
Monthly Award Winning Story: Neighbourhood management. How a simple approach in Great Lever, Bolton, brings huge, measurable benefits to residents (10 Oct 06)
Congratulations to this month’s winner - Julie Lawrence, Assistant Neighbourhood Manager - Bolton Metropolitan Council
Every month we invite readers to send in a story to share with colleagues.
It might be a tricky problem you managed to solve, a project that went well - or even one that went wrong.
Anything unusual, unexpected or memorable about your work that others can learn from can be enormously helpful. And anything to do with attending one of our courses is interesting both to us and other attendees.
Monthly Prizes and £75 Discounts
The prize is a free place on any training course you like.
And even if you don’t win we'll give you £75 off the cost of any course you choose if we list your story in our library. We can't list everybody's but we'll do our best.
This month’s winner is Julie Lawrence. She told us how attending our Estate, Multi Agency and Neighbourhood Agreements course led to developing the Great Lever Safe and Clean Charter.
This has been so successful that the Office of the Deputy Prime Ministers has commended the charter as an example of best practice in neighbourhood management.
The first we knew of it was when Julie wrote in:
"I attended this course a couple of years ago now when I started working for Bolton Neighbourhood Management.
I had been asked to pull together some kind of charter or Service Level Agreement for environment - but I had no idea how to do it.
After attending the course I had a far clearer idea of how to start, and what level of consultation should happen to get it drafted.
The result was the Great Lever Neighbourhood Management Safe and Clean Charter.
This was signed by the Superintendent of Police and Chief Executive of Bolton Council and accepted by 2 key community activists at a public meeting.
I can forward on the Charter should you wish to have it. It was highlighted by ODPM as best practice.
Keep reading - the charter is available below...
I have attended my fair share of courses over the years and they differ in their levels of relevance and usefulness, but this one was one where the penny dropped in terms of delivering a big chunk of my workload at that time."
Background to the charter...
The Great Lever area of Bolton consists of parts of Derby, Harper Green and Burnden wards. It’s one of 20 areas in the country to be selected to run the Neigbourhood Management Pathfinder programmes.
This was not because it was the most deprived area of Bolton, but one where early support would help prevent further decline.
Residents had housing, environmental and crime and community safety problems. The driving force behind tackling these has been the Great Lever Neighbourhood Management Partnership. The partnership represents local residents and a range of service providers including housing associations, the Community Safety Unit, the Youth Offending Team and the police.
Charters have been drafted with targets agreed between local service providers and the local community. The service providers undertake the work but the responsibility rests with the local community, through the Partnership Board and through local and community groups to ensure that these targets are actually being hit.
Over 15 service providers have come together to agree how problems will be tackled and over 30 different types of services delivered and monitored.
These include:
Graffiti removal
Refuse collection
Noise pollution
Violent crime
Anti-social behavior
Julie picks up the story again
Like to read more or make a comment? Log in or register below Comments Comment by matthew school — 05 May 11 at 15:16:57 bolton is a good neibour hood but there are a few problems e.g. litter and graffiti but overall bolton is a good town and great lever is a good neibour hood Or even better still offer your own advice
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