East Bucks Community Board

Board Chairman Chris Poll

Vice Chair Julie Ward

Community Board Manager Michelle Parker  

Buckinghamshire Council

Walton Street  |  Aylesbury |  Buckinghamshire   |  HP20 1UA

(01296 387817) or (07930 950 900)

Michelle.Parker@buckinghamshire.gov.uk

Email on behalf of Steve Bowles, Cabinet Member for Communities

1st July 2025

Dear Town & Parish Councils

Many of you will be aware that a new community board model came into effect which has taken the boards from 16 to 8, with a budget of £250k across the 8 boards to support delivery of agreed priorities.

A briefing was held for the new Chairmen last week where details of the board operations for the new model were shared.  The Community Board Managers and Chairmen are now meeting to agree their approach for delivering their board and establishing priorities; the Board Managers will be in touch with town and parish councils in due course.

Due to the larger areas the boards now cover the focus of the boards will be on community engagement to improve local place for communities by working with communities, partners and internal Buckinghamshire Council services to understand local issues and establish priorities to help resolve or improve these.

Through 'Community Conversations' - regular conversations/meetings/ workshops/action groups Community Board Managers will have with Community Board Chairmen, ward members, town and parish councils, residents and other partners such as the VCSE and local community groups, the Board Managers will gather intelligence at a local level,  listen to the voice of the local communities to help develop and inform the priorities for the ward area and into Board priorities.

The Board Managers have been gathering data and insight across the unitary wards to help inform discussions when they meet ward councillors and get their local intelligence and understand local concerns or issues and what may be needed to help address these.  From these discussions they will create a list of priorities for each ward to discuss with the Chairmen, Board Managers and ward councillors to agree a top priority list for the year and the anticipated funding (or not) required to deliver these.   The funding available to each Board will only be used to deliver these priorities and will be approved by the Board Chairmen and ward member who owns the priority.  A list of agreed priorities will be shared with all Board members.  

We will be exploring opportunities to deliver through joint working and galvanising partners, and sourcing external funds. We will continue to lever contributory funding were possible to make the community board funding go further.

Please note there is no external funding application process - the boards are not grant funders.

For organisations who would have traditionally looked to the boards for funding, Board Managers will be able to help direct them to funding/grant opportunities available at the time as the team keep a database of what is on offer.