Neighbourhood Forums play an important part in making localisation and devolution work in practice in Birmingham’s neighbourhoods. They are one of the key ways in which residents can become involved in:
- decisions about local services which will increasingly be made by Birmingham City Council’s District Committees
- the delivery of Council services.
Birmingham’s ten Districts each cover about 100,000 people: the size of a large town or small city in their own right. Neighbourhood Forums, which cover about 5,000 people, should be an accessible way for citizens to become involved. As well as directly supporting forums, District Committees and Offices will organise activities in which forums are likely to want to be involved, including: the annual District convention; producing District plans; and the consideration of the transfer of assets (land and buildings) to voluntary groups.
Forums are also likely to be interested in the community powers set out in the Localism Act, 2011:
- Community right to challenge – which gives forums and other groups a way of challenging the way particular services are delivered in the locality
- Community right to bid and the register of assets of social value – which gives forums and others the chance to register local land and buildings (not just belonging to the Council) as having social value. Community groups will have a six month ‘window of opportunity’ to bid to buy land and buildings listed on the register when their owners decide to sell them.
- Neighbourhood planning and the community right to build – bodies which Parliament has defined as ‘neighbourhood forums’ will have powers to prepare a local land use plan for the area.
Note: Forums in Birmingham do not qualify as ‘neighbourhood forums’ as defined in the Localism Act which says that they should consist of representatives of residents, businesses and public services. Birmingham’s Forums, however, working together with local councillors and a local traders’ association etc. could set up the kind of ‘neighbourhood forums’ the law allows to exercise local planning powers.
Community Planning Toolkit – covers the rights mentioned above in the Localism Act
Local Innovation Fund – is part of a new Birmingham City Council initiative to support local innovation in public services and local well-being
Parish Councils – are local democratically accountable bodies which can be set up, if local residents support them, to serve neighbourhoods or larger parts of the city