What does Dunbar Community Council do … and why?
Dunbar Community Council reviewed its vision and purposes in March 2014 and felt that it was important that we should tell you what we do and why we do it.
Dunbar Community Council has an overarching vision for Dunbar that it should be a community that is –
Vibrant – with a strong local voice, good quality of life, supporting local culture and historic infrastructure
Resilient – working towards an attractive and sustainable local economy
Inclusive – where everyone has the opportunity to participate in community life as fully as possible
We aim to bring our shared vision to a reality by focusing our activities into two key areas:
Communication
This is the most important role for the Community Council. We are the conduit for conveying information from the community to ELC and other government bodies and vice versa. We know that communication is not as good as it might be and therefore, we will work to enable effective networking and project planning between local groups and organisations.
Support
We want Dunbar to be an economic success story and a town that is really good to live and work in. To this end, we will:
- support sustainable economic development initiatives and the environmental enhancement or our town.
- support the promotion of our town and our community to the wider world.
- support, encourage and promote participation in community life.
Projects that we aim to tackle over our tenure will be aimed at improving both community communication and community support mechanisms.
To improve communications, we aim to:
- Review and improve our website, keeping it informative and up to date
- Plan and implement a regime that ensures that information is displayed in non-digital format on the Town Noticeboards and in the Bleachingfield Library
- Design and implement a protocol for gathering and disseminating community views on issues that matter to us all and communicating these to East Lothian Council and others as appropriate
- Improve access to the Community Council as a body and to Community Councillors in particular
- Design and improve mechanisms for sharing information between local community groups
To improve ways in which we can support our community, we aim to:
- capture an agreed economic development vision (to include review of past plans & strategies) and effectively communicate this to our community. This vision will inform the decisions we take when being asked to support initiatives.
- establish links with and provide support to key players who can support economic development.
- establish clear & transparent criteria and priorities for the assessment of applications for funding through the Local Priorities Grants scheme.
- promote Dunbar Christmas Lights and Dunbar Civic Week and manage these initiatives through sub-committees of Dunbar Community Council.
- establish a mechanism for wider public recognition of work done by community volunteers
- promote activities and support community groups where there is the potential to increase community engagement in issues that affect local people.
We can’t guarantee that we will achieve all of this…. but we will do our very best!