[stacy Cosham]

Hi Ben

At BDC we struggle to engage the community in our work programme setting, however we usually post an article in our Council's newsletter asking for comments, feedback and ideas leading up to the meeting whereby the Committee discuss topics they feel are high on the Council's agenda.

I then facilitate a workshop with the Committee to collect their views, adding in a few from officer feedback - e.g. what's coming up legislation wise or new work commencing in the next year that the Committee may wish to get involved with. I then draft a work programme for them that should reflect their discussion and agreements which the Committee are then required to sign off before the Chairman presents it to full council to endorse.

To balance the content of the work programme i encourage the members to come up with their top 5 topics they want to work on during the year without the need for Time and Task Limited Panels - this usually gets the discussion going and offers insight into what they feel is important. I also provide them a list of the regular monitoring topics so they don't repeat on the work programme.

To date this has been the most productive method in constructing their work programme but i'm also keen to learn about others experiences to improve Member engagement. I find that when the Members have done the majority of brian storming they are more content to take responsibility for the programme.

Stacy

[Jackie Sayers]

At SCDC we do the same as Stacy has described, except we don't seek Council's endorsement - and I don't think we should.

It's important for the committee to agree some criteria against which to judge each topic's merits, and prioritise them. I could share ours as a starting point for discussion if you like.

jackie.sayers@scambs.gov.uk