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Let's do it - shared success across Bury

Our Vision and Strategy

The Let's Do It! Strategy sets out a clear ambition and delivery plan for the next 10 years. But it is not just a strategy for service improvement, it is a radical new proposition for community power; putting relationships first and creating a borough in which every single person plays their part.

Our vision for Bury 2030 is built upon conversations with communities and the goal is simple: to stand out as a place that is achieving faster economic growth than the national average, with lower than national average levels of deprivation.

This is, however, challenging given our starting point in 2020:

Bury is less deprived than others but over the last four years direction of travel has changed and...

  • Bury has become relatively more deprived compared to others; more people are living in (the same) areas of deprivation now than in 2015
  • The proportion of your life spent in good health has decreased by two years for men, and increased by four years for women
  • The likelihood of being in work has reduced from 73% to 71%
  • Attainment in primary schools has got better but other places are improving faster

By 2030 we will collectively tackle these deep-rooted issues by giving everyone the encouragement and support to play their part, joining together the delivery of all public services as one and delivering an ambitious plan for both social and economic infrastructure.

Victoria Wood statue

We have an opportunity to develop every township in the borough to be better and stronger than before the pandemic. We can tackle the causes of inequality. We can ensure that our children have a better start in life, with access to improved education and broader horizons. We can help every adult to have the opportunity to be their very best through access to high quality, local work. We can make sure that older residents stay connected and independent. We can confront the great challenges ahead of us, from supporting local businesses to recover and thrive, to delivering net zero emissions and a cleaner environment for all.

This Bury 2030 Community Strategy sets out the ambition and ideas of our communities, businesses and public service leaders to build back a better borough of Bury over the next ten years.

"Let's do it... !"

Let's Do It Strategy: Contents

Introduction

Over the past year we have taken a long, hard look at ourselves as the organisations that serve the borough, and at the borough as a place to live, work and enjoy.

We have looked at our strengths, for example: our accolade as the first Greater Manchester Town of Culture in 2020; our new integrated ways of delivering health and social care; our award- winning town centres and green spaces and our resilient communities that are supporting each other and standing strong in the face of a global pandemic.

We have also acknowledged our challenges. There is significant work to be done to improve educational outcomes across our borough. Our average life expectancy has stopped improving and the pockets of deprivation that existed in 2010 and 2015 still persist.

In the midst of this work the Covid-19 pandemic presented the greatest challenge that our communities, businesses and public services have ever faced. As both a health and economic crisis, it has highlighted many of the underlying problems that existed in our borough, from ill health to poor life chances. We have lost too many of our residents to Covid-19 and it has also taken its toll on our businesses and town centres. It is clear we will be dealing with the consequences for some time.

But the response to the pandemic also acts as a guide to a new approach to working together to improve our borough. An approach in which everyone, from communities and businesses, to the Council and our partners, must pull together. It is one in which the power of the relationships within and amongst these groups is what matters most. Our emergency response instils us with the belief that, when we work together, we can make a real difference.

In recent months we have talked with people who are passionate about the future of our borough: local people, community groups, public service providers and businesses large and small. We have shared our hopes for the next ten years, listened to and learnt from theirs, and discussed how together we can realise them.

This Bury 2030 Strategy is the sum of these conversations. The reforms laid out in this plan are wide-ranging, from health to housing, from commerce to communities.

But this is not just a strategy for service improvement, it is a radical new proposition for community power; putting relationships first and creating a borough in which every single person plays their part.

The time has come for us to decide what our future will be. This strategy sets out a clear ambition and delivery plan for the next ten years.

So, as one of our borough's most famous daughters, Victoria Wood, Prestwich-born and Bury-raised, once said:

"Let's do it... !"

Leader of the Council,
Chair of NHS Bury Clinical Commissioning Group.

Context

Any programme of reform that looks forward to 2030 has to start with an honest reflection of its starting point. Writing this in 2020 our borough, and the nation at large, is facing enormous social, health and economic hardships as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Recovering from this is a challenge the like of which for many has not been seen in living memory.

Covid-19 has affected everyone in our borough. Every business and every community has been changed in some way. At best, the pandemic has been disruptive and challenging. At worst, it has been devastating. We have lost many residents and a number of others are now managing challenging long-term health conditions. Many businesses have been forced to let go of staff, and others to close entirely. Given the prolonged response further business closures and redundancies are, tragically, inevitable. In many cases the impact has fallen most often on those least able to bear the strain. This crisis has been unequal and unfair, revealing and exacerbating the inequalities in our society.

However, recent months have also revealed some positive aspects of life in our borough. The strength of our communities, the spirit of our residents, and the power of our partnerships and relationships has been clear to see. For example, the joint working between partners in the health and care system - primary care, hospital services, community based services, and private care providers - has been exceptional in responding to the crisis.

Given this context our Bury 2030 strategy must start with a period of activity focused on emergency recovery.

This decade of reform begins with a two-year plan that attempts to repair the damage caused by the pandemic. The initial priorities are to:

  • Respond to issues such as poverty and the health impacts of Covid-19 on our communities and the health system;
  • Maintain the relationships that have been forged between communities and their public services during the crisis; and
  • Put carbon neutrality at the heart of new ways of living and working in a covid-secure society.

But we must look further ahead too. We have an unprecedented opportunity to address some of our deepest challenges, from building a fairer society that leaves no-one behind, to tackling the climate emergency, as well as addressing inequalities of opportunity within our borough. To do this we will embrace the national "Levelling Up" agenda with investment propositions that seek to raise productivity; empower people in places; improve education standards and maximise employment to aid economic recovery.

Throughout this plan, we have laid out the immediate priorities that fall within the initial two-year recovery plan, alongside our longer- term goals. Together, they are how our borough, as part of the wider Greater Manchester city region, will build back better.

Our vision

Our vision for Bury 2030 is built upon conversations with communities and the goal is simple: to stand out as a place that is achieving faster economic growth than the national average, with lower than national average levels of deprivation.

This is, however, challenging given our starting point in 2020:

  • Bury is less deprived than others but over the last four years direction of travel has changed and...
    • Bury has become relatively more deprived compared to others; more people are living in (the same) areas of deprivation now than in 2015
      (Indices of Multiple Deprivation).
    • Proportion of your life spent in good health:
      • Down for men by two years
      • Up for women by four years
        (ONS)
    • Likelihood of being in work has reduced from 73% to 71%:
      • Decline due to the number of women who are now not in work
        (ONS)
    • Attainment in primary schools has got better but other places are improving faster:
      • Average attainment at KS4 - Down
      • However, performance post-16 - Up
        (DfE)

By 2030 we will collectively tackle these deep rooted issues by giving everyone the encouragement and support to play their part; joining together the delivery of all public services as one and delivering an ambitious plan for both social and economic infrastructure.

How will we measure our progress?

Our ambition is that by 2030:

The borough of Bury will have made the fastest improvement in reducing levels of deprivation than any other post-industrial northern locality.

  • We will be measured against comparable boroughs and the Greater Manchester authorities.
  • To achieve this means reversing the decline seen in 2015.
  • It is dependent on us making progress against all the aspects of this Strategy particularly economic growth
  • It accepts the impact of the pandemic but sets out an ambition to recover faster than others.

We will measure our progress to achieving this ambition by tracking seven core outcome measures which are explained in more detail later in this document:

  1. Improved quality of life
  2. Improved early years development
  3. Improved educational attainment
  4. Increased adult skill levels and employability
  5. Inclusive economic growth
  6. Carbon neutrality by 2038
  7. Improved digital connectivity
What local people have said this vision will achieve

Our strategy: Let's do it!

The vision for 2030 has been developed and tested with our communities. Local people have said this vision will achieve:

  • A better future for the children of the borough
  • A chance to feel more part of the borough
  • More green spaces and environmentally friendly
  • A better quality of life

But people also said they identify locally within their townships and neighbourhoods, not borough-wide. Whilst many agree with the vision there is less confidence that it will be delivered. There have been big ideas before but change has not always happened. We believe things are different now.

Things have changed: During the pandemic we have started to work together in different ways.

The Voluntary, Community and Faith Alliance (VCFA) has mobilised over 800 volunteers who have supported thousands of vulnerable people over the last year and are now working on community projects as well. Age UK is now providing a befriending service in partnership with the Community Hubs; our food banks are working together and setting up pantries to maintain user's independence; and community leaders have established the Bury Community Support Network to connect with Council hardship support and the Citizens Advice Bureau.

Feedback also tells us that statutory services are working better with parents and carers of children and young people with Special Educational Needs, co-design in action.

We have established multi-disciplinary teams to deliver our Covid response, for example, the clinicians delivering vaccinations and covid testing are being supported logistically by hundreds of volunteers from the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, communities and furloughed employees.

The way we deliver health and care services is increasingly integrated with staff from different organisations working more effectively together as if they were one organisation. Increasingly this joined up working is delivered through five integrated neighbourhood teams across the borough and focused on the prevention of poor health and early intervention to avoid unplanned care in hospital and other settings.

Health and Care Teams in Neighbourhoods are working alongside community hubs - connecting and supporting the assets of local communities and supporting vulnerable residents to be more independent and connected. Increasingly heath and care teams are working closely and on the same neighbourhood footprint with staff from other public services - e.g. housing providers, GMP, schools.

This strategy is about how to maintain the momentum of this movement:

  • Let's... All play our part in local communities; with enterprising spirit; working together in a way that recognises and celebrates the assets and strengths of our communities and our residents
  • Do it... by connecting everyone to the plans for economic growth and public service improvement across every township.

Turning principles into priorities - Let's do it...

The strategy sets out four clear principles that will drive everything we do and a clear set of priorities to create the conditions for change.

Listen Trust Collaborate

Local neighbourhoods

  • Integrated public service teams in neighbourhoods
  • Carbon neutral, including:
    • eco-housing
    • public sector emissions
    • recycling and clean air plan
    • green and blue infrastructure
Pride Courage Innovation

Enterprise to drive economic growth and inclusion

  • Economic Strategy including Covid recovery
  • Spatial plan: Local and places for everyone
  • All-age skills strategy, early years; school improvement; further and higher education
  • Regeneration plans -
    • Radcliffe SRF
    • Bury Town Centre Masterplan
    • Ramsbottom Plan
    • Uplands, Whitefield
    • Prestwich Town Centre
Dignity Kindness Flexibility

Delivering Together

  • Community voice
  • A cultural legacy
  • Joined up health and social care
  • Digital and transport connectivity
Skills Success Potential

A Strength-based approach

  • Community wealth building
  • Community capacity
  • Population health
  • Inclusion

Let's... All work together with a common approach

These are the Bury 2030 principles that will guide our work:

Local neighbourhoods

We know that it is the relationships, not services, which truly make the difference to people's lives. We want to build on this through empowered local communities within each township where individuals, families and communities are in control and at the heart of decision making. We will bring our collective talents, energies and community power together for the greater good by:

  • Engaging with people where and how they live
  • Hearing all voices and learning from them
  • Trusting and helping each other, always working together
  • Listening when others talk, helping and enabling
  • Supporting development and growth and removing barriers to collaboration

In support of this we will work to bring public services together as one team in each neighbourhood, in line with these principles.

An Enterprising spirit

We are known for our spirit of enterprise and innovation and we will harness that spirit to raise aspirations to grow and develop our people and businesses. We will remove the barriers that prevent people from getting on and connect local people to opportunities through their skills, confidence and relationships by:

  • Demonstrating pride in our collective and individual achievements and in the place where we live
  • Ensuring everyone has an equal voice and equal life chances by harnessing and nurturing all talents
  • Championing innovation, always looking for ways to improve quality of life for all
  • Being courageous and stepping out of our comfort zone to help ourselves and others
  • Opening doors at every opportunity

Delivering Together

This strategy represents a completely new relationship between public services, communities and businesses which is based on co-design and accountability for shared decision making. It is about doing "with" not "to" by bringing a greater focus on wellbeing, prevention and early intervention. We will all take responsibility for making a difference by:

  • Committing to making a positive, practical difference in addressing and tackling our challenges
  • Valuing and developing the role and voices of people and communities to shape and deliver, wherever we can
  • Empowering residents and groups to take decisions and harness resources
  • Strength through cultural diversity
  • Growing relationships and new connections across boundaries
  • Demonstrating dignity, kindness and respect in everything we do

A Strengths-based approach

Our vision is for a place in which people are helped to make the best of themselves, by recognising and building on the strengths not deficits of all our children, families and our communities and taking an evidence-led understanding of risk and impact to ensure the right intervention at the right time. We will do this by:

  • Really listening to understand each other and our shared potential
  • Being flexible and putting our energies into where we can make the most positive difference; asking 'what matters to you?'
  • Being open to trying new things and doing things differently
  • Valuing the skills, strengths and successes of individuals and communities

Do it!... Deliver on our plans for community and economic development where we all play our part

The spirit of the people of our borough has always been our greatest asset, but the conditions must exist for this mindset to thrive.

The next pages describe our approach to progressing the Bury 2030 vision. They describe:

  • The plans the Council and our public sector partnershave to improve infrastructure and create conditions for growth;
  • The way in which every resident can get involved to make even small changes which, together, would make a big difference.

This is a long-term strategy from which rolling two-year delivery plans will be produced with clear priorities for each period, informed by progress and outcomes across the partnership. The first two years will be focused on supporting emergency recovery including recovery of the health and care system and delivering "Levelling Up" priorities around productivity; place-based empowerment; improving education standards and maximising employment to aid economic recovery.

Our specific priorities for 2020 - 2022 are to:

  1. Deliver an economic recovery strategy including a statutory development plan and regeneration plans in Radcliffe; Ramsbottom; Whitefield, Prestwich and Bury town centres.
  2. Progress towards carbon neutrality with particular progress in decarbonising public buildings.
  3. Expand our integrated neighbourhood teams in health and care and with wider public services, to support our children, families and communities; maximise the untapped potential of the Voluntary Community and Faith Alliance (VCFA) and orientate towards prevention and a personalised "whole person" approach to building on strengths and assets.
  4. Progress our inclusion strategy to ensure every community has a voice, is embraced and celebrated.
  5. Deliver our key priority areas for health and care transformation: urgent care, planned care, community based services, mental health and well being and learning disabilities and a greater emphasis on prevention.
  6. Maintaining progress with educational improvement and employment, pre-employment and apprentice opportunities for young people, including targeted work for school age and school leavers who have been disaffected because of the pandemic and through the delivery of the new high school in Radcliffe and Special School in the borough.

Local neighbourhoods

Index of Multiple Deprivation map

Our borough is the place we are proud to call home. It includes six towns built within areas of extraordinary natural beauty. It is a place rich in possibility which we must preserve, improve and cherish for future generations

We want to recognise the distinct identities of our townships and the diversity of each community; to invest in our town centres; create more spaces where people can meet and enable access to affordable decent housing for all. As we do this we are committed to becoming eco leaders, ensuring future generations can enjoy our green spaces and breathe clean air.

Overall our borough is relatively less deprived than our statistical neighbours but our trend is a negative one. Deprivation is highly concentrated and was reported to be getting worse in both 2019 and 2015. To reverse this trend and close the inequalities gap we will target our resources locally, in the places that need them most. Public services and others will work together better, seamlessly and with knowledge of communities. We will create public service hubs which work within and across townships on a neighbourhood footprint, to bring different agencies together to target resources around greatest need, understand and galvanise community assets and focus on prevention as well as management of risk

This local approach provides a foundation stone to develop a different relationship with residents and communities to connect people together. To do this, all of our work in neighbourhoods will be guided by the LETS principles: taking a local approach; driving enterprise; working together and with a strengths based approach.

Let's Do It!... Looking after our local neighbourhoods

Do your bit to look after our clean and green space. Join a community clean-up team; find out about what and how to recycle more; make changes in your lifestyle to consume less and move us towards our carbon neutral goals. Connect through your local community hub if you want to get involved

A neighbourhood delivery model

In Prestwich, Radcliffe, Whitefield, Ramsbottom and Bury we will establish multi-disciplined neighbourhood teams which, between them, will cover the whole borough with activity comprised of.

  • A Community Hub which will support people to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing and seek support in the community in the first instance, including partnering with existing community services such as the Staying Well service and Community Education.
  • The existing health and care integrated teams which, together with primary care services, focus on early intervention; prevention and the avoidance of unplanned care. The teams actively case manage the care for people with chronic, long term physical and mental health conditions, to help them remain in control of their care and live well at home.
  • Wider public service early help team will target our support to help vulnerable people to access opportunities and create new ones on their own, without creating long-term dependency on public assistance. The teams will provide joined-up support from social workers, schools, housing, youth services, employment teams, probation, police and other services. This new network will build on the children's early help teams to provide support across whole families and communities.

Making our borough a safe place to live

Our Community Safety Partnership leads the local implementation of the Greater Manchester Stronger Together community safety strategy. By 2022 the partnership will have created a refreshed strategy for the remainder of this framework. The current five objectives are to:

  • Protect and support vulnerable people with a focus on Early Intervention and developing a new Complex Safeguarding Plan.
  • Put victims first and increase the numbers of victims we support.
  • Reduce reoffending through a "restorative justice model".
  • Build stable, cohesive communities and reduce Hate Crimes.
  • Develop a partnership approach to community safety across public services and with the local community.

Putting our borough on track for carbon neutrality

In 2019, Bury Council announced a climate emergency, striving to be carbon neutral by 2030 and a 'single-use plastic' free borough by 2022. Significant progress has been made, with carbon emissions in Bury down 31 percent between 2007 and 2017, but carbon neutrality is unlikely to be possible by 2030. We will instead align our commitments to that of Greater Manchester's other districts and target carbon neutrality by 2038. To achieve this and more, we will:

  • Create a Climate Action Strategy including:
    • Making our public estate carbon neutral.
    • Supporting greener modes of transport in our borough.
    • Creating a Greater Manchester Clean Air Zone.
    • Developing a Housing Strategy for carbon neutral homes.
    • Developing the City Forest Park, a 330 hectare urban forest in partnership with Salford and Bolton Councils.
  • Help develop the Greater Manchester Clean Air Action Plan to reduce nitrogen dioxide levels generated mainly by road vehicles.
  • Develop a "green and blue infrastructure strategy" to lay out how the borough will make the most of its access both to beautiful green spaces (the "green") and the two greater waterways the River Irwell and the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal (the "blue").

Building houses that are homes

Our new housing strategy recognises the need to make a house a home, with a series of commitments to achieving that, including:

  • A housing strategy for every township, shaped by our development and regeneration plans to support the future of each town centre and neighbourhood.
  • More, high-quality and low-carbon homes in the borough.
  • More affordable homes, to get everyone on the housing ladder
  • A more dynamic housing market, with a broader range of housing tenures and more tailored support for people.
  • Additional support that enables people to live healthily and well in their own community long into later life.
  • Eliminating rough sleeping by 2025, by helping homeless people achieve financial independence.

Enterprise

Bury was at the centre of the first industrial revolution, home to entrepreneurs like John Kay, the inventor of the flying shuttle , who put the north of England at the centre of the world. Bury will also be at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution, with the resources for our entrepreneurs and innovators to work with digital technology. This will be in the context of one of the biggest economic challenges of a generation, as we lead economic recovery from the Covid 19 pandemic.

We want our borough to offer a unique blend of opportunity to prosper and for people to live well; to provide green, blue and digital infrastructure and grow the spaces for businesses to incubate and expand. Our towns will become places where businesses thrive and all our residents have the skills and aspiration to access high quality work, with a genuine prospect of progress and promotion.

In Bury we already have two long established University centres and ambitions to extend Higher Education opportunities for our communities. From September 2021 Bury College will be delivering Health, Digital, Childcare and Education T levels. In 2022 it will be opening a brand new Health and Life Sciences and Digital building. The college is also working towards the delivery of an undergraduate Nursing qualification in 2022 in partnership with the University of Salford

The driver of reform in Bury for the next 10 years is to create a place that stands out not just in Greater Manchester but nationally as the example of what inclusive growth looks like. Together, through this strategy, partners will seek to address the underlying drivers of inequalities and through our economic and all age skills development plans achieve a fairer distribution of wealth and income

Let's Do It!... Building Back Better in our Enterprising borough

If you are an employer, contact one of our Hubs and talk to them about setting up apprenticeships and hosting work experience placements. We are also seeking volunteers to help mentor people looking for work across the borough. Connect with the Bury Business Leaders' network if you think you do your bit to make our vision of inclusive growth a reality.

Delivering an economic strategy

Bury has been working with Barclays Bank as one of a small number of national pilot sites to help understand what make a Thriving Local Economy. We will use the learning from this research, together with

input from our business community and Greater Manchester growth Hub, to develop a local economic strategy which drives local economic growth and informs the economic recovery strategy from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Greater Manchester Independent Prosperity Review found that our borough is highly reliant on its traditional strengths in manufacturing. It also uncovered new opportunities for growth in highly skilled areas: computer programming, management, consulting, and specialised design. Since then, however, the economy has experienced a profound shock nationally which is not yet fully understood. Local economic planning must take account of the impact of the emergency on our business sector, informed by the local Business Leader's Group and a piece of deep-dive research commissioned by the council including evaluation of the impact of Covid-19 emergency business grants.

Over the next 10 years we will:

  • Grow our business base in both existing and emerging sectors.
  • Develop the conditions and capacity for business to grow, particularly space for business incubation and expansion.
  • Connect the commercial pipeline to the curriculum in our schools and colleges to ensure that local people have the skills and aspiration to access quality local jobs. Sadly, that is not yet true of Bury today. Businesses are struggling to find the skills they need in our borough, with a third of recent job vacancies unfilled. By 2030, we intend to fill at least 90% of these roles with local people.

Investing in all our town centres

The sustainability of our six town centres will of course depend on the ability to attract inward investment. This is something that we have seen in Bury town centre, where considerable investment and regeneration has seen it become the third ranked retail destination in Greater Manchester, behind only Manchester city centre and the Trafford Centre. We will ensure equivalent appropriate investment is made in each of the town centres:

  • In Prestwich, we will see new, high quality and sustainable housing; more community spaces; a public service hub; a new library; and lots of flexible spaces for local entrepreneurs.
  • In Radcliffe, we will deliver the key projects identified in the Strategic Regeneration Framework, including a public service hub, refurbishment of the Market Chambers, the redevelopment of the East Lancashire Paper Mill Site for new housing, improved access to parking, a new leisure centre, and a new secondary school.
  • In Bury, we will produce an updated masterplan for the town centre to guide its future role, function and physical development and regeneration. There will also be new regeneration, including the redevelopment of the former police and fire station sites, a new Flexi Hall adjacent to the market, a replacement Transport Interchange, a new multi-agency public building as well as improvements to areas that have become tired and run down.
  • In Ramsbottom, we will soften the impact of traffic by making it less reliant on car travel, build more communal space, and create more scenic, river access points. We will develop a townscape plan, identifying a ten-year plan for a series of works to further enhance the town centre, open up the river and promote independent trading.
  • In Tottington and Whitefield, we will continue to support the vitality of the town centres where opportunities arise.

Equipping residents with the skills they need to thrive

Our borough once had an enviable reputation for educational excellence and it is our ambition to reclaim this. This is particularly important to mitigate the risk to our children and school leavers of disruption throughout the pandemic. We are committing to the development of an all-age skills strategy for residents which includes:

  • Ongoing educational improvement to continue to drive up standards for our 29 000 school children. Our strongest Head Teachers are mentoring others and we are supporting top performing schools to support those seeking to lift standards
  • Ongoing investment in Adult Education through the Council's Community Learning Service
  • A borough-wide apprenticeship strategy, asking any company that bids for public sector contracts to provide apprenticeships, internships and pre-employment opportunities to be reserved for residents of the borough.
  • Launching a bespoke version of Barclays's LifeSkills programme, in partnership with the bank, to raise aspirations across our borough and equip school leavers with the professional and personal finance skills they need to thrive. Across the country, these programmes are already helping 6.7 million young people in the UK.
  • The development of new education settings including delivering the new high school in Radcliffe and new Special School in the borough. We will continue to develop our partnership with all our schools and colleges to ensure the right places, facilities and opportunities are available into the future for our children and young people.
  • We will be developing our partnership with our local Further and Higher education Colleges and Universities to expand opportunities for our young people.

Delivering Together

Empowered volunteerism

The vision for Bury 2030 is to enable every person in the borough to fully participate in, and shape, our future by supporting people to be themselves and to speak out about ideas and concerns. Our borough should be a place where people are helped to make the best of themselves, wherever they are born and whoever they are born to.

Achieving this requires us to develop relationships at every level: the relationship of front line staff between each other and with residents; within communities; and between community groups and public services; and a relationship of trust between the Council, the combined authority and central government. This will be achieved by:

  • Driving change from the service front line which requires the Council, the OCO and other public bodies in the borough to become better at being learning organisations
  • Pursuing the science of happiness through our culture strategy including the Victoria Wood Happy Festival and supporting communities to maintain aspiration, optimism and resilience
  • Supporting community involvement and organisations which enable people and communities to take control, including developing community assets and connecting people to them
  • Where necessary, intervening by integrating services around individuals and families at neighbourhood level into bespoke packages with lead workers
  • Driving digital inclusion to give everyone the platforms to get involved
  • Developing a network of Community Connectors and developing the role of Ward Councillors as part of a new network of Community Hubs

Let's Do It!... Get involved working together to make a difference

Why not join a groupacross the borough? We have equalities networks, faith networks, networks for those who share interests and passions. Join one and make your voice heard. Tell us about what you are doing for the community and how you think we can help. The Bury Directory has information about groups and activities to get involved with or how to establish your own

Joined-up health and social care

Across our public service providers we have resources of over £600 million devoted to health and social care, yet still we know the system is not financially sustainable. By uniting the power of residents, all health and social care providers and voluntary and community organisations, we can make major improvements to people's lives and secure the resilience of health and care for future generations. We will:

  • Continue to develop the five integrated neighbourhood teams we have established; a 600-strong team of nurses, social workers, health workers, clinicians and volunteers who, in conjunctions with primary care services, support people to live healthy lives, as part of our 'Living Well at Home' strategy. The teams specifically help those people who are at risk of multiple long-term conditions or hospital admissions and are continually increasing the numbers of people with whom they work intensively. By 2022, the teams will include further support for mental health and improve how quickly we target those who need support.
  • Make a healthy life easier in our borough, by investing in "health literacy" resources, creating a new Wellness team for the borough, and making it easier to get out and get active in our communities. We will review our Council leisure centres and create new opportunities for running, cycling and walking through the beautiful countryside that surrounds our borough. This is part of a wider focus on preventing health issues, rather than just responding to a crisis when it occurs.
  • Transforming some services to maximise quality and sustainability. This will include a focus on mental health; urgent care; planned care; community-based services; intermediate care and learning disabilities.

Transport and digital connectivity

Our townships are well connected to each other and to strong northern cities but, while we are well placed, we could be better connected to Manchester. Through the Greater Manchester Transport Strategy for 2040, we will invest tens of millions into the borough's transport infrastructure, including:

  • Improving the quality of the borough's roads, by building new routes and improving both local and major junctions to reduce congestion and pollution.
  • Expanding bus routes and improving Metro links across the borough. As part of the Northern Gateway, we will seek to ensure that there are new high-frequency bus services direct to employment opportunities including in the city of Manchester.
  • Making it easier to get around without driving, by creating new walking and cycling routes as well as access to public transport.

New technology means we no longer rely solely on transport to be connected. We will invest to ensure that digital infrastructure underpins our future by:

  • Delivering 4/5G mobile and full-fibre broadband as part of the Greater Manchester Local Full Fibre Network Programme; the largest investment of its kind in the UK. Research shows that if just 25% of local buildings had full-fibre investment, we could add £117m to the local economy.
  • Investing in the skills that will allow Bury residents to benefit from digital. Bury's £6m STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) centre will open in 2021 to complement the renowned Applied Science department at Holy Cross College in Bury. The Barclays Business Centre will be redeveloped as an "Eagles lab" to train people in the basic skills that allow them to operate well online.

Giving voice to all our communities

Our strategy for Bury 2030 is one in which the council, public services, businesses and communities all work together in pursuit of our vision. We need to ensure there are opportunities for every voice to be heard. To do this we will develop a new approach to community engagement:

  • Create new forums for different voices to be heard including a reinvigorated Youth Cabinet; business leaders through the Town Centre Boards created in response to Covid-19 and Green Township Forums.
  • We will regularly be convening Listening Events with communities of interest, such as the race events facilitated by ADAB in 2020 which informed the development of the inclusion strategy.
  • Developing connections with faith leaders through the Faith Leader's forum and particular networks such as those with the Jewish community.
  • Co-designing with our children and young people the services we provide as a partnership, developing engagement through our Children's Strategic Partnership Board with a charter which commits our work with the adults of our future.
  • Through our new network of community hubs we will organise regular fora for local communities to come together, to help shape the local agenda, develop a common approach to tackling issues and get involved in making change happen
  • Establish a network of community champions who will represent the views of their localities and connect residents to the right resources, in conjunction with ward councillors who will provide local leadership in places and drive collaboration.
  • Refresh our commitment to the Armed Forces Covenant with an action plan which supports and engages former armed forces personnel now back on civvy street.

Building a cultural legacy

In 2020 Bury was named Greater Manchester's first town of Culture. The award particularly celebrated the borough's partnership with the Victoria Wood foundation and Bury Art Museum's work to keep the connection with Wood as both a daughter of Bury and inspiration in the science of happiness by connecting skills; exploration and social connection.

The accolade continues into 2021 and, subject to the restrictions of Covid, will involve a programme of events including:

  • The "Happy" Festival of Victoria Wood's comedy.
  • Profiling the Met's artistic programme both locally and at Greater Manchester including the United We Stream digital culture programme for lockdown.
  • A calendar of events from other local groups including the Prestwich Arts Festival and Radcliffe carnival.

During 2021 the learning from the festivals and events will be developed into a culture strategy for the borough which will:

  • Maintain the borough's legacy as a cultural destination, to strengthen our cultural economy.
  • showcase the diversity and cultures of all our residents to further inclusion, including faith groups and communities of interest.
  • further community engagement by creating opportunities for local people to connect and get involved through art, by learning new skills and the pleasure of performance.

A Strengths-Based approach

"I have stayed true to that first idea that people can have a day in their lives that is very important and if they can reconnect with that day, reconnect with the people they were then, they can suddenly revive their emotions".

Our strengths based approach means focusing on individuals strengths and not on their weaknesses. This includes people s personal resilience and capabilities but also on the current and potential social and community networks; it puts the emphasis on achieving outcomes, not focusing on processes and services, and means everyone works together to get results.

To deliver through a strengths based approach we will be guided by the principles of:

  • Listening to what is important to residents within each neighbourhood and using local intelligence to help identify the local outcomes.
  • Supporting each neighbourhood to determine its own priorities which will influence where we all focus our efforts.
  • Recognising and valuing the important contribution of voluntary, community and faith groups in improving health and wellbeing.
  • Starting by recognising the things that people and places have and gain an understanding of what a good life means for them and targeting of resources based on risk.
  • Empowering public service staff to support people in ways that work for them. Staff will not constrained by organisational boundaries and will work together to respond to individual and community needs.

Let's Do It!... Be part of playing to our strengths to deliver our vision for Bury 2030

All of us have a role to play in promoting healthier and happier lives in our borough. It is estimated that physical inactivity in our borough costs over £4.5 million each year, so getting out and getting active is both good for you and good for Bury. Keeping fit and healthier is easier and more fun to do together - walking groups, jogging groups, cycling, sports teams. Make physical activity part of your daily life - use our parks, our cycle lanes, our amazing grass roots sport clubs.The Bury Directory has information about groups and activities across the borough.

Community wealth building

Bury public services will join the Northern Care Alliance Community of Practice to leverage our collective power for social economic development and improve population health and wellbeing. Specific objectives will be to:

  • Create pre-employment opportunities for those furthest away from the employment market through placements, apprenticeships and internments.
    • For example Bury Council has already signed up to the government's Kickstart initiative and will be providing over 50 placements in 2021/22
  • Support workless residents into meaningful, quality work. This leadership will build on existing programmes such as:
    • Bury Works, the youth unemployment initiative focussed on supporting young people into work through a "Hub" approach with access to employment, wellbeing, finance and benefits advice
  • Ongoing roll out and development of the Working Well programme, designed to get long term unemployed and people with complex health and social circumstances into work. In 2021 the programme will be expanded into a Job Entry Targeted Support (JET) programme, focussed on a wider reach and earlier intervention
  • Increase the proportion of local people employed in Bury public services through economic and inclusion strategies, starting with the NCA
  • Provide coaching and peer mentoring support through NHS Career Ambassadors and maintaining the Council's partnership with Barclays who provided Life Skills coaches, to support schools and colleges with career advice and positive role models.

Building community capacity

We need to do more to reach out into the community to create opportunities for communities to bring their views and ideas to us.

To do this we will:

  • Develop Voluntary and Community Sector Infrastructure, to ensure that organisations have the support and advice they need to thrive and collaborate, and creating an environment in which small, self-led community groups can easily form and have an impact. This will include access to space and facilities through the neighbourhood hubs and a refreshed commitment to Community Asset Transfers where practicable.
  • Develop a new volunteering strategy, including a Volunteer Passport that will create new opportunities for everyone who wants to continue the extraordinary momentum picked up during the initial response to Covid-19.
  • Run peer mentoring training so that people with real life experience can support others going through similar experiences, such as those with substance abuse issues, who are homeless, or who are survivors of domestic abuse.
  • Maintain the 'Making Bury Friendly Strategy' to become a dementia, ageing well, autism, learning disability, carer and breast-feeding friendly borough, while, at the same time, reducing loneliness and social isolation for all. We are also encouraging intergenerational activities through community groups such as 'Bee Keepers', 'Corrie Gardeners', 'The Fed'; 'Rammy Men' and so many more who are linking in with school age children to share learning, build relationships and challenge perceptions.

Population health and well-being throughout life

Our health is our greatest asset which we need to invest in collectively and individually recognising that some people have less access to the resources needed for good health than others. We will:

  • Ensure every child has the best start in life through implementation of the Greater Manchester Early Years Delivery Model.
  • Further develop the borough's physical activity strategy and food and health strategy including supporting community-led groups, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to be active and access to nutritious good quality food.
  • Create the conditions where healthy options become the easy and default options. This will include investing more resources in: 'health literacy' and new opportunities for running, cycling, walking across the green space in our beautiful borough.
  • Learn lessons from our Covid-19 response to protect people from infectious diseases.

Building a more inclusive borough

Our vision for 2030 is that every member of our diverse communities feels that there is a place for them; that they are able to both be themselves and shape the community that they are a part of.

To do this, partners have signed up to a common inclusion strategy which reflects all nine of the protected characteristics in law:

  • sex
  • gender reassignment
  • race
  • disability
  • sexual orientation
  • age
  • religion or belief (or lack thereof)
  • pregnancy and maternity
  • marriage or civil partnership

The strategy also recognises additional groups defined as vulnerable and to be supported with the same level as priority.

These groups are:

  • carers
  • our Looked After Children and Care Leavers
  • Military Veterans and
  • the socio-economically vulnerable.

The strategy takes a common approach to meetings our equalities duties to these groups by removing disadvantage; meeting needs and encouraging participation in public life.

Making it happen

Delivery of this ambitious strategy will require development and support for us all to work differently. We need to continually review our skills and capacity to make change happen, but initial investments to launch 2020-2022 delivery are below:

  • We will develop our communities to understand this vision and work out how to get behind it.
  • This began with a digital lecture series called Bury Futures, which provided insight and skills development from local thought leaders on our principles for the future
  • We will develop our staff to have a shared understanding of the local needs of neighbourhoods and the skills to apply the principles of prevention, early intervention and the targeted use of our resources.
  • We will offer our residents the opportunity to become qualified community connectors, including free training to reach Level 2 of the Royal Society of Public Health accreditation standard. This will give communities the skills to really mobilise their networks and a foothold into a career in health and social care.
  • We will engage and develop our community and public service leaders to work as a team and with a clear purpose. This will start with a systems leadership development programme for around 100 local leaders.
  • We will continue to support the development of the voluntary and community sector infrastructure, with updated requirements from the VCFA infrastructure body and access to participatory grants wherever we can make them available.

This strategy is underpinned by a detailed delivery plan which sets out exactly what will be delivered and by who over the first two years of this plan.

Updates on progress made and outcomes achieved will be produced in an annual state of the borough report.

The strategy and delivery priorities and plan will be refreshed annually.

We will direct all our work in neighbourhoods from maintained information about issues and outcomes locally. We will also develop place based induction for public service staff on the history and culture of our communities.

Measuring our impact

Our ambition is that by 2030:

The borough of Bury will have made the fastest improvement in reducing levels of deprivation than any other post-industrial northern locality.

Why this measure?

  • It will allow us to compare our progress against our statistical neighbours and other Greater Manchester authorities.
  • It means reversing the decline seen in 2015 and sets an ambitious target for reform.
  • It is dependent on us achieving progress against all four principles of Bury 2030 as it is a measure based on combined variables.
  • It accepts the impact of the pandemic, but sets out an aspiration to recover faster than others through our collective effort

Measuring Progress

We will measure our progress to achieving this ambition by tracking seven core outcome measures on an annual basis:

Core outcome measures
Outcome Target Baseline
Improved quality of life Reduce the life expectancy gap between our worst and best performing areas to under 13 years for men and 10 years for women. 2015 gap:
Male = 16.7 years;
Female = 11.7 years
Improved early years development Narrow the gap between the school readiness levels of all pupils and those eligible forfree school meals to no more than our previous best performance of 8.5 percentage points. 2018/19:
Bury: All pupils 71.4% - FSM pupils 59.8% = 11.6
Improved educational attainment for our young people Narrow the gap in average attainment 8 score for all pupils and those eligible for free school meals. Our target is to maintain or improve current gap of 8.8 percentage points. 2020:
Bury: 48.1 - 39.3 = 8.8
Increased adult skill levels and employability Increase the gap of adults with no qualification and those with NVQ Level 3+ qualifications by reducing the number of adults with no qualifications and improvingon our previous best position of 58.5 percentage point in 2017. 2020:
Bury: 57.9 - 9.1 = 48.8
Delivering inclusive economic growth Maintain position in Top 3 Greater Manchester ranking for average total household income and increase the proportion of households in the top quartile. 2018: Average Income:
Bury: £40,281
Delivering carbon neutrality by 2038 By 2030 maintain decline in CO2 emissions per capita and be within the top 5 localities in Greater Manchester with the lowest emissions. 2018:
Bury = 4.4
Improved digital connectivity Improvement in the borough rank within Greater Manchester for digital connectivity based on the % of people over 16 who state they have not used the internet in the last 6 months or ever. 2019: 6.7%
Baseline only available as the North East Sector

These high-level outcomes will be underpinned by a wider Bury 2030 outcome framework; measured against the four principles of Lets' Do It:

  • Local Neighbourhoods
    1. Improved access to services
    2. Cleaner environment through improved waste management
    3. Increase in affordable, good quality homes
    4. Reduction in overall crime rates
    5. Improved feelings of safety
  • Economic Growth and Inclusion
    1. Improved business start-up and survival rates
    2. Increased economic activity rates
    3. Improved attendance and attainment in education and training
    4. Improved quality ratings for schools, colleges and training providers
    5. Increased investment in regeneration
  • Delivering Together
    1. Increased engagement in volunteering / community aid
    2. Increased participation in social and cultural activities
    3. Increased participation in democracy and decision making
    4. Improved digital connectivity and inclusion
    5. Improved infrastructure and sustainable transport options
  • Strength-based approach
    1. Improved population health and wellbeing
    2. Increased participation of all equalities groups in decision making and delivery
    3. Increased referrals to social prescribing
    4. Increase in successful outcomes from Active Case Management within Integrated Neighbourhood Teams
    5. Increase in ownership of community assets

This will be underpinned by a Performance Management Hierarchy embedded with the statutory partnership boards for the borough, delivered through the corporate plans of the constituent organisations:

Team Bury & Bury Strategic Leadership Group

Neighbourhood model; Community voice; Community wealth building; Community capacity; Inclusion.

  • Health & Wellbeing Board
    • Population Health
      • Public Health Outcomes
      • NHS Outcomes Framework
      • Adult Social Care Outcomes
      • CQC and other Regulatory Inspection Frameworks
      • Joint Strategic Needs Assessment
      • Health & social care integration
  • Community Safety Partnership
    • Community Safety Plan
      • Crime and Offending
      • Probation and Rehabilitation
      • Community Cohesion
      • Protecting the Vulnerable
      • Community Safety Needs Assessment
  • Bury Economic Partnership
    • Economic Growth Strategy, Local Plans and Town Centre Development
      • Planning and regeneration
      • All-age skills
      • Inclusive growth
      • Cultural strategy
      • Housing and renewal
      • Economic needs assessment
      • Digital inclusion and infrastructure
      • Carbon neutrality
      • Transport and connectivity
  • Children's Partnership Trust
    • Children and Young People's Plan
      • Safeguarding
      • Looked after children
      • Children in need
      • Education and Training
      • SEND
      • Ofsted / CQC Inspection Frameworks
      • Children's Health
  • Organisational Corporate Plans
Bury 2030 logo

This Let's Do It! strategy is also available to download as a printable PDF version.

(This PDF is not fully accessible and may not be suitable for users of assistive technology. See: Accessible documents)