Charnwood Borough Council

Listening to our partners

Charnwood Borough Council is keen to ensure that its aims and objectives are aligned with and reflect the priorities and views of partners at a local, regional and national level. We are involved in many key partnerships and work hard to ensure that they deliver and perform.

Charnwood sits within the East Midlands and is guided in its decision making by regional strategies on areas such as development, transport and economic planning. At a more local level, Local Area Agreements (LAA) set out how public, voluntary and private sector bodies within an area will work together to improve the quality of life for residents over a three year period. It provides a platform for bodies such Primary Health Trusts, Councils and the Police to work together in a co-ordinated manner through Local Strategic Partnerships.

Charnwood Together, the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) is a key partnership for Charnwood and addresses important issues affecting those who live and work here, such as health and wellbeing, environment, housing, community safety, transport, education and employment. The first Community Strategy was produced by the Partnership in 2003, with the aim of adding value by seeking to join up the actions of the individual partnerships/ agencies to secure an improved quality of life for everyone living and working in Charnwood. The strategy has been reviewed during this time and the new Sustainable Community Strategy was launched in 2008 ensuring that all its aims and targets were closely linked to the Local Area Agreement (LAA2) and the Leicestershire Sustainable Community Strategy.

In drawing up this Corporate Plan, Charnwood Borough Council has endeavoured to take into consideration the views of its partners through consultation, the LAA2 and the Sustainable Community Strategy.

Listening to our residents

Regular surveys of residents are conducted to gauge their satisfaction with the Council, to understand our residents’ priorities and the areas they feel are in need of improvement. For example, our residents have told us (supported by the recent Place Survey, published March 2009), that providing activities for teenagers was a key area for improvement, as was the level of crime. Our priorities reflect these through focusing on safer streets and reducing anti-social behaviour, supporting the needs of children and young people and the provision of better sporting and leisure facilities.

Our residents also told us that the cleanliness of streets and roads, shopping facilities and affordable decent housing were key concerns. Ensuring cleaner streets, regenerating Loughborough town centre and providing more affordable housing are all high priority areas for us in the next 3 years.