A Vision for Respect:Proceedings

Cleaner Safer Greener: A Vision For Respect: Conference Proceedings

On 13 March 2006, ODPM held a conference to discuss how cleaner safer greener public spaces are central to the vision for respect. It was attended by almost 400 local government chief executives, directors of service and key partner agencies .

The conference was designed to inspire the audience to give cleaner, safer, greener public spaces greater priority, and demonstrate that it is possible to make a noticeable difference in every community.

The Minister for Local Government and Communities, David Miliband opened the day with a keynote speech. He celebrated the achievements of local government over the last five years in breaking the inevitability of decline and restoring confidence. He also called for greater citizen engagement in maintaining this momentum and emulation of the success of the best. Speakers throughout the day provided the inspiration for table discussions on how to engage communities, build respect and thus improve the reputation of local government.

The results of the conference demonstrate the importance to which local government senior management attaches to cleaner safer greener public spaces.The conference showed their improved understanding and a greater priority placed on liveability issues.

	Before	After
How well informed do you think you are about CSG?
Very well informed	12.9%	51.2%
Moderately well informed	71.1%	45.4%
Poorly informed	16.1%	3.4%
How high up your agenda is CSG?
Top of my agenda	52.3%	64.8%
Moderate importance	41.8%	32.7%
Low importance	5.9%	2.5%

The event captured many useful ideas on community engagement, respect and reputation in relation to public spaces. This will now being used to inform future events and guidance. A range of specific suggestions were made by delegates which are built around common themes such as:

Facing the public: adopting a bottom-up philosophy so that people feel able to influence decisions. Agencies meet people to improve understanding of their shared aspirations and frustrations so that everyone can work together on making a difference.
Understanding who is responsible, recognising that no-one body has sole responsibility for public spaces, but everyone can make a difference. Individuals and their behaviour influence outcomes, different services need to consider the impact on other agencies and services, while councils should lead in brining other local public services and business together
Making it easier for people to report issues and problems and trigger a response that deals with their concern about their neighbourhood whoever is responsible.
Celebrating success - feeding back on what is being done and achieved, promoting good news and improving relations with local media and demonstrating action through visible presence on the streets.
Real time responses to deal with problems that can be fixed quickly and being honest about where changes will take longer to secure on-going and long term involvement.
Pushing the boundaries, challenging traditional service delivery and allocation of resources, to utilising front line staff, voluntary and community sector organisations and people's desire to see a noticeable difference.
Valuing young people as future champions of change, and active partners in making better places to live, asking them what their aspirations are for their neighbourhood and involving young people in designing and delivering the spaces they want and need.

A commitment to act

At the end of the day delegates were asked to identify an action they would take as a result of the day. These included:

Signing up to the Local Government Association's Reputation campaign,which aims to improve the perception of local government through councils pledging to deliver core action on cleaner, safer, greener communities and communicate more effectively with their community.
Engaging all staff in the process of improvement,ensuring teams understand the importance their managers place on cleaner, safer, greener public spaces. This included commitment to involve staff from the front line upwards as the eyes and ears on the street but also in the planning process and shaping of service delivery.
Future How To events aimed at operational staff will support managers who want their teams to be aware of and inform policy developments.
Continuing to discuss how to give people a say over the services they receive and places where they live. Examples considered range from better information provision through to ways of enabling citizens to trigger action and shape services. An online discussion forum has been set up for discussion and comments on a number of key issues likely to feature in the forthcoming Local Government White Paper, including neighbourhoods.