Politics
 

Community involvement UK

From Sustainable Community Action

Community involvement global and by place

Portal - news - forum - A-Z


"Building trust with active citizens is not a froth on the top of your cappuccino moment, its about the whole cup of coffee."


Community involvement is used here as a term similar to Participatory democracyW, and more recent terms such as Open source governanceW.

Community involvement is about people and communities being able to play a full part in decision-making, for example local decision-making, and so influence the decisions which affect their lives. It is also about community empowerment, for example through access to appropriate information and adivce.

Proper community involvement is not tokenistic. Instead it is on-going, valued, meaningful, provides extensive opportunity and is genuinely and extensively influential.

Proper community involvement is not about allowing mere comment on decisions that have already largely been taken. Instead it begins at the design stage, the very beginning of any project or programme.

Proper community involvement does not include measures of success being foisted upon the community, or worse still simply being ignored. Instead it gives a primary role to the community in judging how successful a project or programme has been.

South Bank, nr. St. Pauls, London
Photo credit: Philralph

Contents

[edit] Action Ideas

[edit] Collaborate

[edit] Petitions

  • We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Encourage the Royal Mail to offer a free postcode database to non-profit and community websites. Submitted by Stuart Harrison – Deadline to sign up by: 06 January 2010 Sign the petition
  • created by Feargal Hogan and reads: 'We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ensure that ALL government websites make their information available free of charge to all users in ways that others can easily use.' Sign the petition, deadline to sign up by: 04 May 2008

[edit] New Ideas

[edit] New technology focus

[edit] Campaigns UK

  • Mash the State Grassroots campaign to encourage UK government and public sector organisations to make their data available to the general public. Challenge 1: Councils: Give us an RSS news feed by Christmas 2009. Only 15% of UK local councils have RSS feeds.

[edit] Consultations

  • National inquiry to explore the opportunities and challenges for rural councillors and what stands in the way of them doing more to help rural people have greater influence over local decisions. Launched 6 February 2007. The deadline for sending in views is Friday 18 May 2007. Commission for Rural Communities / Rural issues

[edit] Village cinema

Paul Miller - UK vs. US Politics. Added: July 24, 2008. About 4 min.


[edit] Random facts

  • In April-June 2009, 35 per cent of people felt they could influence decisions in their local area; this is lower than in 2001 (44 per cent), 2007-08 (38 per cent) and 2008-09 (39 per cent).
  • Eighteen per cent of people felt they could influence decisions affecting Britain; this is lower than in 2001 (25 per cent), 2007-08 (20 per cent) and 2008-09 (22 per cent). Source: Citizenship Survey: April - June 2009, England, Communities and Local Government, 29 October 2009
  • Only 39 per cent of people feel they can influence decisions affecting their local area. 22 per cent feel they could influence decisions affecting Great Britain, January 29 [3] Both measures remain unchanged since 2007/08 but both have fallen since 2001. These findings come from the Citizenship Survey: April - September 2008 (covering the first two quarters of data from the 2008-09 survey).
  • Just 38 per cent of respondents to the Citizenship Survey (April 2007 - March 2008) felt able to influence decisions in their local area whilst only 39 per cent of people were involved in some kind of civic participation such as attending a public meeting, signing a local petition or contacting a local councillor. The findings tally closely with data from this year's local elections which showed average voter turnout at around 40 per cent or less. Source: Communities and Local Government June 26
  • six in ten people do not feel they are given an adequate say on how local council services are run;
  • more than 9 in 10 people believe accountability of councils could be improved;
  • nearly four in 10 people do not feel councillors are representative of their communities and six in 10 do not believe they adequately reflect their views.

Source: Communities and Local Government, March 5 2008


[edit] Related Topics

[edit] Related Wikipedia content

[edit] External links


Ideas Bank - Climate change - Environmental wellbeing - Social wellbeing - Economic wellbeing - Transport and Planning - Local sustainability - Community involvement - Global connections - Personal options - Ideas Bank by place - Village pump

SCA Wiki - Places, projects & networks - Ideas Bank - News - Diary - Resources - Community Portal / Avoid ads

References

  1. ↑ Communities and Local Government, March 19
  2. ↑ Communities and Local Government, October 19
  3. ↑ Communities and Local Government, January 29
Retrieved from "http://sca21.wikia.com/wiki/Community_involvement_UK"
Rate this article: