The Community Strategy has four themes:

• The Living Environment
• Education for Life
• Regeneration
• Health, Social Care and Well-Being

A number of activities on the four themes are planned and some of these have already started. These activities are called 'beacons' and depend on organisations and local people working together to make them happen. Some of these may already be familiar to you – e.g. the new hospital project.

Most importantly, the Community Strategy makes sure that everybody in the county borough will benefit from the improvements, and seeks to ensure that all services provided by all partners are equally accessible to everyone regardless of age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, disability, race, religion, language, nationality, ability or background. This is because the principle of equality is at the heart of community planning. The Community Strategy also considers the long-term impact of its activities on the environment, local people and the local economy, making sure that these three elements are looked at together. This is called sustainable development.

The activities in the Community Strategy will be achieved over a long period of time. They will be monitored against 'indicators' such as education targets, health statistics and so on. These will show if the Community Strategy is working, and help to make sense of the improvements in our quality of life.

		Community Strategy document	(pdf 456k)
		Appendix 1 - Timeline	(pdf 23k)
		Appendix 2 - Where we are now	(pdf 623k)
		Appendix 3 - Relationship to other plans	(pdf 27k)
		Appendix 4 - Objectives	(pdf 25k)
		Appendix 5 - Viewpoint Panel Feedback	(pdf 40k)
		Appendix 6 - Areas of need and areas of opportunity	(pdf 347k)
		Appendix 7 - Beacons	(pdf 57k)
		Appendix 8 - Headline indicators	(pdf 46k)
		Appendix 9 - Implementation Plan	(pdf 39k)