Celebrate and promote better and best practice at local community level. Local authorities and other public services already have clearly defined roles through the Local Resilience Forums with support and escalation routes to regional and national services. But these operate at a county, city or unitary authority level and are not close to communities. We need to build a Business As Usual model empowering and supporting parish, district and town councils and other local services to develop a sustainable community which includes – ensuring the all local community is engaged and in contact with their community – providing awareness and insight of the local community so that issues such as social isolation, social and cultural challenges, are visible – become involved in the wellbeing of their local community population – have the resources and capabilities to address local community issues such as digital literacy & exclusion, access to transport – how the local community can support local resilience as we saw in the pandemic response. Centrally government must support this with resources, funding, enablement and infrastructure if it is to be successful. This would release the resources and potential of local communities. Communities “helping themselves” is also known to improve the sense of wellbeing, esteem and belonging. Existing local authority mandated responsibilities include the provision of many services but as we know these are under considerable and growing pressure. We need to exploit resources at a closer community level. Submitted on behalf of the Greater Lincolnshire UN Association
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