Southwark, like the rest of London, is changing. The council wants this change to work for all our residents so everyone can enjoy life, be healthy and thrive in Southwark.
The Council believes it has been bold in its plans to encourage home building and, with rapidly reducing budgets, finding ways to make sure private developers help pay for the thousands of new council homes we are building, the new leisure centres, schools and libraries we have opened, and new cultural and open spaces. We have helped 5,000 people into work, as well as creating nearly 2,000 apprenticeships for local people. We’re also ensuring that as our population grows, we have the new schools, health services and transport improvements that our residents need – despite massive cuts in funding from national Government.
But the Council doesn’t want to make assumptions – it wants to make sure it is getting it right for residents now, and for future generations. To help it find out, the Council has launched the Southwark Conversation so it can hear direct from residents about how the changes are affecting people, how residents feel about the future, and whether there’s anything it can do differently.
The information collected through the conversation will also inform the policy framework on regeneration for all, which was agreed by Cabinet in September 2017. This paper sets out the Council’s ambition to ensure that the places where people live, now and in the future, create new opportunities, promote wellbeing and reduce inequalities so people have better lives, in stronger communities, and achieve their potential. The conversation will also inform the development of the framework; the goal is to improve the wellbeing and health of our communities by
- Ensuring regeneration provides more opportunities for people to improve their well-being
- Cherishing the things that make Southwark great
- Listening and working with our communities to better understand their needs and aspirations and to jointly develop places and solutions that encourage healthy living
and support people to have a good quality of life
- Developing new approaches to make this explicit such as specific planning guidance
setting out our intentions on health and wellbeing for major regeneration areas
While the council doesn’t have a magic wand, and the Government, the Mayor, the NHS and the private sector all play an important role in influencing our lives, the council does have some powers and levers that we can use to help make Southwark an even better place to live, work and play than it is today.
Join the Southwark Conversation – #talksouthwark and complete the survey on www.southwark.gov.uk/talksouthwark or look in next issue of Southwark Life for your paper copy of the survey
Deadline is 24th December 2017
