Agenda item

(A period not exceeding 20 minutes for questions and statements from

members of the public and Elected Members to the Mayor of Doncaster, Ros Jones. Questions/Statements should relate specifically to an item of business on the agenda and be limited to a maximum of 100 words. As stated within Executive Procedure Rule 3.3 each person will be allowed to submit one question/statement per meeting.A question may only be asked if notice has been given by delivering it in writing or by e-mail to the Governance Team no later than 5.00 p.m. of the third working day before the day of the meeting. Each question or statement must give the name and address of the person submitting it. Questions/Statements should be sent to the Governance Team, Floor 2, Civic Office, Waterdale, Doncaster, DN1 3BU, or by email to Democratic.Services@doncaster.gov.uk)

In accordance with Executive Procedure Rule 3.2, Mr Tim Brown asked Mayor Ros Jones the following question:-

‘Mayor Jones, following our convivial conversation at the People's Powerhouse Conference, can you clarify whether the proposed Community Engagement Framework / Policy is an attempt to address a gap of more than 7 years old? If this is the case and given the Twitter exchanges involving DMBC Chief Officers' and a former DMBC Chief Officer can you explain the rationale for DMBC not having a community engagement plan for so many years and what effort has been undertaken to understand how such corporate neglect impacts on BME citizens rights to collaborate, innovate and challenge DMBC/ Team Doncaster race equality performance?’

The Mayor Ros Jones, gave the following response:-

Effective Community engagement is already happening across the Borough in many forms.  Indeed many of the Borough’s achievements over the last four years would not have been possible without it.  There are a whole host of examples such as the excellent work our communities teams do day in day out, the community library service delivering over 132,000 volunteer hours in 15/16, the extensive consultation on our waste contract, the community led model that is making a success of ‘Well Denaby’.  I could go on.  In these and many other cases engagement is successful, timely and effective. But I want us to go further and be more ambitious.

The Council has a consultation policy and a communication and engagement framework in place. However it was clear to me that we can go further and needed to take a fresh look at our approach to engagement that took account of the latest evidence and best practice. That’s why I asked my Portfolio Holder for Housing and Equalities, Councillor Glyn Jones for a Community Engagement Framework to be developed and the policy direction to be set out as soon as possible in the new Mayoral term.  This allows us to build on what we are already doing well, learn from other places and crucially bring greater consistency to our approach.

The Community Engagement framework will bring this consistency by;

•           Developing a policy that sets out what community engagement means and why it is important to the Council,

•           Developing a Strategy which details how we will achieve our policy aims but more importantly consults our people in the process,

•           Refreshing the Community Engagement Toolkit so there are clear tools and guidance available to all our staff.

The first part of this framework is agreement of the Community Engagement

Policy. The policy has been created using evidence of best practice such as

the LGA guide to New Conversations (developed through analysis of a range

of sources)  and we’ve incorporated feedback from the Inclusion and Fairness

Forum.

But deciding what is important and what we want to achieve is not enough.

The next stage will be to develop the Community Engagement Strategy, with

local people, which will show how we will achieve the policy statements that

we want to agree today.

The fact that the Engagement Framework is being agreed at today’s Cabinet

meeting has not stopped the Council and its partners from engaging with

communities and taking effective, timely action.  The examples already cited

plus the development of a BME needs assessment and subsequent action

plan (signed off by the Health and Well-Being board in June 2017), the

tremendous success of the Tour de Yorkshire, and the work of the

independently chaired Fairness and Inclusion Forum are further examples of

this commitment to effective engagement. 

Thank you for your question.

At the discretion of the Chair, Mr Tim Brown asked a supplementary question

but the Mayor reiterated that his supplementary question had been answered.