Edinburgh Council Alternative Business Model briefing

For months, officials at the council have been busily working on an "Alternative Business Models programme" that could see a large range of council services outsourced to private companies, rather than delivered directly by council employees. 

Council services that seem very likely to be outsourced, judging by the tone of the briefing below, include many of the services that relate to the every day management of the urban environment and local public spaces. Amongst the first tranche of services likely to be delivered by private companies are parks maintenance, street cleansing and waste collection services.

Campaigns to oppose this process have sprung up in many parts of the city and Leith is no exception. Around 80 people attended a recent Greater Leith Against the Cuts meeting at Leith Academy. The only online report that appears to be available from that meeting seems to be in the comments to this blog post on the Edinburgh Anarchists Federation website.

However, to date, there seems to be very little detailed information from official sources on things like proposed future service standards anywhere in the public domain.

In the meantime, the briefing below has recently been circulated through the Neighbourhood Partnership. It seems to suggest that more details will be available on the 27th of October when councillors are due to consider another  report on how the Alternative Business Models process will work.

It would appear from the timelines indicated in this council report that councillors will consider whether to give the final go ahead to these proposals at the October meeting.

ABM Neighbourhood Briefing 

If you have questions or concerns about this process, the briefing suggests that you contact your Partnership Information Manager. 

Amusingly, the document neglects to tell you how to find out who the partnership information manager is for your area. So, should you wish to ask questions about this, the Partnership information manager for Leith is Claire Ironside. 

Her email address is clare.ironside@edinburgh.gov.uk and her phone number is 0131 529 7763

The Greater Leith Against the Cuts campaign recommends that you direct your questions to local councillors. 

If you do send in any queries related to this, feel free to share your questions, and your thoughts on any answers you receive to Greener Leith. 

Do you support council moves to outsource services to private firms, or are you opposed to the plans? Do you think there has been enough public discussion about these plans? Let us know in the comments below. 

Public Question Time: Appearance Matters

The next Leith Neighbourhood Partnership Meeting will take place at 10.30am on Saturday the 24th at the MacDonald Road Library.

The focus of the meeting will be on "reducing the amount of mess on our streets." Greener Leith volunteers will be in attendance at the meeting, and we'll be taking the opportunity to feed the results of the online poll we undertook on the subject into the discussion.

Nearly 200 votes were cast in our online poll (and it's not too late to vote), so we're glad that there will be an opportunity to share the results with the powers that be.

You can see the whole agenda here:

Agenda for Leith NP 24 Sept 2011 

Poll: What should be done to cut litter on the streets of Leith?

The Leith Neighbourhood Partnership staff are in the process of producing the next Neighbourhood Plan which will guide their work for the next three years. 

One of the top priorities that's been identified by local people is the problem of litter in the streets. 

There was going to be a focus group for local residents and council staff about this issue next week, but everyone is on holiday so it has been postponed. 

In the meantime, to help out we put this poll together, to try to gather your ideas. We'll share the results with the council and the people at the focus group whenever it actually happens. 

So, it's worth voting, as your suggestions could affect what the local council officers do for the next three years.

You can vote for as many options as you want to - and you can add your own ideas in too. 

If you're using a mobile and can't see the poll in your browser, you might be able to vote here.

How would you improve Leith?

The Leith Neighbourhood Partnership are currently seeking your views on what their priorities for action should be for the three year period, 2011-2014. When the results are in, they will be discussed at a public meeting on the 24 March 2011 at 4.00 pm

There's a quick online survey that you can fill in if you would like to take part as an individual. Click here to fill it in: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/H83SJ7G

Alternatively, if you are a member of a community group and you would like to take part in the consultation as a group then Loraine Duckworth can send you paper consultation packs too. To get hold of one, you can email her by clicking here.

You can find more information about the current Leith community plan on the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership website here.

Leith Decides: The Decision!

The voting event for Leith Decides took place on Saturday in Leith Academy. There were 29 projects, worth £25,237 in the running for funding, from a pot worth £16,600. And even though a couple of projects withdrew at the last minute - clearly not every application was going to be successful. Anyone who has been to a 'typical neighbourhood partnership meeting' will know that some are more successful than others when it comes to getting people through the door. Indeed, they sometimes come in for criticism for not generating enough input or support from "ordinary" local residents.

This event showed that, with a little creative energy, and a commitment to giving people real decision making power - local residents will show up in large numbers and take part. In this case - at least 350 people turned out to vote, despite the freezing temperatures and the snow and ice. Below, we've got a short video clip of Cllr Maggie Chapman, who was a vocal supporter of the project from the start, announcing the results: 

Hermitage Park School Association managed to come top of the voting for two projects. We managed to grab a very short interview with Kirsty Barr, the chair of the association on how she felt about the process:

The full list of the successful projects is as follows (in order of votes):

1. Hermitage Park School Association - Eco-Garden and active play space for infants.

2. Hermitage Park School Association - Smartboard for nursery children.

3. ARTS Afternoon for Pulse of the Place - Travelling kit of drums for youth group.

4. Citadel Youth Centre - A youth volunteering project helping young people into employment.

5. Friends of Leith Primary School - Climbing Wall in play area.

6. FABB Scotland - Music technology workshop for young disabled people.

7. Saheliya - Counselling and support activities for young girls who have witnessed or experienced atrocities.

8. Dr Bells Family Centre - Create a new outdoor play area.

9. Bethany Christian Trust - New cooker for men in residential centre, to help them learn cooking skills and move on to independent living.

10. Pilmeny Development Project Youth Clubs - A laptop and printer to support young people at youth club.

11. Friends of Montgomery Street Park - Planting a small community orchard in Montgomery Street Park

12. Access to Industry - 2 day accredited media training for vulnerable people.

13. Families Together in Leith - A family focussed weekend event.

14. Leith Festival Association - Celebrations for the "switch on" of the Christmas Lights at the Foot O' the Walk.

15. Stanwell Nursery School Parents Committee - Developing courtyard into attractive area with trees, shrubs and flowers to attract wildlife.

16. 154th Leith Scout Group - New Modern Lightweight Tents.

17. Leith Acorn Centre YMCA - 2 night residential weekend for young people who attend the youth clubs.

18. Access to Industry - Food Hygeine training and work experience for 12 people.

19. Leith Central Community Council - An exhibition and consultation to develop ideas on the improvement of Leith Walk and the surrounding streets.

20. Victoria Primary Parent Teachers Association - A bulb planting project in the school garden, and planters in the playground (part funded).

Greener Leith would like to congratulate all the successful applicants. You can find out more about the individual projects on the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership website.

Given that the project was a pilot (and we're sure that most folk would agree that there are lots of ways that it could have been improved), overall we think it was a huge success, and shows that Neighbourhood Partnerships can play a role in promoting local participation and democracy. At the very least it should give those who are proposing that they be scrapped to save money, food for thought.

We'd like to see more council budgets allocated this way - and more resources put into supporting the staff who deliver events such as these. This event relied on the goodwill of a small number of council officers, local councillors, and local volunteers to work - and so unsurprisingly it was a bit chaotic, and perhaps under resourced in places.

We understand that it was hard to make the case for spending more than a few thousand pounds on organising the event, as the total grant money awarded was £16,600. It's easy to see that allocating much larger sums of money would more than justify the organisational expense - and encourage even more people to participate in the process. It will therefore be interesting to see if other Neighbourhood Partnership follow Leiths lead in the future.

Cash for environmental improvements approved

Last week, the Housing and Built Environment Sub-group meeting of the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership agreed thousands of pounds to take forwards local environmental improvement projects, including:

• £10,000 to support detailed 'traffic modelling' work on various options for cutting traffic on The Shore.
• £25,000 to improve the path along the edge of Leith Links from Links Gardens to St Mary's Primary School (see photo above).
• £35,000 to remove concrete planters in Newhaven and install better recycling facilities, as part of a first phase of environmental improvements in the area.

Greener Leith plans to offer some additional funding via our We Love Leith project for the Shore options appraisal process, in order to support an in depth local community consultation process.

We're particularly keen to ensure that a good solution is found for this street that will help to cut traffic, as proposals to 'pedestrianise the Shore' came top in our We Love Leith consultation. Whilst full pedestrianisation is probably impractical, some of the options the study is likely to look into include pedestrianisation at weekends, permanently closing the entrance at sandport place, and banning through traffic apart from buses and cyclists. When we have more details we'll be sure to post it here.

Leith Decides on the 27th of November

A unique experiment in local democracy is set to take place in Leith later this year, with the launch of the "Leith Decides," initiative that will see local residents vote directly on how more than £16,000 will be spent. So, you should mark the 27th of November in your diary now - as voting day will be really exciting.

The so-called 'participatory budgeting' initiative will be the first undertaken in the city, and is amongst the first few ever undertaken in Scotland. Although Leith is leading the way in Scotland, the idea is big in other parts of the UK - with around £23million allocated this way, mainly at a local level in England.

So, how does it work? The Leith Neighbourhood Partnership have allocated just over £16000 from their community grant fund to the project. Normally, the decisions about applications from community groups that apply to the fund are taken by the members of the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership.

Leith Decides turns that process on it's head, by giving all the residents of Leith the opportunity to vote on project proposals after seeing a series of 3 minute pitches given directly by the applicants.  The video below, although it's a bit old, is from the participatory budgeting unit and it gives you a flavour of what you can expect.

Given our support for any initiative that helps to open up decision making, Greener Leith is right behind this initiative. We hope that everyone will attend the voting event that will be held on the 27th of November at Leith Academy at 1pm. Please do put that date in your diaries now!

Before the event though, community groups, residents groups, schools, sports clubs, and communtiy councils have the chance to submit an application for funding. The application form has been simplified and shortened in a bid to encourage a broad range of groups to apply, and so if you're a member of local group why not give it a go? 

Your proposal must be for no more than £1000, it must benefit people in the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership area, and you must be able to complete it by April 2011. There's more information on what can be funded and the application documents below:

Application Form

Guidance for Applicants

If you have an idea, but are not a member of a local organisation, don't worry, you can still get help to put in application from local community education staff. Contact Jackie Mearns or Martin Black, Community Learning and Development, Leith Community Education Centre, 12 Newkirkgate, Edinburgh, EH6 6AD.  Telephone 0131 554 4750 or e-mail Jackie.mearns@edinburgh.gov.uk or Martin.Black@ea.edin.sch.uk.

What would you spend £1000 to improve Leith?

Over the coming months we hope to be able to provide more information on this blog on some of the proposals as they come in.

What would get you involved in the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership?

There is a draft community engagement strategy being circulated by the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership (LNP). Somewhat ironically it's not on their website, so if you want to read it, you can download it here. To cut a long story short they're looking for ways to engage with more people. Here's our suggestions:

Improve the website

Have a look at the LNP website. It's a bit static isn't it? One simple improvement that would help people to engage is to set up a LNP news blog, with a news RSS feed. This news feed could then be used to automatically update Twitter, Facebook pages and an opt-in email list. That opt-in email list is especially important - if you let people automatically opt-in and opt-out of email updates then you cut down on the admin required by council staff, and people don't have to keep coming back to the website to check for updates. They get them straight to their email inbox.

The LNP news blog could also be set-up to allow all the partners to post information to it, to allow other people to comment, and so on. But first a local news feed please!

We can already hear howls of protest from some quarters that focussing on the internet as an engagement tool excludes people who don't have internet access. That's true. We're not saying only use the internet. However, given that engagement in this way is so cheap compared to other methods, and given the low engagement with the LNP from all walks of life - this has got to be a good, cheap and quick place to start.

There will also be people who think government business is a formal process and shouldn't reduce itself to playing the social networking game. If Twitter is good enough for Glasgow City Council, to choose just one government agency using twitter, then it should be good enough for the Leith NP. In cyberspace, just as in the world of bricks and mortar, you have to go to where the people are. There are 1,748 members of the 'I Love Leith' Facebook Group.

Promote and Publicise Public Questions

Have a look at that LNP website again. There's nothing that says 'Ask a question' in big letters is there? It is great that there are named contact people to call with queries. However, more needs to be done to encourage people to ask public questions of the LNP.

Why? Simply because this is one of the most simple and effective ways for people to engage with the partnership. Not only can you ask a question of the LNP, but the LNP must give you a formal response. In that way, the public question mechanism is a great way to hold our local elected representatives and public service managers to account. Not only that - you can do it at any time, not just when there is a meeting on.

It could be made easier by providing and promoting a simple web form for submitting questions. Freepost postcards could be distributed throughout the community centres, libraries and schools.

It would be great to see the LNP take inspiration from the website www.whatdotheyknow.com That site makes the process of making a Freedom of Information Request, and the response, public. It allows others to search and comment on the results. And yes they do have an RSS feed for Freedom of Information Requests made to the City of Edinburgh Council that you can subscribe to by email!

An LNP public questions version of this would allow people to ask a question, and opt to have it made public. The LNP would then publish the question, and the formal response. The very act of this would encourage more people to ask questions, inspire others to ask more questions and stimulate debate in the papers and local blogs. Not only does this gain more publicity for the LNP, but it would also show that the LNP is responsive to the concerns of the people who engage with it. It may also cut down on duplicate questions, as people would be able to see what questions had already been asked.

Cut Consultation Fatigue

It is a common complaint (at least amongst activists) that there are too many consultations, and then afterwards, no-one ever sees anything happen as a result. The LNP therefore has a role to play in coordinating and sharing knowledge. It could also do more to show how projects develop - that action does result from community involvement processes, even if it takes a long time. If possible don't just publish the results of the consultation, it's also necessary to keep an up to date, "what happens next?" page if the consultation is part of a wider project.

This can all be done via the website too - but we feel that all the agencies carrying out consultations have a role to play in making their results available in an easy to share format to the LNP staff. And before you ask - the Leith Links Ask results are on the LNP website!

What are meetings for?

Turn out at LNP meetings is declining to the point where there are more people on the top table than there are in the audience. This poses a tricky problem for the LNP. It is a formal council committee that has formal business, so a committee format of somekind is needed. But on the other hand, the 'large top table' format can be intimidating to people.

There are a few ways around this. One way would be to have a meeting of two halves. The first half would attend to the formal business of the LNP. The second half could be more interactive - taking workshop formats or more paricipatory appoaches to involve people in walking about and informal discussion. We'd like to see less 'death by powerpoint' and more 'post it note action,' that's going to get people out of their chairs and talking.

Greener Leith would also like to see less inward looking meetings. Too often the presentations at the meeting are provided by one agency that already has a place at the top table that seems to be addressed mainly to the other people at the top table. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised - afterall many of the councillors on the top table are on the police board, the fire board, planning committees, the NHS boards and so on. So they're reporting to their bosses! But does this need to be done in public?

Wouldn't it be great to look outside Leith sometimes to get a presentation from someone who's doing something innovative or exciting or different somewhere else - and to ask the question, "what are the lessons for Leith?" That's not to say that nothing innovative or exciting or different ever happens in Leith of course!

Invest in the activists

There's a lot of talented and committed people who give their time and energy to the LNP - often for free. In order to make the process work there needs to be a commitment from the LNP to invest in the people involved - and this includes the staff!

Just yesterday, at the Housing and Built Environment Sub-group a key member of staff began by saying, "and I've got two projects here that I'd like you all to approve..." This attitude shows that for some people engaging with the community is a 'rubber stamping exercise'. It's vital that the right level of information is provided in a simple format that will allow 'lay' people to make informed decisions. If the LNP is to work better, there needs to be training and a genuine commitment from CEC staff for involving non-technical people in decision making - and this is not always something that comes easily to staff who don't have a community development background. It's a skill that needs to be learned - the LNP should invest in their staff to make sure they've got those skills.

Too often, in the Housing and Built Environment Sub-group at least, the group is expected to make decisions based on partial or incomplete information. Fortunately, the group members are growing in confidence and are less willing to play a 'rubber stamping' role for council officers. This should lead to better quality projects in the long run.

Most of the community representatives involved in the LNP are not town planners, civil engineers, social workers, or community engagement experts. They also deserve training and support so that they are confident of playing their role in the LNP process. Afterall they're not being paid to do it - they're doing it because they want to improve Leith - and that's something that should be celebrated and supported.

If more resources were put into supporting the activists then perhaps there'd be more of them?

What do you think?

There are just our ideas. You might have many others. If you do, you can email them to the Neighbourhood Manager Peter Strong. You could also leave them in the comments to this post.