Agenda and minutes

Cllr King introduced herself: Northampton Borough Councillor for Phippsville, also Councillor Co-Chair of Northampton Youth Forum. Her “daytime work” is a youth worker.

Everyone introduced themselves.

Apologies were received from Gracie Okusanyo from the Link and Barry Hansford from Northampton College and Community Co-Chair of the Forum.

The Minutes of the last meeting were agreed as an accurate record.

It was noted that the feedback the forum members had given on the Northampton Borough Council budget options had been passed to service areas. The authors of the equality impact assessments had reviewed and if appropriate, revised, the equality impact assessments in light of the feedback. They had noted the perceptions of linked impacts between some options. Some changes had been made to the options presented to the Councillors at the Full Council meeting, for example the addition of a neighbourhood warden. It had also been agreed that the relevant service areas would pass on feedback to relevant other services, in particular the Northamptonshire Police, so that as decision-makers on say Police staffing, they could have due regard to the comments.

The Stamp out Hate Crime campaign had been continuing. The Northampton Youth Forum had won a countywide youth award for “Outstanding Contribution to Anti-Bullying” work. Moulton College Student Association had become involved, leading to a Stamp out Hate Crime stand at their recent well-being week and news feed from the Facebook page linked through to their student ‘moodle’ computer system. Moulton College had expressed an interest in joining this Forum. Moulton College had identified that the Stamp out Hate Crime campaign could help them to prevent and tackle hate crime and homophobia.

Update on how it fared in 2011 and discussion about improving further.

The Forum noted that Northampton Borough Council takes part in the Stonewall Workplace Index Assessment for Diversity Champions – to help employers ensure their services to both internal and external customers are LGB-friendly. Northamptonshire County Council does not take part in this scheme but schools under its control can access help from Stonewall as it has signed up to their School champions scheme.

In the past year Northampton Borough Council as a whole had been assessed in comparison to other diversity champions in Stonewall’s scheme for the first time. The findings had been discussed with Stonewall to help the Council consider room for improvement and actions for improvement.

The Council had scored particularly well, above even top 100 employers, for its community engagement – specifically the forums, the events they organise with the community such as for World AIDS Day and Holocaust Memorial Day in the Guildhall courtyard, and for the use of Forums pages on Facebook. The contribution of Cllr Palethorpe as the then Leader of the Council and Co-Chair of the Forum with a good record of attending meetings and speaking in the community on LGB equality and against homophobia had also helped the council to do well. The Council had solid scores too for its equalities policy work. There had been no LGB discrimination tribunal cases.

Areas for improvement included increasing LGBT disclosures in staff and councillor equality monitoring, staff engagement and bullying prevention.

The forum discussed these and members of the forum shared some ideas for how the Council might look to improve in these areas.

- Staff diversity group: the Lesbian Line representative noted that Northampton General Hospital had a good response by not labelling their staff diversity group as “LGBT “. Instead they had made it general staff diversity and gradually grown the confidence for people to come out if they wished. Other members of the forum said they would welcome that approach too. It was noted that the gay-straight alliance approach avoids self-labelling; not everybody wants to be ‘out’ and declare themselves in every situation of their life so the words equality and diversity might be better descriptors – people feeling safer and more comfortable to attend.

One suggestion was that the unions might be involved to organise small events with the staff diversity group. Again Northampton General Hospital was suggested as an example the council might look to learn from.

It was noted that St Andrews Hospital seem to have an active staff group and that the NBC Community Engagement and Equalities Officer was in touch with her about this.

Conversation moved on to the use of logos in all kinds of literature and contexts for council services as a means to create an environment in which promoting LGB equality was the norm and expectation of staff, contractors and customers. Discussion with the Head of Landlord Services about possibly including the Stonewall Logo in the new tenants handbook was one example. One of the members of the Forum said that he is  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

It was noted that Cabinet had now approved the new Northampton Borough Council equality strategy “Our Approach to Equalities”. This is available online at www.northampton.gov.uk/equalitystrategy.

In deciding on what corporate equality objectives to set, regard had been had to the interest of the forums in hate crime as well as the work by Overview and Scrutiny and the Community Safety Partnership priorities consultation. This had led to the decision to include hate crime in the objectives.

The other objectives were around having a modern and diverse workforce; and providing fair, inclusive and accessible services with particular regard to the Gateway service.

Currently service planning was under way across the Council. All services had been asked to consider and advise what they would set as service level objectives and measures for each of the above corporate equality objectives. During the year their performance against these would be monitored. At the end of the year the equality strategy would be updated to reflect work done and still to be done.

The International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia is Thursday 17 May 2012.

The Forum agreed that as in past years there should be a ceremony in the courtyard bringing together community organisations, individuals, councillors and people working for the council.

They agreed that the ceremony should take place at 11am, to be finished by not later than 12 noon, with tea and coffee provided.

A display stand would be requested to enable FAN Northants, Lesbian Line and Stamp out Hate Crime and other local groups to be able to share information about their services.

The ceremony would be led by a volunteer from FAN Northants.

The ceremony would include one minute’s noise.

Cllr Anna King would be one of the speakers.

Other invitees would include staff diversity groups from various organisations, the Mayor of Northampton, the Leader of the Council, NBC councillors, union representatives, a Fire engine to use its sirens in the one minute’s noise and a Police motorbike.

Lindsey would put some emails out to staff and notes on Facebook to help identify people who would like to come along and be involved.

Community Centres
The forum was advised that progress had been in handing community centres over to the local community to run. To date 9 had been transferred to be run by the community. Another 6 were due to go through before end of March, then another 6 over the coming months.

Governance Review

Keith outlined the opportunity for all electors to have a say whether they want a local council to be set up. He explained that this might be called a “parish council” or “community” or “neighbourhood” council – all these terms describe similar things but “parish” may be perceived as overly Christian or old-fashioned by some people who would prefer the other terminology.

If people would like to see a local council created they need to do so using a petition. Any individual can set up a petition. There’s help e.g. petition forms. People in the community can get other people to sign it. The signatures need to be from registered electros in the local area for which the council is requested. They can’t be on several different petitions.

Once handed in to the Northampton Borough Council the petitions will be validated against electoral role. If they are found at 27 April 2012 to exceed the threshold of that area – generally 10% - they go forward as valid petition – which means they go to the full Council.

There’s then a second stage which is a referendum, due for 15 November 2012, the same day as the Police Commissioner’s referendum. So all electors can vote in each area – a simple “yes” or “no” to having the proposed local council established. If there’s a majority in favour on the day the proposal will go forward to have approval for the local council being set up. Individuals then stand as parish councillors in May 2013. The parish precept will be set by Northampton Borough Council for the first 10 months or thereabouts. The new local council will then set its own precept for 2014-15.

There is a web address www.northampton.gov.uk/cgr . Information there includes the proposed timetable, petition forms, information about possible parish council powers. E-petitions for people to sign electronically and the possibility for people to set up e-petitions online themselves. There are ward maps available. Petitions may seek parish councils for part of a ward, a whole ward or going across more than one ward – all the petitions so far have been set up by NBC and/or NCC Councillors and they often have close links to local residents associations.

There a 7 parish councils already in Northampton, mostly in the south of the Borough and on the outskirts of Northampton. They offer a range of services, often currently just a few of what they could potentially do.

On the “You Decide” form you can put your name down as if signing a petition by sending the form to NBC.

The10% required to get a referendum for an area ranges between 250 and 660 signatures of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

It was agreed that the next Forum meeting would include items as follows;

- Northampton Alive: a 30 minutes presentation and debate about the regeneration of Northampton from 6.30pm to 7pm open to the public and facilitated by the Leader of the Council

-         Review of IDAHO

-         Umbrella Fair update

-         Councillor Empowerment Fund update

-         FAN exhibition update

22 May 2012,

 3 July 2012

The next meeting of this Forum would be 22 May 2012.