Agenda item

Report on the emerging findings, the academic research and future trends that will inform the well-being.

Context:

To provide members with an update on progress to date and planned activity to prepare the Well-being Assessment for publication in March 2017.

Key Issues:

1. The Well-being of Future Generations Act is a ground-breaking piece of legislation that should ensure that public bodies think more about the long term, work better with people and communities and each other, look to prevent problems and take a more joined-up approach. It sets out in law a definition of sustainable development.

2. The sustainable development principle is made up of five ways of working that we are required to take into account. These are: Looking to the long term so that we do not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs; Taking an integrated approach so that public bodies look at all the well-being goals in deciding on their well-being objectives; Involving a diversity of the population in the decisions that affect them; Working with others in a collaborative way to find shared sustainable solutions; Understanding the root causes of issues to prevent them from occurring.

3. The Act highlights the importance of balancing short-term needs with the need to safeguard the ability to meet long term needs. It is expected that public bodies and public services boards will look at least 10 years ahead, although best practice would be to look 25 years ahead.

4. The production of a well-being assessment is a key part of identifying the priorities for the area. The assessment will be evidence based and draw on a range of sources, in particular: data; the views of local people; information about future trends and academic research.

5. The statutory guidance states that a deeper examination of the information and data from sources like these will help the PSB prepare a more rigorous product. They will have to look at the long term, consider what the evidence tells them about how to prevent problems from happening or getting worse, and involve other people with an interest in the well-being of the area. Collecting and analysing good evidence is integral to this process.

6. The process of engaging people in the development of the well-being assessment is currently underway. A brief synopsis of the process is shown at appendix 2. To date we have received around 800 responses from members of the community. These have been drawn out from extensive public engagement grounded in some of the key data items that we would expect to form part of the well-being assessment. At this stage some of the most commonly raised issues are about the affordability of housing in the county, problems with public transport and the vibrancy of local retail centres, particularly in the south of the county

7. Engagement will continue through October into early November. The well-being assessment will be available for scrutiny when he committee meets in February 2017 before being presented to the PSB for a decision in March.

Member Scrutiny:

·         The Committee were reminded that the well-being assessment is an analysis of well-being as opposed to a needs assessment and that it would also need to consider the assets and strengths within the county and that this has had an impact on the approach taken to gather evidence, officers being proactive in targeting high footfall areas. 

·         Key emerging issues of significance included the need for affordable housing given that house prices are too high compared to earnings which are too low and the need for transportation infrastructure as well as suitable employment, particularly an issue for rural areas. There was a real sense of positivity emerging from the engagement in terms of assets, particularly the beautiful countryside, the sense of community and the agricultural opportunities in Monmouthshire.

·         Officers reassured Members that they have focussed engagement activities in villages as well as larger towns and that significant effort has been invested in the community well-being assessment.  The Committee heard that the Welsh Government has expressed an interest in Monmouthshire’s approach to the assessment as well as its establishment of scrutiny arrangements.  In November, the Council’s Scrutiny Manager will attend an event with PSB officers to share Monmouthshire’s scrutiny practice with those who may not yet have developed their scrutiny arrangements.

·         Members stressed to the officers their valuable knowledge of their wards and how important that knowledge would prove to officers in suggesting local groups and clubs to engage in the process.

·         It was felt that when all the results were collated that an all members seminar would prove useful for feedback. 

·         There were mixed feelings on the small MCC logo on the literature. Some Members felt that the logo was not prominent enough while others felt that the small logo removed the emphasis from the council which was felt would ensure members of the public gave more honest, less negative responses.

·         Members asked that published results were ‘jargon free’ with easy to read graphics.

·         Members asked for the ‘Made Open’ platform to be published wider, with public use encouraged.

·         Questions were raised regarding how officers will weigh the evidence and prioritise the issues from the findings and were told that each emerging theme will be looked into more detail by bespoke groups of cross-agency specialists in each field.  Members acknowledged that too much data can be difficult to make sense of and were reassured to hear that some funding had been made available from Welsh Government to analyse the data and organise it into themes in addition to extracting local level data to provide a Monmouthshire context.  Officers concluded that the key findings need to be presented in an accessible and interesting way, such as via infographics, with references to data sources to substantiate the findings.