The Orkney Partnership

Orkney's Community Planning Partnership is called The Orkney Partnership.

"Community Planning is an important challenge for Orkney. It has the potential to create a more efficient structure for the public sector in Orkney, and importantly provide improved services to our communities. In such unsettling economic times, all public services are being expected to do more in terms of providing improved services to larger groups, with less financial resource. Community Planning can help us to find imaginative solutions within this difficult environment, notably through better joint working.

Community Planning can be a tricky concept to grasp. This may be because it is something we do naturally here in a small community, and in fact it would seem illogical to not pull together."

James Stockan
Chair of the Community Planning Partnership and Council Leader

The legal status and responsibilities of the Partnership are explained the Terms of Reference. The work of the Orkney Partnership is guided by the Local outcomes improvement plan (LOIP) and other key documents.

Values

The Orkney Partnership has seven shared values and we have considered how they relate to this Strategy, to help steer our approach:

•   Resilience: Helping individuals and households to manage their own affairs and make informed choices and decisions about their lifestyle and prevent them falling into poverty; building resilience in people and communities.

•   Enterprise: Promote the qualities of self-reliance, innovation, and individual achievement.

•   Equality: Ensuring that every individual has an equal opportunity to make the most of their lives and talents, recognising that historically certain groups of people with protected characteristics such as race, disability, sex and sexual orientation have experienced discrimination.

•   Fairness: Removing barriers that prevent some people from taking part in life, socially and economically. Promoting a society in which individuals and groups are treated fairly and receive a just share of the opportunities that our islands have to offer.

•   Innovation: Working collaboratively, with a free exchange of ideas, to develop and implement effective solutions.

•   Leadership: Working together to inspire creativity and cooperation in the common interest, building relationships and appreciation for others. 

•   Sustainability: Plan our actions for the long term, in an ongoing discussion with our residents. Designing and building services, infrastructure and organisations that are affordable and accessible. Ensuring that the decisions we take today do not compromise the life chances and choices of future generations.

These values have been used to create the acrostic “islands”: