We are aiming to get our city running better. This means tackling the immediate financial and social crises that present themselves, but not getting bound up in them. It means keeping a clear head to take the overview and the long view to ensure we are making best use of all the city’s collective resources.

To this end Asher Craig and I are launching a two pronged piece of work to map the present and plan the future, shape a distribution and role of community assets and set out a picture of the shape of Bristol’s Voluntary Community Sector (VCS).

Community Assets: Bristol City Council has an interactive map of assets in communities right across the city. You can have a look at the map here: http://maps.bristol.gov.uk/pinpoint/.

Please have a look at the map and think through how you think the network of assets could best be organised. It covers amenities such as community centres, GP surgeries, children’s centres, schools, faith groups, youth clubs etc. The challenge is to work with the city to collectively to make conscious decisions on what should be located where and how different services and groups could best interact.

We’ll run another process in parallel with this on the VCS. We want to work with the VCS to sketch what Bristol wants/needs the VCS to be in 10-15 years. We want to set out what the VCS needs to be in terms of skill set, size, geographical coverage, financial modelling. Once decided the city can ensure its commissioning and grant making process delivers that. At present we run commissioning and grant making decisions that are in and of themselves good, but don’t align to any overarching agreed plan for Bristol.

We want both processes completed by the end of January 2018 and they will form a core part of the One Bristol City Plan.