Improving our neighbourhoods, changing our lives
When the Government launched the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal in 2001, it set a target of ensuring that within 10-20 years, no-one would be disadvantaged by where they live.
Bolton’s Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy (NRS) has been developed to support this objective, as well as the Community Strategy key aim of narrowing the gap between the most and least well off across our six priority themes of Healthy, Achieving, Prosperous, Safe, Cleaner and Greener, and Stronger. We are now able to measure and monitor deprivation at a much more local level, which helps us to understand better the sort of things we need to do to tackle it. We have identified eleven geographical target areas within Bolton, where people’s quality of life is affected by at least five out of six deprivation issues, such as health, educational attainment, being out of work, the living environment, crime, and housing. These areas are: Breightmet, Crompton, Farnworth, Great Lever, Hall i’ th’ Wood estate, Halliwell, Hulton Lane estate, Johnson Fold estate, Rumworth, Tonge with the Haulgh, and Washacre estate.
We are also working to address thematic problems that are experienced in all of these target areas and sometimes by people living in other parts of the borough too. For example, we know that some people living outside of our target areas also face health issues, and are working with our partners to ensure that these are addressed.
Neighbourhood renewal is about complex problems that cannot be tackled in isolation. A key part of this work involves bringing different partners together, including service providers, residents, community and voluntary groups, and faith groups to develop joined up solutions that really work and are what residents want. Recognising the success of our original Neighbourhood Management Pathfinder in Great Lever, the neighbourhood management approach has now been rolled out to all eleven of our target areas. Each area has a Neighbourhood Manager based there, who works closely with a wide range of partners and residents to focus attention on the priority issues that need to be addressed.