Get Involved: WCBC Involvement Strategy 2022 - 2027

Get Involved: WCBC Involvement Strategy 2022 - 2027

Why are we doing this?: 

We last consulted with you and revisited our involvement strategy in 2018. It’s time to revisit the strategy and give it a refresh to reflect where we are now and we’d really like you to get involved in helping us shape this piece of work.

Wrexham Council has made significant progress in improving Involvement with the public in recent years, and have been commended by Audit Wales for work in this area. Some improvements and achievements include:  

  • Developing a more seamless approach to our involvement activities, including improvements to our Your Voice Wrexham consultation portal to make it easier to use, and improving the quality and timeliness of feedback to yourselves on consultation and engagement activities
  • Maintaining engagement with our communities over the period of the Covid-19 pandemic and re-energising engagement as we have emerged from the pandemic.  (e.g. in 2019/20 WCBC carried out 42 consultations on ‘Your Voice Wrexham’ – with around 12,241 responses received.  In 2020/21 we carried out 38 online consultations, with around 6,859 responses received. In 2021/22 we carried out 54 online consultations with around 10,203 responses received)
  • Improving engagement with people who have protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, in line with our commitment to ‘reduce inequalities in representation and voice’.

We know that we’ve made significant progress in this area, however there is more we can do, to do ‘involvement’ well, together, and we want to work with you to develop these plans. 

If you would like to download a full copy of our draft strategy, please click on the link: Download draft Involvement Strategy 2022-2027.

Wrexham Council is committed to listening and working together with the people of Wrexham. Good Involvement means that everyone in our community feels they can join the discussion about the services we design and deliver; and can help shape the future of Wrexham County Borough. We hope by taking this approach the future of services in Wrexham will be focussed on what matters most to the people of Wrexham and that people will feel they can have their say and to work with us to make things happen together.

What do we want to know?: 

How we will encourage involvement from everyone

Our Involvement strategy will focus on three areas of involvement: Consultation, Engagement and Co-production. 

It is important to note that other terminology is used in some areas, particularly with regards to children and young people, where the term commonly used is ‘participation’. We would consider the terms ‘participation’ and ‘involvement’ to mean the same thing for the purposes of this document.   Our Children and Young Person’s Participation Strategy sets out this area of involvement in more detail.

The law also requires us and gives you the right to expect us, to consider how we get people involved and work together.  Please see the attached summary of key legislation. 

We also have local plans committed to getting more people involved; highlighted in a number of places including:

  • Wrexham Public Services Board Well-being Plan - says that public sector organisations and communities need to talk and listen to each other in order to improve well-being in Wrexham.
  • Our Council Plan –we are committed to involving local people in how we plan, prioritise and deliver services.
  • Public Participation Strategy - The strategy sets out how the council will comply with the new duties set out under the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act to promote and encourage participation in council decision-making.  
  • WCBC’s Strategic Equality Plan – The plan sets out a commitment to enhance equality in representation and diversity of voice; we want more people to get involved who may not have done in the past.
  • Children and Young People’s Participation Strategy - sets out how the Council embeds its commitment to participation with children and young people in Statutory and Third Sector organisations’ decision making processes through consultation, engagement and professional observations.

In addition to these plans mentioned above, we plan each service and encourage people to get involved across every department in the Council.

What we found out: 

Having drafted our Involvement Strategy; public consultation has been undertaken, in order to present our new Involvement Strategy to members of our community and our partners and to seek their feedback.

What difference has it made?: 

This has enabled us to revise our strategy in line with the feedback we have received, so that we can be confident our new Involvement Strategy reflects the views of our stakeholders, who we hope will work with us in the future on our involvement journey to shape services together.

Consultation start date 25 July 2022
Consultation end date 04 October 2022

Contact

Full address Contact Email
Guildhall
Wrexham
LL11 1AR
Elaine Smith