City Inclusion Partnership
As part of the changes to Brighton and Hove City Council's constitution the Equalities Forum has been closed and a new group set up: the City Inclusion Partnership. Previously the Council supported the Equalities Forum as a consultation mechanism between the Council and the community. The new partnership will oversee and lead the strategic direction of equalities and diversity work across the city, to support statutory agencies to meet their duties under the different equality schemes.
The new City Inclusion Partnership will sit under the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) as one of the ‘family of partnerships' and will link into existing groups across the city working in each of the equality strands.
Consultation has on the CIP has provided some clear messages about its aims, membership and work programme. Both community and voluntary sector groups and statutory agencies feel that the governance remit is clear for the CIP: ensuring that public bodies meet their duties under equalities legislation, and that issues from the Reducing Inequalities Review (RIR) are picked up appropriately and addressed effectively in the Local Area Agreement LAA).
CIP will work closely with the Stronger Communities Partnership (SCP) to complement its aims and avoid duplication. CIP will focus on the statutory side, supporting public bodies to develop their equalities approaches in partnership. The SCP will focus on community engagement work and will aim to develop an Equalities Coalition.
A number of ways for CVS groups, other statutory sector and business sector partners to engage with the CIP were developed through the consultation. These include using focused,time-limited working groups to investigate existing work, draw on good practice, engage with all the relevant groups and complete a specific task, then feed back to the CIP. When completed, the Community Engagement Framework will establish the principles for engagement with communities for both CIP and SCP. Where groups exist they will be used by CIP for engagement and consultation. Where there are gaps, statutory partners will work in partnership to find way to fill them.
At present the CIP will continue to consult and evaluate how it can best identify and address equalities issues. Because of the statutory rather than community focus, meetings will follow the LSP pattern of not being public, but minutes and other information are available (see contact below).Included on this page are notes from the two main consultation events, for CVS groups (6th May 2008) and for statutory bodies (30th July 2008).
Please contact Sarah Tighe-Ford, Equalities Co-ordinator, Brighton & Hove City Council for more details or for any other papers.
Tel: (01273)292301
