Our Community Planning Partners are working together to make South Lanarkshire a better place to live, learn, play and work. Our aim is to work with communities to deliver better services targeted at reducing poverty and tackling inequalities and deprivation across South Lanarkshire.
One of the ways partnership working is taking place is through Neighbourhood Planning which is where both residents and local agencies and organisations are committed to working together to develop local plans for their communities.
This work aims to reduce the inequalities that exist in our most deprived communities and improve outcomes for residents. Key to this is supporting communities to drive the process and work alongside partners and service providers. Together they build a shared understanding of local needs and priorities and respond to these making the most of our shared resources.
Collaboration with communities across South Lanarkshire and ongoing priority setting has been a key feature of our work. Sustaining existing support to these communities to maintain and monitor the level of progress and success gained through Neighbourhood Planning is important to continue to improve outcomes for these areas.
Neighbourhood Planning involves communities in real and meaningful ways and has created positive change in these communities.The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 confirms that a neighbourhood must be either an electoral ward or an area within the local authority with a population which does not exceed 30,000. Partners must identify smaller areas within the local authority which experience the poorest outcomes, and prepare and publish Neighbourhood Plans to improve outcomes for these communities.
We must use smaller areas within South Lanarkshire to identify residents experiencing the poorest outcomes and then publish individual plans for each area as these specific priorities may differ from those in the overall Community Plan. The progress of every plan must also be reported publicly and reviewed regularly to ensure any progress continues to meet the needs of those living in these target areas.
None of these smaller areas should have a population of more than 30,000 and it should be agreed what constitutes a valid locality. Following a detailed analysis of all 431 datazone levels across the 20 wards in South Lanarkshire, nine wards were identified as having sections of deprivation, poverty and inequality.
For further information on Neighbourhood Planning and to see the progress made on the top ten priorities within each Neighbourhood Plan, please see the Annual Reports detailed within the various Information Pages above.
