
  • Jacqueline Doherty (Treehouse Community Creche RRC)
  • Christine Doherty
  • Wendy Gibbons (Outer West NRP)
  • L.Doherty (Outer West NRP)
  • Cathal Crumley (Outer West NRP)
  • John Mahon (WHSCT)
  • John Donnelly (Time2Choose)
  • Denise Grant (Time2Choose)
  • Thomas McCourt (Rosemount Resource Centre)
  • Gavan Harkin (Rosemount FC)
  • Carmel Doherty
  • Cathy Kinsella (Outer West NRP)
  • Séan Carlin
  • Eric McGinley (Sinn Féin)
  • Gary Donnelly (Councillor)
  • Darren O’Reilly (Councillor, Rosemount Resource Centre)
  • John Kelpie (Derry City and Strabane District Council)
  • Colm Bradley (Community Places)
  • Claudine Doherty (Community Places)
  • Louise O’Kane (Community Places)
  • Michael Gallagher (ILEX)
  • Rachelle Craig (Derry City and Strabane District Council)
  • Christopher Gray (Derry City and Strabane District Council)
  • Patrick O’Doherty (Strabane District Council)
  • Gerard McFadden (Strabane District Council)
  • Sue Divin (Derry City Council)
  • Teresa Bradley (Derry City Council)
  • Oonagh McGillion (Derry City Council)
  • Colin Kennedy (Derry City Council)

Section 2:Record of comments and questions from those in attendance following presentations and during discussions:

2.1Yellow form table discussions:

‘Focusing on what you have heard about Community Planning: What are you looking forward to about it?’

  • ‘Looking forward to how local community lead organisations can be involved in the community planning process such as Foyle Drug and Alcohol Forum.’
  • ‘Better quality of decision making – open and transparent’
  • ‘Level of transparency? Looking forward to more unified co-operative work.’
  • ‘We are looking forward to our views being taken seriously when planning strategy.’

‘Please agree 2 questions from your table for feedback’

  • ‘How can community planning ensure there are social clauses built in to economic contracts and tenders to make them more beneficial for local business and residents’
  • ‘How will it (Council meetings) be televised? Will ratepayers have the ability to pose questions in “real time”?’
  • ‘Why is the community representation not legislated for in the same manner as statutory?’

Comments :

Colin Devine (NWCN) stated they were looking forward to better service provision. His question related to the need for strengthening the statutory obligation required of a range of diverse statutory agencies. How can council ensure that it brings the statutory agencies with it (preferably through willing co-operation and not requiring enforcement)?

John Kelpie: Even if there isn’t a statutory tie/obligation, the legislation says their plans ‘must have regard’ to local community plans. It’s an evolving process eg. Scotland has leant a lot over the years. There is always a tension between what central and local government believe are local priorities – it’s a balance, but it’s moving in the right direction. If legislation is a catalyst then great, but there is already a dawning realisation in local and central government of the need to work with Community Planning.

Female participant – Commented on looking forward to transparency and unified approaches to work. Asked how the community meetings will be televised? Who’s responsible? As ratepayers do you have the ability to pose questions in real time?

John Kelpie – Whatever we can do on transparency and communication we will do. The communication plan is not yet drawn up. We are doing all the traditional forms of communication as well as website, facebook, twitter. There is a statutory obligation now to audio record meetings. The new council is taking this a step further. The meetings will be streamed live on a website as they happen. When the Guildhall was refurbished this capacity was built into the specification. The intent is to have this functioning from April 2015. The software is built in such a way that you can zone in – a search engine included along with tabs and archives so that you can get to the information needed as easily as possible. 90-95% of work will be in open business – whatever is not commercially sensitive will be in open business. You can’t communicate directly with councillors during meetings but the public gallery is open to the public during meetings.

Male participant – We welcome the consultation. ‘Community’ is the key word. Question relating to whether there will be council staff representation in the Neighbourhood Renewal areas task forces, in particular on the Outer West task force?

John Kelpie – I don’t know the specifics of that example but it remains to be decided exactly how the local area plans will operate. How local is a ‘local’ area? What is the governance around it? There will be broad representation from statutory, local government and community and voluntary sector into the council plan and statutory partners will have to collaborate to achieve outcomes. It’s important that local groups shape local services. For example at the Community Planning meeting in Claudy the issue of the closure of the former public toilets was raised. The local community has to decide if that is a priority – council has to listen to residents and then prioritise within available budgets etc. Council has to take an overview but in Community Planning it is the local residents who have to help prioritise the issues.

Dalton Kehoe (Rosemount Resource Centre) indicated that it was important that community officers were out on the ground regularly engaging with local communities. Specificallywill the council have a community officer represented on the Outer West Strategy Board?

John Kelpie reaffirmed that it is important. Officers should have the attitude of ‘How can we serve? What can we bring?’

Teresa Bradley (Area Community Services Officer) responded to indicate that officers currently sit on the physical renewal taskforce committee and other sub-committees within the Outer west. The new Strategy Manger has since requested (a couple of weeks ago) that a Derry City Council officer sit on the strategy board. DCC has responded and an officer will be attending these meetings.

Male participant: We’re looking forward to seeing how community led organisations can be involved in the community planning process for example the Foyle Drug and Alcohol Forum.

John Kelpie indicated looking forward to council officers linking in more with health issues locally.

Male participant: How can community planning ensure social clauses are built into economic contracts to ensure local business and communities benefit?

John Kelpie indicated that central government now have legislation in place to put social clauses in. This has just recently changed for local government too. The new council is working to put this into most contracts. Derry City Council already does it voluntarily for example like with the Guildhall contract, to encourage/suggest to contractors that they should do this. The new council will be taking this forward.

Oonagh McGillion indicated that Derry City Council was the first council to do this and gave the example of the Peace Bridge construction. They have tried to lobby at Northern Ireland level and this as paid off in government departments now. The challenge now is to maximise this and up-skill local potential contractors, supplier and sub-suppliers.

Follow up question asked ‘At what price/value of contract does this kick in?’

Oonagh McGillion responded £1 million. There is some flexibility in apprenticeships and employees and she would be happy to send on further information if anyone was interested.

Colin Kennedy indicated it is 1 person per million pound contract and that that is in line with good practice.

Participant: We are looking forward to community views being taken seriously by planners and people with power. However, as a question, how can this be guaranteed? There are named statutory partners but communities are like ‘and also...’ – How is ‘community’ defined? Why is structured community involvement not legislated for? Is it tokenistic? Communities seem to have no specific power?

Louise O’Kane: There is very clear statutory guidance on this but local councils do decide on how to take this forward. It is up to local councils to decide who is on local community planning partnerships.

John Kelpie: The legislation requires statutory partners to listen and engage. Council has an obligation to make sure the statutory agencies do that. The local authority decides how communities get involved. This question leads well into the next presentation as we’ve spent the last couple of months exploring this. We’re looking at local thematic groups. Council will open the groups to everyone – like health, transport, physical infrastructure- and provide the groups with data and a secretariat. Those groups then come up with the priorities. Local groups will then decide on the ground.

Hugh Brady: A question relating to confidential business. What structures are in place to prevent abuse of tenders?

John Kelpie: There are Auditors, procurement officers...

Hugh Brady: Not contractual work, I mean in the planning process.

John Kelpie: Elected members have to go through training protocols, code of conducts etc and they must sign up to these. It (Planning) has been a massive challenge. We’ve had assistance from Scotland, Wales, Dublin to understand what can go wrong. It has been a massively steep learning curve, but the outcome will potentially be better. We will make sure the policies are tight. We will demonstrate transparency and have clearly evidenced decisions – and decisions can be challenged – there will be a very open environment.

Hugh Brady: In relation to recording of meetings, will closed business be recorded and available afterwards?

John Kelpie: Open business only – there would be commercially sensitive things like costs which can’t be open. However the decision made by council will be open – just not the process to get there.

After Michael Gallagher’s presentation there was further opportunity for questions:

Participant: Historically Derry and Strabane have been starved of transport. We know results (of the surveys/consultations) will be deprivation, jobs, transport, health, education etc. but how will you make sure Stormont takes notice?

Michael Gallagher: You’re correct be we still have to evidence the need first. What’s a bit different is that the citizens survey is qualitative – getting at the ‘why’ – the reasons behind the statistics. This survey adds the ‘colour’ and ‘flavour’ to the official data. The Difference is that local people will be setting the priorities.

John Kelpie: It wouldn’t take long to write the priorities – we don’t need more statistics. But this research is in the background to strengthen the case – to ‘bend our spend’ – and those statutory agencies need the evidence to do this. Bringing the analytical information up to date is in the background – its not the whole of community planning.

Sean Carlin: In relation to rural areas – one of the critiques of Citiscope / the One Plan – was that the document was urban centric. Rural people switched off. Now with Strabane and the rural population increased in the council area we want to see terminologies in the survey which are inclusive of rural areas. For example last Thursday in Donemana there was a perception that rural areas don’t get as much.

Michael Gallagher: Contact me – I can ensure you get input into the survey. In 2009 DARD rural proofed the survey. There is a balance – we need a robust survey.

Sean Carlin: Is there a benchmark for rural proofing?

Michael Gallagher: DARD provided guidelines and 2 members of their staff came down to assist. If enumerators are from rural areas they will also help the approach in rural areas.

John Kelpie: The new council area is very rural focused.

Female participant: On behalf of youth in our community, when we say ‘jobs’ its not part-time or minimum wage jobs we want. This town is known for that. My grandson completed university and has been working part-time for 8 years since that. Please be mindful of that when talking about jobs.

John Kelpie: That’s a well made point – pay scales and quality of jobs are important.

Hugh Brady: Have central government indicated there will be extra finance to carry out outcomes?

John Kelpie: No big magic pot of money will exist. Community Planning is about better use of existing resources. There is a £7.5 million rural pot of funding from 2015 – 2020

Hugh Brady: And £70 million for capital projects?

John Kelpie: Council will look at every opportunity - EU, sponsorship, etc we have an existing funding unit and that will direct time and energy to the priorities in the new Community Plan.

Section 3: Evaluation Form Feedback

3.1Ten Evaluation Forms were received.

3.2Please detail how satisfied you are with the event

  • Excellent (2 marks)
  • Very good(7 marks)
  • Satisfied(1 mark)
  • Poor
  • Very Poor

3.3What did you like most about the event?

  • Very Good
  • The clear delivery and well presented.
  • Open and felt like an honest communication
  • Knowledgeable answers from DCC employee
  • The community engagement
  • Clarity of Presentation, clarity of explanation, community involvement
  • Transparency and openness – delighted to meet Mr Kelpie
  • The community engagement
  • Helpful, Informative.
  • Chief Executive Presentation – clear information in other presentations
  • Openness and transparency in discussion and responses to questions from the floor.
  • Strabane and clarity of content
  • Community and Voluntary sector need to be given equal rights to that of the statutory agencies

3.4What could have been improved?

  • Venue was big and cold
  • Yes, heat?
  • Absolutely ridiculous as regards the heating!!!
  • Could have one per year update (A warm room)
  • Heating – Freezing!
  • The heating!!!
  • Venue not the most comfortable – poor heating
  • Heating!

3.5Any other comments?

  • ‘Involvement commitment is clear – who will be involved in ultimately setting the impacts we wish to achieve? – What impact measurement approaches are being considered? Will new council – in terms of the NW standing out/making its needs known – seek to have Plan or version thereof in the next Programme for Government?’
  • ‘Given the Governments push to get Neighbourhood Renewal Boards established and running fairly successfully, they should be included on the ‘Statutory agencies’ list and given equal status to input on all decisions which impact on, or effect our community. I believe this process will ensure that all outcomes will improve and that Derry city and Strabane Council will give leadership to the rest of the councils and will give ownership of the process to the community thus ensuring active and ongoing participation.’
  • ‘Can you guarantee more local community representation on the community planning process i.e. Fairness and transparency? Will party politics control which local community reps will participate in this community planning process?’
  • ‘I feel local community groups, NRA, should be part of the planning process.’
  • ‘How’s information feedback to agencies, results from 1,400 questionnaires’

The meeting concluded at approximately 3.30pm

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