Agenda item

Purpose:

To provide the committee with a brief update about work being undertaken at a Gwent regional level to build on well-being assessments and to provide an update on emerging proposals for 2019-20 funding from Welsh Government which is in place to help Public Service Boards build their strategic capacity and capability to support the delivery of well-being plans as well as consolidate work on the assessments and plans.

Key Issues:

1.         Officers representing the five Public Service Boards in Gwent have been meeting in the Gwent Wide Strategic Well-being Assessment Group (GSWAG) to share learning and identify opportunities to collaborate on areas of common interest.  This work initially focused on the development of the well-being assessment and has continued to strengthen the development and implementation of well-being plans with a particular focus on collaboration and regional working.

2.         For each of the past two years the Welsh Government has made available circa £74K of funding for the five PSBs in the Gwent area to use collaboratively to build on work completed as part of the well-being assessments and help build towards the development of the well-being plan. 

3.         Past projects include:

i)              Future Trends – The limitations of work on future trends was a common theme raised by the Future Generations Commissioner and Welsh Government when they provided feedback on Well-being Assessments. Initial work on identifying strategically important future trends and disruptors has now been built upon with a regional conference in November and a local workshop for Monmouthshire, held in Monmouth in December which developed this at a local level and which members of the committee were invited to attend.

ii)             Climate Ready Gwent – This work is underway and aims to identify landscape scale opportunities for climate adaptation using an ecosystems approach and make recommendations for future strategic regional collaboration.  The aim is to influence the required changes to policy and practice that will enable Monmouthshire and its neighbours in Gwent to take the necessary steps towards being climate ready for the future.

iii)            Happy Communities – This provided two tools: the Happy Communities Index (now called Thriving Places Index in Wales) which measured the local conditions for community well-being and the Happiness Pulse which is a measure of personal well-being.

iv)           Data and Dashboards – Remaining funding is being utilised to improve how Monmouthshire PSB can use a type of data that is published under an Open Government License to develop accessible and automated reporting of key data issues raised in the well-being assessment, that can be used by the community, the PSB and councillors.

4.         A further allocation of funding has been made for 2019-20 (see appendix 1).  Officers on the Gwent wide group are currently developing projects to utilise this funding for 2019-20 and this is a work in progress ahead of a submission at the end of March.  A progress update will be given at the meeting.  It is likely to include work on annual reporting and community risk registers.

Member scrutiny:

The Policy and Performance Manager provided an update on regional wellbeing work.  Committee members were given the opportunity to ask questions.

·         Regarding concerns about the small numbers of the public attending the Monmouth climate ready workshop, it was confirmed that the first workshop was widely advertised and attended by 40 members of the public.  The second workshop was arranged for public bodies.