Current Goals - Objectives for Year 3

Housing
Raising the physical standards of properties is our key priority within this theme, in particular to increase the number of homes achieving the decent homes standard.

Constant progress has been made to reduce the number of “eyesores” and “disrepairs” and our aim this year is to further reduce eyesores (to 298) and disrepairs (to 102).

Strengthening Relationships with owners, landlords and tenants will enable us to target advice and information and in turn will lead to the overall improvement of standards and housing quality.

The appointment of a new Environmental Health Officer who will focus his efforts on the NM area will ensure compliance with all standards and taking enforcement action when necessary.

Springbourne in Bloom is being extended to Boscombe in Bloom, with displays planned throughout the area and young people in schools heavily involved in planting.

Environment
The group will continue to develop and implement ideas on education to encourage people to make good use of and look after their environment, including enhancing recycling.

The recommendations arising from the Environmental Audit will be put to the council and the group will endeavour to ensure that the Local Authority includes some of these in their long term plan, to ensure continued improvement within the NM area.

Plans for a small play area in The Crescent and further upgrading of Churchill Gardens are
in hand.

Health
Our health survey and examination of the updated indices of deprivation has provided us with appropriate baseline and focussed our work. Working closely with the Healthy Living centre we now have clear targets for health and are developing interventions to tackle these issues. In the main it is hoped that HLC will deliver against these targets.

Education
With the increased amount of baseline data being available and on the information this provides, our two local secondary schools hope to implement a scheme called “Restorative Justice”. This is a way of tackling difficult behaviour in a constructive way. Experience from elsewhere shows this can radically improve how people behave towards each other and can reduce school exclusions and truancy.

Community Safety
Following on from the work carried out by our GOSW funded crime and drugs worker, we expect to see and will work towards further reductions of at least 5% in the following crimes - burglary, robbery, vehicle crime and violent crime.

Employment
Our employment outreach worker will engage with at least 100 people and move them into or closer to work. However, we have really only begun to tackle this issue and hope to develop many new ideas this year. In particular we are keen to ensure that we target employment, volunteering and other recreational opportunities to people in recovery from addictions.

Youth and leisure opportunities
This year will see the building of a “state of the art” skate park in Kings Park, which NM has contributed to, but we are aware that this area still lacks adequate youth provision and we will work closely with youth services to increase provision.

Building on the success of last years Radio Kidz (summer radio project) we will use this years youth radio station to find out what young people themselves want from their area and services. What young people say through the four weeks of programmes, phone ins and events will influence the areas youth strategy.

Planning
We will work with Planning to influence the “Statement of Community Involvement” which will set out how the Council involves communities in planning decisions and planning policies. Following on from that we will endeavour to ensure that the new Planning policies reflect local needs.

Succession
A major task for this year is planning for the time after NM money runs out (2009). We want to maintain the way of working and ensure that our successful initiatives continue locally and are rolled out to other areas.