MORE fruitful talks are needed with town and community councils to get them to buy into the Sustainable Powys vision a committee has heard.
At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Governance and Audit committee on Friday, May 23 members received an internal audit report from SWAP (South West Audit Partnership) who had evaluated the “delivery arrangements” for Sustainable Powys.
Apart from the framework of five core towns from where council services will be centred upon little detail on the future shape of Powys has been made public so far.
The report focussed on the processes and framework for the sustainable Powys concept which SWAP assistant director Ian Halstead said was not a “delivery programme” in itself.
One of the areas of improvement Mr Halstead had outlined in his report is around communication.
He said that all parties need to have a “realistic understanding and expectation” of Sustainable Powys and how it “turns from concept through to delivery.”
On this issue Conservative Cllr Pete Lewington said that the report did not tell him “how effectively” the council had engaged with partners and explained what Sustainable Powys actually means.
Cllr Lewinton said: “Effective engagement is really crucial especially when you think about what your asking communities to do.
“This should be beyond just measuring the numbers of participants especially as conclusions and decisions are reached by extrapolating from a very small number of participants.”
Powys Independents Cllr Graham Breeze said: “I’ve attended two public engagement meetings with community councils over the last couple of months.
“The feedback there was that community councils have not grasped this yet and didn’t understand it.”
Liberal Democrat Cllr Adam Kennerley added that having also attended similar meetings he felt Powys council didn’t yet have “competent and confident relationships” with bodies that would: “allow us to co-produce and share service provision.”
Director of corporate services Jane Thomas said the “initial engagement” done with Powys councillors, the wider public and town and community councils had: “set some foundations.”
She explained that Powys council had just finished it’s “second tranche” of town and community council meetings.
Ms Thomas told the committee that she had met with Cllr Sian Cox (Liberal Democrat) the portfolio holder for adult social care and council leader Cllr Jake Berriman (Liberal Democrat) to: “consider the effectiveness of what we are currently doing.”
Ms Thomas said: “We don’t believe they (engagement sessions) are being effective either and we are reflecting on that and changing the way we are doing that no2
“This is so we get that buy in from communities to work with us which we clearly don’t have at this point in time.”
“We know there is some work to do.”
The report was welcomed by committee chairwoman and lay member Lynne Hamilton.
