Council launches new method of bringing you the best services
THE way in which the Council delivers the day-to-day services that affect you and your community is changing.
Staff from Housing and Environmental & Consumer Services, as well as parks and road and lighting maintenance, will be joining together to form Services for Communities.
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This is about delivering local services, for local people, focusing on the issues that affect your day-to-day quality of life.
Whether it’s improving the home in which you live, tackling antisocial behaviour, keeping your street clean and safe, or improving recycling facilities in your neighbourhood, Services for Communities will work across all these areas.
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Services for Communities is about the services that YOU want the Council to deliver and understanding more about what’s important to YOU in your neighbourhood.
Over the coming months, we’ll be asking you about the priorities for your local community and neighbourhood.
Why create Services for Communities?
Across the UK, people are telling local authorities that confidence in their ability to deliver the services people want is declining.
Councils are seen as remote and out of touch - delivering the services they want to deliver and not responding to the needs of local people and communities.
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We’re determined to change that for the residents of Edinburgh. Most people who work for the Council care about the work they do and want to make a real difference to the city.
Services for Communities will ensure that staff are able to make this difference and, once the right structures are in place, can make real improvements to your quality of life.
While there won’t be any immediate change to the services you receive, we’ll be making sure that we have the right structures in place to ensure that we can improve the services we are providing on the ground. And, until we can do that, it will be business as usual.
What are the key aims of Services for Communities?
To create communities that are:
- clean
- safe
- green
- healthy
- well-managed
- well-housed
- well-maintained.
Why is Services for Communities different?
At the moment, services being delivered in your local community are often the responsibility of several different Council departments.
Services for Communities aims to make it much easier for you to report a repair about street lighting or road maintenance, report incidents of antisocial behaviour, or keep parks well-maintained.
Our aim is to deliver a broad range of services from five local area offices, with one named point of contact in each area.
What does Services for Communities mean for my neighbourhood?
You won’t see any immediate change in the ways in which Council services are delivered in your local community, but we’re aiming to ensure that more services are delivered locally, with a clear focus on your priorities.
That’s why services will eventually be delivered from five local areas:
- north
- south
- east
- west
- south west.
Before this becomes a reality, however, we need to ensure that officers are located in the right place and we have neighbourhood managers and their teams in place who can ensure that more joined up service delivery happens.
How can I get involved?
One of the key priorities is increasing the amount of community involvement in telling us what the priorities are for your area.
As Services for Communities becomes established over the coming months, we will be looking at the ways in which local residents can become involved in the development of local services and setting priorities.
We recognise that each local area has different demands and priorities and it’s essential that we can respond to these differing needs.
Services for Communities is about increasing the amount of community involvement in planning local service priorities. It is important that we get this right so we will gradually develop new ways of getting you involved.
When will Services for Communities become a reality?
From 1 April, individual services from across the Council will join Services for Communities. It will, however, take time to ensure that we have the right structures in place to begin to make a real difference to your local community.
While you’ll begin to notice that many Council buildings and vehicles have the Services for Communities signage, this won’t have an immediate impact on the service we deliver and the people you should contact for help, advice and information.
You should continue to seek the same services, speak to the same people, visit your usual service point and use the same telephone numbers.
When any of these contacts change, we’ll let you know.
What else will be happening?
We need to find the right ways to listen and talk to you. Again, it will take us time to get this right.
In the meantime we’re keen to hear your comments, views and suggestions. We’d like to know what you think about Services for Communities and the ways in which you’d like to get involved.
- Let us know what you think – we want to hear from you! e-mail us at: sfc@edinburgh.gov.uk or write to: Mark Turley, Director, Services for Communities, 23 Waterloo Place, Edinburgh EH1 3BH.