Community Strategy
The Gloucester Partnership was established in October 2001, bringing together public,voluntary/community and private sector organisations that operate locally in an attempt to efffectively meet community needs and aspirations.
Under the Local Governement Act 2000, a duty was placed on Local Authorities to "prepare community strategies" that would ensure that the various bodies who provide services to the public were better co-ordinated: responsive to the concerns of local communities: were delivered in ways that suited the people who depend on them: and took account of the needs of future generations".
The Act made it clear that "Where deprivation and social exclusion were significant factors for any community, the community strategy would need to address how these factors would be tackled, and how the quality of life of those living in deprived communities would be improved.
The Draft community strategy was produced using a wide range of strategies already in existence, a thorough investigation of any relevant consultation carried out in recent times, and was the subject of a comprehensive consultation exercise resulting in hundreds of comments.
All comments resulting from the consultation were taken into consideration and the document was improved and changed as a result. The community strategy was named Our Gloucester - Our Future and was then adopted by Gloucester Partnership as a basis for their work programme.
Our Gloucester, Our Future (2003 - 2013)
The strategy brings all service providers together with a shared vision to deliver what the community wants through agreed actions. The community strategy provides the main framework for all other strategies, and the direction for all partnership working.
For your convenience we have split the Community Strategy into the following sections:
The Community Strategy has to meet four objectives. It must:
- Allow local communities to articultate their aspirations, needs and priorities
- Co-ordinate the actions of the public, private, voluntary and community organisations that operate locally
- Focus and shape existing and future activity of those organisations so that they effectively meet community needs and aspirations
- Contribute to the achievement of sustainable development both locally and more widely with local goals and priorities relating, where appropriate, to regional, national and even global aims.