Community planning

Community planning is a process that helps public agencies work together with the community to deliver better, more joined-up public services and improve the quality of people’s lives.  

It is based on the idea that if local agencies and organisations work well together, working with local communities, businesses, charities and voluntary groups, public services will improve for the people who use them.

Community planning is needed to ensure that the services provided to the people of Orkney are of the highest possible standards. By working together in partnership we can achieve much more than we could as individual organisations. In many areas individual organisations are already working well. They have their own purpose and provide different services. But through community planning we can spot any problem areas or gaps and tackle these together. We can also make a joint effort to address the challenges that are too large for one organisation on their own to deal with. 

In community planning, what matters is what is actually achieved – the outcomes – and how people's lives change as a result.  It is also about ensuring that communities are engaged in the decisions made about services which they use.

Community Planning is a statutory duty placed on a number of organisations and came into force on 1 April 2003, with powers updated under the new Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 which requires each community planning partnership to prepare and publish a Local Outcomes Improvement Plan (LOIP). This replaces the former Single Outcome Agreement or SOA.

Further information

Support for Community Planning Partnerships | Improvement Service