Conclusion
This new Good Relations strategy flows directly from the new Good Relations and Cohesion Audit for Belfast which was undertaken throughout 2025. These are exciting additions to the previous audits, strategies and programmes, complementing existing successful delivery and adding value to existing good practice in the city.
More than adding value however, this new Strategy embodies a desire to move the work on Good Relations into a new direction, with a focus on those key issues that are relevant for today: tackling issues around social justice and reducing sectarianism and racism – all within a renewed focus on building reconciliation.
Belfast City Council can be proud of what it has achieved in its good relations work. Community workers on-the-ground on all sides of the community deserve great credit for courageous and often groundbreaking work they undertake often in association with council.
This Strategy aims to build on that work, going beyond a currently defined good relations approach, toward a focus on cohesion, belonging and promoting a positive peace.
The five pillars include a real focus on ensuring communities with most social and economic needs are front and central to delivery:
- Redefining and refreshing good relations work toward robust transformative not performative actions.
- Increasing and enhancing capacity of all involved from different sectors.
- Building trust in key institutions.
- Concentrating on social justice needs that exist across communities using commonalities as an enabler of good relations and cohesion.
- Actively demonstrating increased openness and transparency.
These pillars will all work within the key themes of any new T:BUC strategy.
By focusing on outcomes such as the five pillars in the strategy, the indicators and monitoring processes will flow naturally.
The Strategy identifies that sustainable change is important. Seeking change in skills and behaviour will have impact for many years. Furthermore, improving relationships or changing the way decisions are taken now to support an intercultural future for the city will leave a legacy for years to come.
The Strategy identifies and directly embraces the issues that still exist. It will involve people, led by communities, in acknowledging those issues from the past that are still to be addressed, in the context of new challenges in the present, for the benefit of the city in the future.
These issues, along with the direction of the new Strategy, go beyond good relations to embrace long-term cohesion with sustainable, systemic outcomes that will help transform the city, and how we deliver good relations and cohesion, for the future.
