Local Service Board

Welcome to Merthyr Tydfil’s Local Service Board

Here you can learn more about the work of Merthyr Tydfil’s Local Service Board – it’s members, its meetings, and the projects that it is working on.
Its aim is:

to ensure local public service leadership is more effective and that the local leadership teams develop a new direct relationship with the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG); and
to improve local services for citizens by pooling resources and removing bureaucracy or other obstacles.

Welsh Assembly Government Policy

Merthyr Tydfil’s LSB

Terms of Reference

LSB Projects

Local Service Board Meetings

Monthly Briefing Notes

Welsh Assembly Government Policy

Local Service Boards (LSBs) are Wales' new model for engaging the whole of the Wales public service in a new way of working by integrating services and responding more effectively to citizens' needs
Local Service Boards are not new organisations, but local leadership teams. Membership will include key leaders from across public, third and private sectors working as equal partners, taking joint responsibility for connecting the whole network of public services within their area. A senior official from WAG will work with each local leadership team to help achieve this
The Boards will agree, and ensure delivery of, a set of priority joint actions to achieve this. These actions will be put into a Local Delivery Agreement that will be published.

Merthyr Tydfil’s LSB

The current make up of the Board is

Independent Chair – Mostyn James JP DL
The Leader of the County Borough Council – Councillor Jeff Edwards
The Chief Executive of the County Borough Council – Alistair Neill
The Chair Cwm Taf Local Health Board – Dr Chris Jones
The Chief Executive Cwm Taf Local Health Board – Margaret Foster
The Chief Officer Voluntary Action Merthyr Tydfil – Ian Davy
The Chief Superintendent South Wales Police (Merthyr and RCT BCU) – Kevin O'Neill
A senior representative of the Welsh Assembly Government – Liz Williams Director Children and Young People’s Strategy Division
Support to LSB via WAG Secondee (January 2009 to June 2010), Ceri Thomas, who will act as programme manager for the LSB across the projects, reviews and strategies that will support the outcomes of objectives agreed by the LSB.

Terms of Reference

Merthyr Tydfil Local Service Board (TOR).pdf (55k)) cover the membership of the LSB and its relationship with the Community Strategy Review and the Local service board work

Local Delivery Agreement

The LSB agreed a draft Local Delivery Agreement.pdf (36k)) to be submitted to the Welsh Assembly Government at its meeting on 14th July 2009. If you have any views on the LDA please contact Ceri Thomas.

LSB Projects

In 2009-09 the LSB is investing its £ 50,000 grant from WAG on two projects and the workshops.

The projects are:

Neighbourhood security

Harnessing the Power of Community Intelligence

This Project will be delivered in partnership between the South Wales Police and the Universities Police Science Institute (UPSI), School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University who have designed and tested a systematic community engagement methodology. It used a series of interviews to deliver community or local intelligence what the issues are that cause a feeling of insecurity within and across different neighbourhoods. These in-depth personal interviews were conducted in February and March in every part of the borough.
Once interviews in wards were completed they were analysed and reports delivered to the LSB, the local police and representatives of the Community Safety Partnership. Its was agreed that all parties would conisder any immediate actions they could take based on the data as it emerges, provided that did not compromise startgic ones that need wider buy in. All partners will be able to use relevant extracts to look at steps to tackle issues such as pockets of littering and dog fouling, with police and Safer Merthyr Team taking action on crime and crime prevention measures.
A borough wide Strategic Report was delivered in April that pulls together all this data, this will be used to develop both stratigic and very specific and local action plans for a number of the partners.

Consultation, Engagement & Communication

The Society of Information Technology Management (SOCTIM) have been engaged by the LSB to carry out work to:

determine a baseline position of customer/citizen consultation, engagement & communication arrangements for all partners of the LSB, and
the identification of areas for potential improvement and collaboration.

This also to include potential development of software applications. They have undertaken, research,inteviews, surveys and provided an interim summary report that informed two workshops to develop actions to go into a final report to be produced in May.

Other projects in which the LSB have an interest include:

Alcohol abuse

This project is being taken forward jointly with Rhondda Cynon Taff LSB.. The Merthyr Tydfil and RCT Community Safety Partnerships jointly fund it.
There will be five phases:

phase 1 & 2 project teams established. and detailed plans for each objective plus delivery approaches being developed
phase 3 delivery of plans to start shortly
phase 4 monitoring and evaluation
phase 5 Mainstreaming what is effective - scheduled for spring 2010