4 days ago
- Business
- Powys County Times
Powys County Council discusses Sustainable Powys plan
Communications must improve if Powys County Council is to succeed in its bid to get a sustainability bid off the ground.
The authority wants to create 'Sustainable Powys' and has already had meetings with town and community councils.
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.
At a meeting of the Governance and Audit Committee last week, members received an internal audit report from SWAP (South West Audit Partnership) who had evaluated the 'delivery arrangements' for Sustainable Powys.
SWAP assistant director Ian Halstead said one of the areas of improvement was 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.'
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 Lewington 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.'
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.'
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 its 'second tranche' of town and community council meetings.
Ms Thomas told the committee that she had met with Cllr Sian Cox, the portfolio holder for adult social care, and council leader Cllr Jake Berriman 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."
'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.'
