Sustainable Communities Act
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The Government brought the Sustainable Communities Act at the end of 2007. This allows councils, after taking advice from local people, to put forward proposals needing government action that will help local communities to be more sustainable and offer better quality of life.
It provides a way that local people can ask central government to take action. It is aimed at helping to change the environment that people live in by giving them the power to change things they don’t like.
Local councils are invited to make proposals to central government as to how it can help them promote the sustainability of local communities. To do this, local councils need to talk to local people to find out what would help them.
Leader of the Council, Paul Scriven said:
"This is a real chance for local people to seize the power and remove the red tape to make their neighbourhoods better by using these new powers to help them change things.
"It is the local people who know best when it comes to what needs doing to improve their local area."
What have we done so far?
Since February, the Sheffield Sustainable Communities Act Panel has considered a total of 32 ideas, including 28 ideas put forward by members of the public through the website, the Sustainable Communities Debate, a large local conference and other local events and meetings, and the Panel. On 11th June the Panel formally agreed on and recommended four proposals, which were taken to the Council’s Cabinet on 22nd July and to Full Council on 29th July before being submitted to the Local Government Association who will draw up a shortlist for Central Government.
The proposals which have been agreed by the Panel to be put forward to government are:
- Delegating responsibility and funding for the Sheffield post office network to Sheffield;
- Allowing councils to help communities to use vacant land which is not likely to be developed in the near future for food growing and other greenspace;
- Allowing asylum seekers to work in the UK to enable them to lift themselves out of poverty and to contribute more to the community;
- Setting up an Adult Learning and Skills Trust for Sheffield with greater powers to identify and commission the skills and learning courses needed for Sheffield.
The full submissions which went to Government are available at the bottom of this page.
The Local Government Association is planning to complete short-listing in December, and we would expect a final response from Government some time next year.
It is anticipated that there will be further rounds of submissions under the Sustainable Communities Act, but there has been no confirmation of this as yet. In the meantime, we want to keep up the momentum and will be using the Panel to help the Council and partners plan how we should deal with major issues for the city such as the environment and Sheffield’s ageing population.
We are now recruiting new members to the Panel: for more information about how you can get involved please follow this link: Sheffield Sustainable Communities Panel
If you have any questions about the Sustainable Communities Act, please contact Victoria Penman on 0114 2735417 or Laurie Brennan on 0114 2735199.
Downloads
Submission to Local Government Association:Learning and Skills (195 KB)