Principle 4 – Provides strong democratic accountability, representation and community empowerment

Our outcomes for community empowerment in Surrey

We believe that LGR, and the formation of these three distinct, relevant and cohesive unitary councils in Surrey, based on clear functional geographies, will provide the best footprint to enable a renewed focus on asset-based community development. It will work with people at a localised level, in places they recognise and relate with. It will establish where there is a role for the local authority, and where the communities’ strengths can be harnessed and supported to enable them to do more for themselves to meet locally identified needs. 

The footprint of the new unitary councils will enable us to adopt, embed and accelerate new and innovative participative methods that will improve local decision making and community engagement at a neighbourhood level across six outcomes which are expanded on below:

  • Advancing equity
  • Building relationships,
  • Generating knowledge
  • Mobilising resources
  • Creating more resilient communities
  • Sharing power  

We will also be able to upscale existing best practice from across Surrey to rapidly mobilise our community engagement approaches to support and facilitate this work.

Over the following pages, we expand upon each of these outcomes, setting out both local and national case studies that powerfully demonstrate what can be achieved by embedding meaningful community empowerment into the culture and fabric of local decision making processes.