Tuesday, 12 Febuary 2008

Today I attended the latest meeting of One Watford (the Local Strategic Partnership) chaired by our Mayor Dorothy Thornhill.

The One Watford LSP has done great work developing a Community Plan and working on LAA1 covering (I think) 2006-09. LAA2 (to cover 2008-11) now looms large on the horizon and discussions of LAA2 really dominated the meeting. We saw some presentations from HCC and agreed our comments on the draft county-wide priorities to try and ensure that Watford’s particular needs were not overlooked.

We also reviewed the findings of our recent Aspire workshop. Watford CVS is charged with co-ordinating various community initiatives – very particularly co-ordinating our own Community Development Strategy with WBC’s Community Engagement Strategy and the Community Empowerment Strategy being drafted by the new Community Housing Trust. This is good news and illustrates one key contribution that the VCS can make to LSPs.

Another issue I have championed on the LSP is representation of the VCS and of Watford’s diverse communities. The LSP having agreed that there are issues to address (and myself knowing that WCVS also needs to sort its own policies out a little) we agreed that Mayor Dorothy and I would discuss this again in the summer and return to the LSP with clear proposals.
This seems entirely helpful. I must remember to add it to the agenda for WCVS’s trustees meeting next week.