Areas, Forums and Ward Panels

Now we have the Ward Policing Panels, what is the betting Council officers will start wondering whether we need both Area Committees and Neighbourhood Forums.

A few points to consider:

1. Area Committees are well established. We should enhance them with the ability to cover pre-planning issues in much more detail, such as allowing Councillors to raise potential site issues well in advance. Now most ward Councillors are not fettered on planning issues, this should be much easier.

2. Forums have organically grown over 16 years to cover about 40-50% of the borough (depdends whether you include the Roundshaw Community Board as a Forum?). It may be better at this stage to keep what we have. but not rush to expand, if there is no current demand.
3. More effort and money (through devolved budgets) should be put into developing Ward Panels as the "local Parish Council" for each ward. In due course it might be worth widely debating whether existing Forums would then disaggregate into the ward panels and for each panel to send a non-voting resident rep to the Area Committee. However at present, it is best to develop the Ward Panels in varying ways to see what works best. In a year or two it will be interesting to see how they have evolved.