BRADFORD TRIDENT - Serving The Community

Bradford Trident has many tiers of community Involvement and involves individuals, groups, Voluntary organisation and whole communities in the regeneration of the area via its Board, Community Council, Forums and Neighbourhood groups over the last 10 years. It has a thriving volunteer base that extends beyond the area. These tiers can be described under three main headings;

The Board

The Board has a representation of 24 Directors that includes 12 Community Councillors; these are elected representatives from the community, businesses, Schools and faith organisations. In addition the Community Councillors act as advocates for their communities to help shape the delivery of local services. All these compliment the Ward Councillors and help achieve more of representative view on the delivery of statutory services in the BD5 area.

Forums

From the onset in 2000 there were quite a number of forums which evolved into district wide forums such as the women's Forum and others such as the Youth Forum became involved in other district wide structures which included the Youth Parliament. Another forum, The Trident Voluntary Sector Forum has evolved into an electronic media forum of sharing ideas, raising issues, sharing funding opportunities and sign posting including supporting voluntary groups with funding applications. Others have existed in the original form and have worked quite well such as the Faith Forum that has won National Awards from the Home Office for its cohesion work with faith communities. Forums have evolved over time and have been effective. Currently the Trident forums that are in existence and operating locally are the Faith Forum and the Trident Voluntary Sector Forum.

Neighbourhood Association/Groups

Neighbourhood Action Groups (NAGs) started in 2003 and have been a very useful media for local residents concerned about grass root issues to raise them and have them resolved. They have served as a tremendously useful tool to have residents voices heard and have given local people the power to influence change at the Neighbourhood level.

NAGs have always worked well to compliment the work of Bradford Councils Neighbourhood Support Services and have been seen as a useful resource for Area Development Officer and Ward Coordinators who work within the Councils Neighbourhood Support Service. In recent history, post 2007, the Neighbourhood Action groups with the exception of one, out of choice of its members, West Bowling NAG have assimilated and formed as Management Committee's of our Neighbourhood Centres. Marshfield NAG has become Marshfield Neighbourhood Association (MNA) associated with the Mayfield Centre and Little Horton and Park Lane NAGs have merged to form the Park lane Neighbourhood Association (PLNA) associated with the Park lane Centre.

It is worth mentioning that when involving communities and giving them opportunities to be involved its imperative that approaches and structures created need to be engineered with inclusiveness in mind. There is no simple rule or all for one approach, our community involvement structures allow all manners of individuals to be involved as effectively as possible.