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  • Lead Member Plymouth City Council
  • Participating Members Bristol City Council, Plymouth City Council
  • Year 2020
  • Status Policy Labs

Principles met

  • Community leadership and a new role for councillors

    We will explore ways for councils to act as a platform for helping the community to contribute to local outcomes, and to re-think the role of councillors as community connectors, brokers and leaders.

About the project

Led by Plymouth City Council, this Policy Lab 2019 – 2020 seeks to promote the Cities of Service model for social action across the Network. Cities of Service is effectively about people helping people. Cities of Service takes the strategic overview and leadership role of local government and combines it with the skills, knowledge, and energy of citizens to address the most pressing challenges in a given geographical area.

The model is based on four defining characteristics – leadership, clear objectives, purposeful action, and impact. It has helped to elevate the significance and status of volunteering in both Plymouth and Bristol and has prompted us to think about the role of social action in designing services and in complementing and enhancing core public service provision. Over 10,000 people so far have shown us that they want to make a difference in the place where they live by getting involved in Cities of Service projects and we want to scale this work up even further to work with even more citizens across the network to tackle the key issues in each local authority area.

For both Plymouth and Bristol, we are addressing our most difficult challenges by working with our greatest asset – our citizens.

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