More local economic power

Local councils are on the front line of developing local economies. It needs to be recognised. #localism #localgovthttp://t.co/r3DrsBDoZm

New LCR

Check out the digital edition of the new @NALC LCR magazine, #localism #localgovthttp://t.co/NvN3rrL7VE.

Being good is now easy

The new Good Councillors guide is out now. It is an essential tool for all established, new and aspiring councillors in the local (parish and town) council world. Free download from here: http://bit.ly/11Yutvx

Putting Communities First

Eric Pickles, secretary of state, Communities and Local Government said: "Local (parish and town) councils are the pride of their communities. For well over a century they've been making a difference in towns and villages up and down the land. Parishes and town councils are rooted in their areas and care passionately about the places they belong to. We want to see you leading the localist vanguard. Using community rights to revolutionise public services, decide where new homes and shops go in your area, and safeguard much loved assets. Because parishes leading from the front will help local people call the shots. I wish you the very best of luck for today and look forward to hearing the outcomes of this important event."

Feeding of the community spirit

This Sunday will see The Big Lunch happening around the country. There will be thousands of communities, and local (parish and town) councils feeding the community spirit by holding a lunch gathering in their local area.

The Big Lunch is a very simple idea from the Eden Project. The aim is to get as many people as possible across the whole of the UK to have lunch with their neighbours once a year in a simple act of community, friendship and fun.

Since starting in 2009, thousands of Big Lunches have taken place in all types of community across the UK. Last year The Big Lunch fell on the same weekend as The Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations on Sunday 3rd June and The Big Jubilee Lunch was part of the main Diamond Jubilee programme of events announced by Buckingham Palace. Our research shows that an astonishing eight and a half million people took part in events across the UK.

A Big Lunch can be anything from a few neighbours getting together in the garden or on the street, to a full blown street party with food, music and decoration that quite literally stops the traffic.

Get inspired by this film:http://www.youtube.com/user/biglunch?feature=watch

The Big Lunch commissioned LGIU to write and research a report which analyses the social impact of The Big Lunch. For more information on this, read this:
http://www.lgiu.org.uk/the-big-lunch-feeding-community-spirit/

Community How To

Most of the community groups I come across in my role as Chief Executive of Online Centres Foundation - the organisation behind the national network of 3,800 UK online centres - have a To Do list as long as their arms.  Many are pushed for time, and all are pushed for precious resources.  New technologies - and researching new ways to get things done - are not a priority.    

I want to see that changing.  Or at least moving up those To Do lists. 

It’s often the smallest of these groups who work with and through local councils to do the most amazing things for local people and communities. These are also the groups least likely to be using new technologies.  For some it’s not only an issue of resource, it’s an issue of skill and knowledge.  If you don’t know what’s out there, you can’t find it.  And if you don’t have the IT skills to use it anyway, what’s the point? 

The point is that digital technology can save community organisations time, hassle and even money.  There are many amazing digital tools out there which are FREE (or very low cost), and incredibly easy to use.  They’ve often been designed to help organisations do the things that are important to them - like event management, volunteer coordination, fundraising or profile raising.   

That’s why we’ve teamed up with Nominet Trust to create the Community How To service. 

It brings together top digital tools under one roof, alongside case study recommendations by the community groups already using them.  The idea is to help people working in communities find and use new tools.

If you think any of the groups or organisations you work with could be doing more with digital, let them know about Community How To - www.communityhow.com.  If they find a tool they think could help, but don’t think they have the digital skills to make it work, UK online centres are there to help people get to grips with the basics, and get the confidence to give IT a go. 

Take a look at the Community How To service at www.communityhowto.com, and find out more about UK online centres and OCF at www.ukonlinecentres.com, help@ukonlinecentres.com. 

We’d love to hear from you, and we’d love to help you help local community groups do more of what they do best.  

Guest blog from Helen Milner, UK Online Centres. 

A new role in community action

The Sustainable Communities Act has great potential for parish and town councils. The Act is a radical new “bottom-up” process that allows local people – for the first time in this country’s history – to drive central government action to help their local communities.

Up until now, parish and town councils have been excluded from this process. This was totally unacceptable. Parish and town councils should be at the forefront of driving government action to help communities. Well after successful campaigning by the National Association of Local Councils, County Associations, Local Works and local councils, this has all changed.

The campaign for the Sustainable Communities Act arose out of the very concerning problem of community decline, which can be seen in the national decline of everything from small shops and Post Offices to green spaces and recreational facilities. This decline has huge and worrying social, environmental and democratic implications. People see their community dying around them, feel powerless to do anything about it and so disengage from democracy and their community.

At the heart of the Sustainable Communities Act is this philosophy: citizens and communities are the experts on their problems and the solutions to them. They therefore should drive the help and actions government takes to reverse community decline. The Sustainable Communities Act sets up a ‘bottom up’ process that does just that.

Here’s how it works: the Act allows people – through their councils – to suggest ideas to government and government is obliged not only to respond, but to “reach agreement” with a totally independent panel on which of the ideas that come forward should be implemented. This is a radical idea – it is about turning government upside down and allowing local people to drive the agenda, reversing decades of “Whitehall knows best” dogma.

Since being passed in 2007, the Act has achieved some notable results. In Sheffield for example, the Act has been used to help save post offices from closure and to boost their revenues. The Act has also been used to encourage renewable energy and close a loophole that allowed gardens to be used for development.

Up until now though, parish and town councils have been excluded from the process,

Parish and town councils are the most local part of government and the body most closely connected to the community. Their connection with local people and their knowledge of the local area means you are ideally placed to make use of the Act. No one knows the local community like they do.

There will be issues in your local community that the Act could assist with. Perhaps you want to be able to promote renewable energy schemes in your area but lack the means or knowledge to do so. Or you want to help increase the amount of recycling in your area but there are rules and regulations that prevent you from doing so. Or perhaps you think government should do more to promote woodland and have ideas for how they could do so.

For more information on this please visit:www.nalc.gov.uk or http://www.barrierbusting.communities.gov.uk.