Purpose
Place and Community Planning has corporate responsibility for the delivery of both strategic and operational services, including delivery of the Council’s statutory duties across a number of functional areas. The work is delivered by three sets of services within the strategic grouping:
- Community Protection
- Community Planning and Partnerships
- Community Testing and Vaccinations
Community Protection delivers the Council’s statutory remits in relation to Environmental Health, Trading Standards and Licensing Enforcement, along with frontline service delivery on Community Safety matters, including Decriminalised Parking Enforcement.
The Community Planning & Partnership Team is actively engaged in the coordination and delivery of community planning with a range of partner agencies working together to support and drive positive change on local priorities in East Dunbartonshire. They are focused on supporting the Council and the Community Planning Partnership’s strategic direction through the effective development of the East Dunbartonshire Community Planning Partnership to achieve our local outcomes. It plays a lead role in the development of policies and strategies concerning the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act, Equality Act (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations, including the Local Outcome Improvement Plan and Locality Plan.
The Community Testing and Vaccination Team was created in response to obligations placed on the local authority in relation to the pandemic. The team works in partnership with the NHS Board at Greater Glasgow and Clyde in supporting the local vaccination clinics providing flu and COVID-19 vaccinations alongside other necessary public health immunisations.
Strategic Priorities
The key strategic priorities for Place and Community Planning are summarised as follows:
- Delivery of statutory responsibilities by Environmental Health and Trading Standards to improve and protect public health and consumer protection, in line with local and national priorities.
- Revisions to the regulatory frameworks for Environmental Health and Trading Standards, including effective responses to any changes / impacts that result from matters such national reviews, changes to working models, legislative changes and workforce planning pressures.
- Contributing to the creation of safer communities across East Dunbartonshire through effective deployment of frontline resources and delivery of intelligence led activity to tackle a wide range of community safety issues.
- Delivery and development of activity across the East Dunbartonshire area in relation to Decriminalised Parking Enforcement.
- Development of partnership working and jointly resourced activities such as Co-Production with Police Scotland to deliver effective targeted services and maximise efficiencies where possible.
- Progressing the requirements of the Community Learning and Development (Scotland) Regulations 2013
- Development and coordination of supporting meeting the Equalities Act (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations, Armed Forces Covenant Duty, Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021; Equalities Act 2010
- Delivery of the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 and progressing agreed actions
- Delivering the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. And supporting development and implementation of the New Scots Refugee Integration Procedural Framework.
- Progressing the requirements of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, and new Community Planning arrangements with a focus on addressing poverty and inequality and in the delivery of the Local Outcomes Improvement Plan and the Locality Plans.
- Progressing the Fairness and Equalities Agenda.
- Delivering the COVID-19 Community vaccination programme, in partnership with the GGC NHS Board,
Work of the Teams
Community Protection Service (Environmental Health, Trading Standards & Community Safety Teams)
The Community Protection Service is responsible for the delivery of functions which corporately support the work of the Council and make significant contribution to the delivery of a number of local outcomes – in particular local outcome 4 relating to safer communities. The Service is actively engaged in a Co-Production arrangement with Police Scotland, with teams working innovatively together to deliver targeted joint services across the local communities of East Dunbartonshire and enhance community protection. The Community Protection Service plays a leading role in the work of the ED Community Safety Partnership, co-ordinating activity between partners to deliver effective and efficient services, with particular focus on delivery in areas where the greatest inequalities exist.
During the course of the last few years, service delivery by Community Protection has been heavily impacted by the need to provide an extensive and on-going public health response in relation to the coronavirus pandemic. However, delivery of work on all of the core community protection activities and priorities that the service is responsible for delivering on has now resumed in earnest. As a result, the service is committed to the further development of all of this core work throughout the course of 2023-24, whilst also placing focus on any areas of regulatory activity that it can deliver to assist our local communities in the route out of the pandemic and in dealing with the effects of the current cost of living crisis.
The Service is comprised of three teams, all of which have a distinct remit in terms of delivering statutory community protection duties for the Council across the local area, with the primary overall objectives being to promote public health, public safety, wellbeing and consumer protection:
- The Environmental Health Team enforce a wide range of statutory duties in relation to food safety, public health in terms of nuisances and communicable diseases, occupational health and safety, noise pollution, air quality and contaminated land. This essential public health service is provided through the delivery of planned interventions to local businesses, reactive responses to public health complaints and assessment of environmental conditions within the district. Services are delivered in order to protect the community from hazards in the environment and to regulate and facilitate the growth of responsible businesses.
- The Trading Standards Team enforces a wide range of consumer protection and licensing legislation and provides advice services to local consumers and businesses in order to maintain fair trading in East Dunbartonshire. The Team delivers risk based, targeted, and intelligence led programmes of enforcement work, with priority given to activities closely aligned to local outcomes under the LOIP.
- The Community Safety Team delivers a wide range of critical work across the local area, including services in relation to antisocial behaviour, low level crime and community safety, decriminalised parking enforcement, control of dogs, fly-tipping, domestic night noise and the pest control function. The team works closely with range of colleagues and key partners to deliver enforcement activity, as well as providing early intervention, prevention and diversionary activities.
Community Planning and Partnerships Team
The Community Planning & Partnership Team is actively engaged in the coordination and delivery of community planning with a range of partner agencies working together to support and drive positive change on local priorities in East Dunbartonshire. They are focused on supporting the
Council and the Community Planning Partnership’s strategic direction and local partnership working through the effective development of the East Dunbartonshire Community Planning Partnership to add value and address gaps in inequalities. They deliver East Dunbartonshire Council Community Grant Scheme and East Dunbartonshire councils Warm Spaces Grant and manage the strategic partnership agreements,
The CPP Resettlement colleagues work with people who have recently arrived in East Dunbartonshire through the UK government’s resettlement programmes. They provide case management resettlement support ensuring individuals integrate into our communities. They play a lead role in the development of strategies concerning 1951 UN convention relating to the status of refugees, European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) 1951, the Convention was given direct effect in domestic law through the Scotland Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998.
Community Testing and Vaccination Team
The team has a key role in the vaccination roll out across East Dunbartonshire, working with other Council departments and EDLC colleagues. The aim is to support the health protection function of vaccinations in a partnership with GGC NHS Board Public Health. The team are flexible in approach and work in response to the programmes of NHS and Scottish Government, and in doing so importantly to ensure locally that all residents of East Dunbartonshire have safe access to the COVID-19 and Flu Vaccination programme.
Key Improvement Actions for 2023-2024
- Provision of effective trading standards and licensing enforcement and advice services to comply with statutory obligations and meet national / local objectives
- Effective implementation of a wide range of statutory duties in relation to Environmental Health
- Delivery of effective community safety and antisocial behaviour services across the Council area
- Effective coordination of local co-production activity between the Council’s Community Protection Service and Police Scotland
- Develop and deliver on revised Locality Plans with partners and the community and lead, in partnership, in the review of the Local Outcome Improvement Plan
- Deliver an updated accessible, co-produced East Dunbartonshire community grants scheme
Key Priority Performance indicators
- Number of targeted decriminalised parking enforcement initiatives and patrols (including schools and residential areas) in response to complaints, service requests and intelligence received
- Percentage of Environmental Health high risk food safety inspections and public health service request responses delivered within target timescales