Draft Good Relations Strategy 2026 to 2035

Strategic focus of new strategy

This new strategy is consistent with the T:BUC strategy from the Executive Office, either the T:BUC review due to be published or the existing strategy. However, we want to also independently update our strategic ambition for good relations and for Belfast as we enter the next iteration of the peace and reconciliation process.

While the existing delivery of good relations by the council is very well regarded and effective, it is time to reset the city’s good relations strategic direction, review and enhance its role internally within the council, and ensure consistent and complementary delivery on social cohesion in all that the council provides. That will include refocusing the role of The Shared City Partnership.

The strategic focus therefore seeks to identify a new iteration of reconciliation beyond good relations, recognising the critical role which good relations will continue to have in building a positive peace, but incorporating the critically important elements of what will stimulate an even more cohesive city.

Concept of an Integrated Social Cohesion Approach and Strategy

Embedding the peace is an ongoing process that has been done well to date with much capacity developed and sustained in communities and local government. There is importance in continuing to positively provide purpose, content and actions that serve the needs of all people in a post-conflict setting, where issues and contrary beliefs remain; and where new challenges and dynamics emerge, competing with an older set of views, concerns and structures. 
 
Ensuring genuine attention to the needs and interests of all, including new and existing communities, in terms of relations, policies, actions and structures, is paramount. This is more important in a context of misinformation in the digital era and ongoing radicalisation of people of all ages whether for political, religious or ethnicity agendas. The role that social media plays in peddling harmful misinformation which raises tensions around sectarianism and racism is a new and significant challenge to the promotion and maintenance of good relations. 

The next iteration of the reconciliation and peace building processes, therefore, needs to be more complex and complete than the building of relationships, which has been successful to date and continues to be important. That next iteration needs to focus on the building of a more cohesive, inclusive and socially just community that embeds peace and enhances a sense of belonging for and by all.

It should focus not just on building good relations and relationships which are the foundation of any peace building process. It should go beyond good relations to create fairer and more open ways to access services and rights, have social justice running through its core like a golden thread, and develop trust in key institutions that are equitably regarded by all. It must also start to incorporate a meaningful strategy and focus on reconciliation and further building a positive peace.

This new Belfast Good Relations and Social Cohesion strategy, therefore, focuses on inclusion, belonging and trust, on identifying the rights and responsibilities equally applicable to all, and a long-term Whole Community and Whole Council approach to building a more cohesive Belfast, with the goal of meaningful reconciliation at its core.

Every aspect of our policy and design should include reference to and focus on its impact on developing greater cohesion and better relations.

This strategy includes five pillars for building a more cohesive city:

1. Continue to repair and refine relations within a reconciliation lens and reembolden how those relations can improve the lives of people across the community. This may include, for example, a hybrid small annual small grants with a more focused multi-annual grants programme or further advance work beneath the radar, but well regarded and successful cultural expression programmes. The dynamics of different types of fear within local established communities and newcomer communities may also be relevant and assist in supporting positive cultural expression in communities that feel a sense of cultural loss.

2. Develop capacity to sustain and strengthen decision-making and project delivery across the community. This includes capacity to undertake social cohesion and good relations work across all sectors in the community and all departments in the council. Capacity is not just focused on training and knowledge but ensuring that decision-making processes within the council and other public agencies are robust, fair, aware of implications; and the good relations/social cohesion function is appropriately positioned within the council. Some communities are more advanced than others in their capacity and community infrastructure. Some may need additional resources to get to a position of parity in their ability to engage with others in the good relations process. It will also include successful initiatives such as the migrant forum.

3. Ensure greater openness and transparency in decision-making and delivery. This includes decisions made within the council and encouraging more openness outside the council with community, public sector and other stake-holders. Funding decisions should also bear in mind the importance of being seen to be fair and equitable as an outcome, and monitoring & evaluation processes that are simpler and more relevant to the projects funded. 

4. Develop trust in key institutions by all people across the community. Key institutions relevant to social cohesion include, for example, local government services, policing and youth services amongst others. Making good relations therefore more relevant to the work of the council in, for example, policing and community safety is relevant as is being aware of any trust issues any community may have in the our decision-making processes.

5. Deliver better and meaningful social justice outcomes, with a focus on those interface areas that still suffer most within our still divided society. This may also touch on issues of relevance such as gender equity, Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), and with minority ethnic and more disadvantaged communities. Access to green space and ongoing impact of legacy and other issues relevant to those communities such as physical and mental health and wellbeing, those most impacted by the conflict are also the type of issues that have social justice implications.
   Common needs across communities can provide a greater focus for good relations and cohesion activities.

Together, these five pillars will help develop an overarching dynamic or sense of belonging for the city to which all people can buy in to. This includes all communities including newcomer communities as well as people from traditional, established communities; and progressing work at interfaces with potentially different perceptions of priorities.

These pillars do not fail to recognise that we and other agencies, have helped to change Belfast remarkably and for the better in the last 25+ years. The change, regeneration, and improvements have been positive and of benefit to all communities. However, more than 30 years since ceasefires, and 27 years since the Agreement, Belfast needs to finish the job of a reconciliation process that is for the benefit of all, leaves no one behind in real or perceived terms, and builds a genuinely cohesive city by the middle of the 21st century. In this period, our poorest communities are those who often live at interfaces and closest to peace barriers and are still our poorest communities after many decades of investment. Leaving no one behind should mean that we are working hardest at areas separated by peace barriers. 

However, feedback also suggested the importance of acknowledging new and invisible peace barriers that includes for established and newcomer communities, issues such as language and cultural barriers.

Therefore, the strategy for the city should have good relations and social justice at its core, all of which should be critical aims for any agency developing and delivering services for people from all backgrounds. These social justice priorities are as appli-cable to keeping people safe including women and girls as they are to providing accessible services for those who need them most.

The benefits of such an approach will be to:

• Save money through prevention and earlier intervention.
• Have stronger, resilient and more aspirational communities where there is mutual support across political, ethnic or religious divides.
• Have the goal of meaningful reconciliation as an intentional outcome of this work.
• Increase the resilience of the city.
• Deliver better health and wellbeing outcomes, particularly in interface areas where they are most acute.
• Provide a further basis for economic health and growth.
• Reduce conflict, enhance healing, and increase support for public agencies.

This approach speaks to the benefit of intercultural rather than multicultural approaches to developing cohesion, where integration and relationship building is the aim rather than a separate provision, where misinformation is challenged, and where long-term as well as short-term approaches are embraced. This will simplify the measurements of success where complex and often inappropriate integration indicators are replaced with ones that are shorter, easier to understand; and more accurate measurements are used especially for short-term projects. It also is a strategy that realises that the impact of projects able to plan for just a one-year project is restricted compared to what multi-annual funding can deliver although some newer groups appreciate smaller, one-year support, which is why an initial hybrid system is included.

The strategy commits us to develop 10-year targets for Social Cohesion for Belfast, as well as a series of three-year good relations action plans. It advocates for digital innovation. It seeks the active promotion of integration while tackling social exclusion, relevant to established as well as new communities, in countering extremism and radicalisation. Radicalisation includes people from existing and new-comer communities where young people are being used by organisations to act unlawfully; or where people are frustrated at real or perceived threats to communities, or racism or sectarianism is directed at them.

Regardless of a community’s politics, cultural identity, ethnicity or faith, there are common issues and needs that are reinforced in an integrated social cohesion strategy; there are common responses relevant to these issues and needs; there are common approaches that work whether longer or shorter-term; there is a need to ensure that cohesion and good relations tackle social exclusion, poverty, fear and feelings of being left behind, as stimulants to counter this radicalisation.

That is why Belfast City Council, any council, requires a Whole Community, Whole Council approach that takes seriously the ambition of long-term social cohesion targets and three-year good relations action plans that take the first steps in that generational social cohesion process. All functions of a council affect cohesion, trust, and equitable provision; and processes for decision-making affect it just as much which includes how people engage with each other within the council and within and between projects that receive council funding. 

Building on the impressive change we have helped facilitate to date, we seek to lead the recognition of a genuine reconciliation process where people understand and believe that progress for all is predicated on an honest desire to understand and meet the concerns and needs of others.