Pushing on with our Neighbourhood Agreement process

Progress at last on our Neighbourhood Agreement for City and North neighbourhood, Liverpool City Council.

In essence, funding for providing local services will now move from a city wide approach, to a localised system of funding based on local priorities. The city agrees on a Local Area Agreement which is then reflected through 5 neighbourhood agreements.

The City and North joint neighbourhood committee contains 14 Labour and 4 Liberal Democrat Councillors. Steve Munby is the Chair and I am the Deputy Chair. The neighbourhood includes the city centre, the Dingle, the waterfront, Kirkdale, Everton, Kensington, Fairfield and Picton

Steve is chairing the Children and Young People Partnership Working Group (PWG), Jane Corbett is chairing the Health and Older People PWG, our Neighbourhood Manager, Karen Lewis is chairing the Strong and Safe Communities PWG.

I am chairing the new Physical Regeneration PWG.

I was chairing Economic Development and Enterprise, with Physical Regeneration but we agreed at our last joint wards that this was far too big of an agenda for any group of people so we have split it in half. Nick Small is going to chair ED&E. This makes sense as he is also our Shadow Exex Member for the same brief, city wide.

Last week we spent the whole day in the wonderful Blackburne House on Hope Street, deliberating over local priorities for these two "blocks" of the Neighbourhood agreement. We were joined by all the relevant council staff, partners and agencies as well as other local councillors. We have come up with some very strong aims and priorities which will dictate our spending over the next three years.

Once the NA is published I will link to it on here.

Our final task will be to identify which Key Performance Indicators we wish to prioritise in order that the relevant funding can make its way to us.

It is very powerful stuff, to engage on such important future spending with the ability to address local need and local issues. I am enthusiastic about this process, even if it has taken us about six months to get to this point.