Report of the City Solicitor

This report provides an update on the draft Our Manchester Strategy – Forward to 2025 reset document. A draft of the reset Strategy is appended to this report.

The Committee received a report of the City Solicitor which provided an update on the draft Our Manchester Strategy – Forward to 2025 reset document. A draft of the reset Strategy was appended to the report.  The report stated that achieving Manchester’s zero carbon target was reflected throughout the work on the Our Manchester Strategy reset and would be clearly captured in the final reset document.

The main points and themes within the report included:

• Background to the Our Manchester Strategy reset;
• Our Manchester Strategy – Forward to 2025;
• Final design and communications; and
• Next steps.

Some of the key points that arose from the Committee’s discussions were:

• How successful had the consultation been in reaching different communities, particularly taking into account the impact of the pandemic and digital exclusion; and
• Was a breakdown of respondents by age, race and sex available.

The Policy and Partnerships Manager outlined the work undertaken to reach people who were digitally excluded when carrying out the consultation on the Strategy, despite the restrictions imposed by the pandemic.  This included producing paper copies of the survey, which were distributed through a range of means including in the emergency food response parcels, through Age Friendly newsletters and through community hubs.  She advised Members that it had also been translated into the top ten most common languages other than English spoken in Manchester and that targeted engagement had taken place with under-represented communities through community and voluntary organisations and that this had included face-to-face engagement under COVID safety guidelines.  She reported that some community groups had also supported residents to engage with the consultation online.  She advised the Committee that the Council would continue to build on this work to improve inclusion.  The Deputy Leader highlighted that the number of respondents was twice the number who had responded to the consultation on the original Strategy.  

The Policy and Partnerships Manager advised Members that a demographic breakdown of the respondents to the consultation had been included in a report to the Resources and Governance Scrutiny Committee on 3 November 2020 and she offered to share this with the Committee Members.  She informed the Committee that this information was only available where respondents had provided it and that completing the demographic data had not been made a requirement as it could deter some people from responding.  She advised Members that about 70% of the respondents to the universal survey had provided this information and that work would be taking place to look at how this could be increased in future.  She informed the Committee that the demographic data from respondents had been compared to the overall statistics for the city and, where certain groups or neighbourhoods were under-represented, targeted work had taken place to address this. 

In response to a Member’s question about the extent to which the Strategy had succeeded in addressing poverty, the Policy and Partnerships Manager advised that progress against the Our Manchester Strategy was reported on annually in the State of the City report.  She also confirmed that the Council had engaged with the Poverty Truth Commission as part of the work on the Strategy reset.

In response to a Member’s question about which sectors of the economy were expected to have job opportunities as the city recovered from the pandemic, the Chair advised that this had been discussed at that day’s meeting of the Economy Scrutiny Committee and suggested that Members who were interested could watch the recording on that meeting.

Decision

To thank the Deputy Leader and officers and to note the report.