Place Partnership in Tameside and Glossop

This work demonstrates the importance of involving local people and being led by community knowledge.

The Use Your Energy Fund had its target audience at its heart. A Youth Council co-designed, reviewed and decided on which projects received funding. The application also needed input from a young person. This included one question having to be completed by a young person who would be participating in the activity.

The involvement of young people throughout is thought to be key to its success. Learnings from this as also shaped the approach for future community led initiatives. These included co-design with the community, and wrap around support for applicants. This support from the VCSE sector included upskilling volunteers and connecting community organisations.

One unique approach of Tameside was the investment into capacity to build active workplaces. This dedicated capacity allowed Tameside to build stronger relationships and provide support for local businesses, and helped them build an understanding of the importance of activity in the workplace.

This approach was two pronged. The first aim was to encourage workplaces to place greater importance in creating more opportunities for the workforce to be active. One example of this included connecting workplaces to wider funding opportunities and resulted in delivery of mass participation events (such as Dr Bike).

The second aim was around building relationships with employability services. This involved supporting GM evolve better conversations, which builds confidence of employees to talk about benefit of physical activity with those looking for work. This relationship led to young people (NEETs) gaining voluntary experience with a local Bike hub (Manchester Bike Kitchen).

Tameside want to build on the already strong work ongoing in this area. Embedding cycling in Tameside’s culture and creating a cycling scene in Tameside due to their natural environment. To help build this culture Tameside have identified the need to build residents confidence in cycling. One example of this embedding active travel into schools’ culture through programmes Creating Active Schools. Ensuring residents have access to bikes is also key to building a cycling scene. This would involve building on affordable bikes schemes like that run by Manchester Bike Kitchen. Increased opportunities, coupled with improved cycling infrastructure is how Tameside hope to achieve this aim.

Tameside have broken this down into two distinct strands.

• Strengthening and connecting the community offer from organisation such as Active Tameside and the Be Well team. This would involve aligning and upskilling the paid workforce so they can create a meaningful community offer.
• Exploring different models of community led initiatives such as the Aspire youth partnership. This will focus on how best to support community groups, exploring how activities and work can become sustainable in the long term.

Tameside’s place team are hoping to build a more connected agenda across teams and organisations for the older population. The initial aim is to align the Live Active programme and Ageing Well agenda. A longer-term aim is the co-creation a shared Ageing Well Physical Activity strategy, which contains a universal 55+ offer. Agenda alignment is seen as key to building a stronger community offer and referral system, which would allow wider programmes such as active parks and cycling initiatives to be connected.

This ties in strongly with the community development theme, as community groups and sports clubs will likely need upskilling so they can be confident in welcoming older participants and those with long term heath conditions.

With a focus on families, Tameside are exploring how to ensure parks are loved community assets. To achieve this, they want to provide increased opportunities for their communities to be active. This includes the expansion of Story walks, which provide the opportunity to families to engage and explore local parks through the bringing to life of children’s stories. This expansion will also involve the creation of a specialised walks for certain demographics. This would include stories and walks for children and families from SEN or ethnically diverse communities.