Issue - meetings

As detailed in the recommendation.

Councillor Shotton introduced the Community Resilience and Community Benefits Strategy report which provided an overview of the work being done in the area, building on previous work to grow the social sector through social enterprise development including Community Asset Transfers (CATs) and Alternative Delivery Models (ADMs).

The report proposed the agreement of a Community Benefits Strategy which defined, for the first time, a set of community benefits that could be used in all types of procurement contracts but that could also be used to assess the level of community benefit an organisation was delivering.

The Chief Officer (Organisational Change) said 24 social enterprises / social organisations operating in Flintshire over the last year were the beneficiaries of Council support to help their development.  That, along with the CAT programme, had resulted in a number of assets being transferred to social enterprises / community organisations.  The results of that work, both developing organisations and enabling them to take on assets and services, resulted in a stronger social sector working at a community level.  He took this opportunity to congratulate Café Isa who had won the Best Social Business Award at the Flintshire Business Week Ceremony the previous week.

He added that with an increase in the number and size of organisations in the social sector, this enabled future work to build on this stronger social sector base and for the sector to be recognised as valuable and business like.  It also encouraged a raised awareness across the public, private and social sectors about the delivery of social objectives or community benefits.

RESOLVED:

That the Community Benefits Strategy be approved.