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Council Plan
Published: 17/06/2019
Every local authority is required to publish an annual plan, and this sets out the Council’s aims and objectives for 2019/20.
This year’s plan is updated with details of the Council’s seven priorities, up from six last year; an additional priority being “Safe and Clean Council”. The seven priorities are:
- Caring Council
- Ambitious Council
- Learning Council
- Green Council
- Connected Council
- Serving Council
- Safe and Clean Council
Within Caring Council, our priorities include provision of new social and affordable homes - continuing our programme of building new Council and affordable homes.
We are working to prevent homelessness, offering more diverse housing options. We continue to work positively towards meeting the Welsh Government target for all social housing to be brought up to the Welsh Housing Quality Standard by 2020.
We are continuing to fill the gap between traditional care in the home and long term residential care by opening our fourth extra care scheme in Holywell as well as extending Marleyfield House care home in Buckley. Domiciliary care services will be delivered to individuals in their own home by working with social enterprises to deliver the services. Support will be given to residents with a learning disability to become more independent with the opening of the new modern day centre, Hwb Cyfle.
Flintshire Fostering Service will continue to test and evaluate the Mockingbird Model of fostering after becoming the first fostering service in Wales to adopt The Fostering Network’s innovative Mockingbird programme.
The Council will continue to work towards reducing poverty in all areas – reducing food poverty, increasing funding to reduce fuel poverty, reducing the impacts of poverty on children and ensuring equal and ready access to sanitary products in schools.
As an Ambitious Council, we will adopt a strategy to ensure long term sustainability of town centres. We will help local communities to be resilient and self-supporting with service models to sustain local public services.
Our Learning Council ambitions are to support learners from 3-18 years of age to achieve their potential and high levels of educational attainment. This is important to ensure they have the right skills to access modern employment opportunities. Schools will be supported with preparations for the national education policy change in 2026. A change to legislation supporting young people up to 25 years with additional learning needs will be implemented over three years, starting in September 2020 and schools will be supported.
As a committed Green Council we aim to calculate the Council’s total carbon footprint which will support an action plan to reduce carbon emissions and reduce single use plastic consumption. A local plan will be developed to increase the number of E-charging points across the County.
As a Connected Council, we are supporting local communities to be resilient and self-supporting. We are combining our customer contact teams into a single integrated contact centre. We have also introduced a digital self-service online account “My Account”.
Our new priority, Safe and Clean Council will ensure that we adopt a consistent and collaborative approach to addressing community safety as well as agreeing standards for environment services to provide assurance about performance of enforcement of car parking, litter and dog fouling.
Colin Everett, Chief Executive said:
“Flintshire continues to be a high performer, and this Plan helps us focus on performance in priority service areas. The Plan also sets out some exciting new initiatives and innovations.”
Councillor Ian Roberts, Leader of Flintshire County Council said:
"This Plan sets out our key priorities to support and enhance residents’ lives. We continue with some of our priorities for example, expanding the provision of affordable homes for residents in need; protecting people from poverty; enabling people to live independently and well at home, whilst avoiding unnecessary admissions to hospital.
“Despite continued financial austerity, we will remain committed and ambitious as a Council to continue to deliver for our local communities.”
Cabinet Member for Corporate Management and Assets, Councillor Billy Mullin, added:
“We aim to continue the work of supporting children and young people to achieve their potential; enhancing the natural environment and promoting access to open and green spaces. The important thing is that Flintshire is setting ambition and continues to reach and surpass its targets sustaining a solid performance every year.”
The final Council Plan will be available on the website before the end of July.