By working in partnership with Lancashire County Council, Preston City Council has achieved beacon status for cohesive and resilient communities.
Beacon status is a national award of excellence. Beacon councils are held in high regard as examples on national good practice. Beacon councils are actively encouraged to share their good practice so that other councils can learn from them.
The Lancashire Community Cohesion Partnership beacon application consisted of:
- Lancashire County Council (lead)
- Blackpool Borough Council
- Burnley Borough Council
- Chorley Borough Council
- Fylde Borough Council
- Hyndburn Borough Council
- Lancashire Constabulary
- Lancaster City Council
- Pendle Borough Council
- Preston City Council
- Ribble Valley Borough Council
- Rossendale Borough Council
- South Ribble Borough Council
- West Lancashire District Council and Wyre Borough Council (joint)
The bid was unique because there were 15 partners who were working together for a shared outcome over a large area.
Cohesive and resilient communities
The Local Government Association’s (LGA) definition of a cohesive community is one where there is a common vision and sense of belonging for all communities; diversity is appreciated and valued; people from different backgrounds have similar life opportunities; and strong and positive relationships are developed between people from different backgrounds.
Central government is committed to working with local government to spread good practice on how partners can contribute to cohesion and tackle extremism in their communities. It set out eight guiding principles for success in building cohesion locally:
- strong local leadership and engagement
- developing shared values
- preventing the problems of tomorrow
- good information based on the mapping of local communities
- visible work to tackle inequalities
- involving young people
- interfaith dialogue and social action
- working with partners, such as local third sector organisations.
In line with this commitment, there are now two specific cohesion indicators in the new Local Government Performance Framework (LGPF):
- the percentage of people who believe people from different backgrounds get on well together in their local area
- the percentage of people who feel that they belong to their neighbourhood.
There is also a new indicator for building resilience to violent extremism. It measures the quality of projects aimed at preventing violent extremism. In future, local authorities will be able to include these indicators as improvement targets within Local Area Agreements (LAAs).
Over the next few moths, Preston City Council will play its part in showcasing to other councils and interested parties, the partnership working on resilient and cohesive communities which is ongoing throughout Lancashire.
Preston's People and Communities Vision
The People and Communities working group is committed to challenging all forms of discrimination and prejudice. It will not settle for the existing situation, but will seek to support and mainstream excellent equalities, community cohesion and community learning practices.
In all its work, the People and Communities working group will implement good practice guidance in terms of all accessibility issues and continue to seek to promote mutual understanding between communities and actively develop a community where diversity is positively valued and celebrated.
This is Preston's second beacon award. In 2006/2007 the council achieved beacon status for waste and recycling.
Date Updated: 29/04/09