Local Area Working

Image: Houses Rather than delivering exactly the same services in the same way across the city, we want to be able to adapt our services to fit the particular needs of the citizen and the area in which they live. We call this 'Local Area Working'.

The approach will give us a more detailed understanding of the individual needs and characteristics of all parts of Belfast.

It will allow us to plan and deliver our services in a more effective manner and make it easier for us to engage with local people about what we do in their area.

This in turn will give the Belfast citizen the opportunity to become well-informed participants in shaping our services.

It also means that we will be able to respond more effectively to the local area initiatives of other organisations such as the Government's Neighbourhood Renewal Partnerships or the Community Safety partnerships.

Strategic Neighbourhood Action Programme

In 2007 we began to investigate how we can improve on the delivery of our services at a local level and respond more effectively to the needs of citizens.

A small team was set up - the Strategic Neighbourhood Action Programme (or SNAP) - to help us adapt our services to local area working. The SNAP team are developing the tools, procedures and policies that we will need to work at smaller, well-defined, geographical levels across Belfast.

Neighbourhood Services Knowledge Base

Our SNAP team surveyed just under 700 organisations who deliver services to the public across the city. The results have been put together in a report and we will use them to help us to improve the delivery of our own services.

Find out more about Neighbourhood Services Knowledge Base

Belfast My Neighbourhood debates

We are planning to roll out (in 2009) a new citywide neighbourhood engagement programme called ‘My Neighbourhood debates’. It will attempt to identify key local issues and priorities in individual City Places across Belfast. This will help us shape our local service delivery.

At the heart of the programme, there will be ‘town hall’ style public debates involving local councillors and staff. We plan to publish comprehensive area profiles for each of the City Places which will set the process within a realistic context.

City Places

To help us develop new ways of working directly with Belfast citizens and their community, we have had to find a way to describe the city in terms of local areas.

Using information from the Northern Ireland Census, we have identified 21 areas that cover the entire city. We call them 'City Places' and they will help us to gather and share local information and to help co-ordinate our local services.