For three years the The Zebra Collective has been working with local authorities across the South West, as part of Empowering Communities, to provide skills training for local authority officers, enabling them to work more productively with their local communities.  This report covers the last year of the programme.  

For further information about the empowerment skills training offered by The Zebra Collective, contact:

info@zebra.coop
www.zebra.coop
01752 395131

This study by the Universities of the West of England and Gloucestershire examines the problems and potentials of community-led planning, explores principles and policy proposals for developing good practice, drawing extensively on the views of local authorities in the South West and on the available literature.

It makes recommendations on how communities might most effectively be empowered by community-led plans, and how action at community level can be used to influence strategic thinking.

Taking Stock

Since the project started in 2007, Empowering Communities has commissioned research on a wide range of topics, both to inform its own activities and to explore empowerment in the South West more widely.  We are now considering what more general lessons can be drawn from our work, and have produced a summary of our research to date.

Research work and evaluations are still in progress, so this is a preliminary stock-take, made primarily for the purposes of the partnership.  We do think it is worth sharing more widely, however. We will be particularly pleased if others find it useful, and if it helps to stimulate discussion on how to develop communities in which more people feel they have a real say in what happens around them.

Empowering Communities of Interest - Structures for enabling equality groups to be heard in public sector policy making.  The Equalities Task Group of Empowering Communities examined the involvement and engagement of "equality strand groups" or "communities of interest" rather than purely geographically based "communities" in the south west region.

The group was interested in what the role of cross strand forums or networks might be in improving the empowerment and influence of these often under - represented communities, in public policy and decision making, for example in Local Strategic Partnerships and Local Area Agreements. 

A Report by Equality South West.

The final evaluation report of the work of Empowering Communities, the Regional Empowerment Partnership, in 2008-2009, by Zahno Rao Associates. 

For a report of the National Empowerment Partnership for 2008-2009 follow this link  

An 8 page booklet, based on the discussion paper "Making the Business Case for Empowerment".

If you would like a hard copy of this pamphlet, please e mail us at

newsandinfo@creatingexcellence.org.uk