Community Participation Strategy refresh

About our Community Participation Strategy refresh

At Barnet, one of our top priorities is always working with our communities. We want to empower our communities and work in partnerships on things they care about. That is why community participation is so important and why we are continuously refreshing our approaches across the council, as well as thinking of new, exciting and inclusive ways to involve our residents in having a say and shaping the things that we do. We launched the community participation strategy last year and we have a new administration who is committed to continuous community participation and engagement which means now is a good time to refresh our approaches and we need your help to do this.

Why is community participation important?

• involving communities can help them to flourish, be happier and healthier
• communities have insight into their own needs, and they know what is best for them; having influence over decisions that affect their lives is fundamental to tackling challenges
• communities have the knowledge and assets; working with them, facilitating discussions, and enabling action can build resilience and confidence to create better neighbourhoods.

To refresh our organisation-wide community participation strategy, we are launching an interactive map that will be open for everyone to use and input to enable better cross-organisational working.

We want to hear from you about which communities you have a relationship with, how you engage with them or how they participate in shaping services or delivering activities. We want to know:

• who are we (the council) connected to?
• what else do we need to connect to across Barnet?
• what best practices do you use to engage and participate with residents and communities?

Click the maps tab below to include a community you have been working with or heard about and would like to connect to. You can also share your stories about working with communities below.