Sustainable Communities Act your chance to submit proposals

Parish councils are being encouraged to make direct proposals to DCLG under the Sustainable Communities Act, 2007. The legal order  formally commenced on Monday 14th October 2013.

NALC is promoting parish use of the Act. All parishes in England need to have sight of the link on the NALC SCA web page before making proposals under the Act (at
http://www.nalc.gov.uk/About_NALC/SustainableCommunitiesAct2007.aspx).

Parishes should read all of the documents and text on the web-page before submitting proposals to DCLG. Proposals should either benefit the residents of the submitting parish council, or if appropriate can benefit the residents of all parished areas nationally.

The method of submission couldn’t be simpler. Parishes are advised (by NALC) to formally agree their proposals (through council resolution) after compulsorily consulting with and involving their communities on the ideas in the draft proposal. Proposals should be submitted by a proposing parish – by completing the Barrier Busting Form on the DCLG Barrier Busting web-site http://barrierbusting.communities.gov.uk/.

More details about what DCLG will be looking for are also available at the Barrier Busting link.
 
A submitting parish council should

1.    Consult its community as to which ideas residents would like to have considered for a direct proposal

2.    Formally agree with its community the wording of a formal proposal

3.    The council needs to formally resolve to pass the proposal and send it to DCLG at the Barrier Busting web-site 

4.    DCLG responds saying either ‘yes’ the proposal is passed (in which case the council uses the Barrier Busting Tracker to track progress with implementing the proposal) or ‘no’. If DCLG say ‘no’ the council can leave it at that and not re-submit a proposal, or can re-word a proposal and submit it to chris.borg@nalc.gov.uk to ensure that the NALC SCA Board makes a decision as to whether to re-submit it (or not), to DCLG. If the Board says ‘no’, it must give reasons to the council. In most cases the Board will probably re-submit a (possibly amended) proposal to DCLG on the council’s behalf and the same process outlined above is followed.

Councils are encouraged to start the process of submitting direct proposals to DCLG as soon as possible.