AUTHOR: ANGE JONES, AGE-FRIENDLY COMMUNITIES MANAGER AT THE CENTRE FOR AGEING BETTER

An Age-friendly Community is a place where people of all ages are able to live healthy and active later lives. It involves local groups, councils, businesses and residents all working together to identify and make changes in both the physical and social environments. This could be anything from transport and outdoor spaces to volunteering and employment or leisure and community services.

AUTHOR: ANDREW TUBB, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF CIRENCESTER TOWN COUNCIL

Having received over 500 positive and constructive responses to a public consultation on Cirencester Town Council’s budget proposal and always seeking to raise the bar even higher, I was interested to learn about innovative democracy at a conference in Manchester, part of International Week for Democratic Innovation.

AUTHOR: CLLR LILLIAN BURNS, PRESTBURY PARISH COUNCIL

Citizens’ Assemblies were very much to the fore at the Innovating Local Democracy Conference which took place in Manchester in January. Earnest local authority officers and others spent much time examining different models and how to make them work most effectively and learning best practice from each other. All good stuff.

AUTHOR: DANIELLE FROST, HEALTH AND WELLBEING OFFICER AT THE ESSEX ASSOCIATION OF LOCAL COUNCILS

The health and wellbeing movement is fundamental to Essex County Council’s strategic plan and they understand that to be successful, they need the local council sector to engage with it. Local (parish and town) councils are the closest layer of government to residents and can have the greatest impact on residents’ lives, from beginning to end.

CRISPIN TRUMAN OBE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE CAMPAIGN TO PROTECT RURAL ENGLAND

Standing in the High Weald in Kent recently, I’d been hearing about the multitude of problems the local area faces, with the pressures of development, degradation of nature, the finances of farming and the decline in traditional forms of community and participation.

AUTHOR: JONATHAN OWEN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LOCAL COUNCILS

Amidst all the current manifesto talk there is a frisson of excitement in the world of think tanks which is highly relevant to our movement, especially our largest ‘super’ local (parish and town) councils, about the concept of ‘community power’.