Ward committees in Birmingham no longer have executive powers. The revised Constitution of the Council says the committees (which are now being called ‘ward forums’ instead) exist ‘to encourage and facilitate dialogue, between the Council and local people within their Ward’.
Ward committees, as such, need not exist. In some areas they do not because councillors have decided to do away with them. The Council has agreed, however, that local leaders including councillors, need some sort of arrangements which:
- provide a forum for community engagement in decisions affecting the local area (by meeting regularly with neighbourhood forums, residents associations and other local groups
- enable councillors to work with neighbourhood forums, residents associations and other local groups so that local communities can debate and take action on local issues and priorities
- can present local ideas, priorities and issues to the rest of the Council and its committees so that Council plans can be grounded in the reality in neighbourhoods
- enable informed comment on significant planning applications affecting local people
- can plan and organise work with other neighbourhoods and other local partners.
Councillors can decide what kind of forum they want that will fulfil the roles listed above (and in doing so, they need to think what is mostly likely to work for others too).
Boundary Changes
In Birmingham, boundary changes will create a mixture of single and two member wards from 2018 onwards. The notion of ward committees after this time will be redundant (it doesn’t make sense to talk about committees with only one or two members). The kinds of structure which might take their place include:
- town meetings (several wards meeting together in a town centre they share)
- neighbourhood boards (in specific areas of local concern which are more local than wards)
- local task groups (focused on tackling key local issues which might extend across several wards)
- joint meetings with other local services (eg police tasking meetings and health service meetings)
- other special meetings (eg bringing together neighbourhoods sharing the same main ‘A’ road running out from the city centre)
Councillors can work with others to use any of these, or other appropriate, types of forum that work for their locality. Judging what is most appropriate is a question for local leaders. The only ‘rule’ is that effective local leadership depends on meetings with purpose – which produce results – not ‘meetings for the sake of meetings’?
Next, you might want to look at:
Ward Forums: who, where and when?