The Committee received a report on the Overview and Scrutiny Committee (OSC) Challenge Session which examined how the council can improve its engagement with the Borough’s diverse community at a local level. The Chair welcomed back Councillor James King, who had chaired this session and  provided the Committee with a brief summary of this challenge session report. The main points of the discussion are summarised below:

The Committee noted that they had agreed the report and recommendations of the Empowering Communities Challenge Session held in March 2021.The session examined how the Council can improve its engagement with the Borough’s diverse community at a local level. The report made four recommendations which included:

That the Council:

v  uses its South Poplar and Isle of Dogs Community Development Panel as a model for engagement in other areas of the Borough

v  strengthens feedback loops into existing programme delivery including the Local Infrastructure Fund, the Capital Programme, regeneration schemes.

v  engages residents to determines local Covid-19 recovery priorities.

v  develops a geography-based partnership approach that brings collaboration from the council, public and private partners, VCS, and others to pick up local priorities.

As a result of discussions on this report the Committee indicated that community panels such as in South Poplar and on the Isle of Dogs provide a completely unique way of communicating and enable community members to interact and communicate on specific subjects between each other; instead of just having a one-way dialogue with the Council and its partners. This gradual development of such genuine communications, consultation, participation, and co-development would reveal insight that would be harder to extract from the more traditional methods and be critical to achieving any successful outcomes.

Accordingly, as a result of discussions on progress on the report the Committee:

1. Formally noted the Overview and Scrutiny Challenge Session Report and agreed the recommendations; and

2.    Agreed to submit the attached report to the Mayor and Cabinet for executive response.