You said, we did

Date: 3 November - 11 December 2022

Leicestershire County Council has a strong commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion in the services it delivers and the support it provides to the people of Leicestershire.

We asked

This policy aims to:

• protect trans and non-binary people who use our services from discriminatory treatment or practices 
• support trans people and enable them to be always treated with dignity and respect 
• enable a trans person’s personal data and records (such as change of title, name, gender) to be treated with due confidentiality 
• comply with the broader legal requirements in relation to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment 
• raise awareness and promote understanding of trans and non-binary identities among employees and communities

We consulted on

We sought your views on this policy to help us deliver services which are accessible to all.

What happens next?

After the consultation closes on 11 December, we'll analyse the results and share with residents in due course.

Date: 11 November - 9 December 2022

The Care Technology (CT) service was launched in April 2022 and recognises the importance of assisted technology in enabling people with care and support needs to lead independent and fulfilling lives.

We asked

Adults who meet the criteria will receive support in respect of their care needs and this may include care technology. People who have received care and support services in the past, including care technology, will be assessed as part of their care and support review.

If a person is not eligible to receive support, they are signposted to other organisations who may be able to assist them.

The council has an amount of legacy equipment that was previously provided on a discretionary basis, particularly to people who are deaf or hearing impaired. Since the launch of the new CT service, we have continued to receive requests for repairs and maintenance and have been providing a discretionary service.

We are proposing that requests for repairs and maintenance for legacy equipment are considered as part of a care and support assessment review and be subject to Care Act eligibility criteria to ensure fairness across the service and those it supports.

We sought your views on what you think the service offer could be going forward for people with legacy equipment that may need future maintenance, especially where people may not meet the eligibility criteria for care and support.

What happens next?

After the consultation closes on 9 December, we will analyse the results and share these with cabinet and residents in January 2023.

Date: 19 October 2022 - 16 November 2022

We asked

Welcome to the North of Leicester and Melton Mowbray Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) engagement. This is the next step in helping develop an attractive and joined-up cycling and walking network in Leicestershire.

Following the adoption of our Cycling and Walking Strategy and Action Plan in 2021 (below), we are now in the process of developing LCWIPs for areas surrounding Leicester city, in addition to supporting district councils who choose to develop LCWIPs for other areas.

What LCWIPs will do

• Set out the vision and priorities for cycling and walking improvements in each of the areas
• create attractive and joined-up cycling and walking networks
• encourage people to travel more sustainably. 

These proposals are not final! You helped influence the priority cycling and walking network, to tell us:

• what improvements to cycling and walking routes you would like to see, and where
• if we're missing a key route
• about any other feedback you think would be of value 

Please see the map that details the existing and proposed routes and comments made during the consultation period.

What happens next?

Feedback received will be considered alongside the data evidence collated as part of the LCWIP development process, to help shape and create an updated network plan and identify potential concept plans of infrastructure for inclusion in the final draft LCWIP.

There will be further opportunity to provide feedback on the final draft LCWIP next year. A summary of the engagement will be available to view here, in due course.

Date: 13 June - 21 August 2022

We asked

Every three years, pharmaceutical needs assessments (PNAs) are carried out around the country to ensure that local community pharmacies – “chemist shops” - are meeting the pharmaceutical needs of local people.

Earlier in the year, we asked people across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland for their views on pharmacy services and usage which has fed into the draft PNA.

The PNA helps NHS England to manage and make decisions about requests from pharmacists or pharmacy businesses to set up new community pharmacies, merge businesses, or move premises within Leicestershire. They also provide insight into other areas where improvements to pharmacy services can be made.

Preparing PNAs is the responsibility of Health and Wellbeing Boards. These Boards bring together local authorities, the NHS and other key partners to improve the health and wellbeing of their local areas.

What happens next

After the consultation closed in August, we reported the results and any suggested changes to the PNA to Health and Wellbeing Board in September 2022. A summary of the results can be found at Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment 2022.

Date: 6 July - 16 August 2022

We asked

The Mental Health Friendly Places project (MHFP) is part of the suicide prevention programme for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

The aim of the project is to improve the mental wellbeing of people living in Leicestershire and Rutland through the creation of mental health friendly Places. The project consists of 3 tiers of support - Places, Communities and Neighbourhoods, as well as a digital offer. 

Place

Trusted community places (community hubs, small businesses, etc) will help to raise awareness by displaying a Start a Conversation and MH Friendly Place poster. This will have a QR code which leads to self-help information. They will agree to complete the Zero Suicide Alliance online training and commit to pledge to action and share information by Starting a Conversation. 

Community

Links both individual venues and larger organisations from all sectors, to increase activity and create a local network. They will increase awareness and understanding and have access to additional training and resources. They will commit to the pledge to action and complete suicide prevention training. They will also agree to help us showcase activity and contribute to learning for other areas.

Neighbourhood

This will link local councils, organisations and venues that would like to build a coordinated local network. They will improve suicide prevention activity within their wider community, increase awareness, access additional training. They will commit to the pledge to action and suicide prevention training and agree to deliver a set number of trainings in their community. 

Digital 

We're also looking to develop a Digital Hub which will allow Places, Communities and Neighbourhoods to register and share support. As well as an online Digital Pathway to help us find these local connections and formal mental health support.

Who can get involved?

The project will seek to involve community and voluntary organisations, local businesses, schools and Primary Care Network (PCN) partnerships, and fit into the systems currently provided by the NHS, local authority partners. 

What can you do?

To help us understand how this project might work, we will be asking for support from the community and wider stakeholders through an engagement exercise, and a pilot.

A proposed outline for the project has been created which you can read about in the summary documentation:

What happens next?

After the survey closes in August, we will analyse the results and share with residents in late autumn.

Date: 6 June - 31 July 2022

We asked

Looking after a person that you care about is something that many of us want to do. Caring can be very rewarding, helping a person develop or re-learn skills, or simply helping to make sure your loved one is as well and supported as they can be.

The draft Joint Carers Strategy 2022-2025 sets out a shared vision and priorities for recognising, valuing and supporting carers by Leicester City Council, Leicestershire County Council, Rutland County Council and the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

The strategy reflects recent legislation and national guidance with regards to the role and duties of Local Authorities and NHS bodies towards carers. The strategy also seeks to respond to the issues related to caring that have been highlighted locally and set out how the partners signed up to this strategy will work together to address these.

You may recall last year we asked for your help to review the carers strategy and provide information on key areas important to you.  The responses we received highlighted which priorities people feel are important within the strategy, and what areas require further focus. This information can be viewed under the header Carers strategy review spring-summer 2021.

What are we consulting on? 

We are consulting and seeking feedback on the refreshed Joint Carers Strategy 2022-2025 and Leicestershire’s action plan. We are seeking feedback about our priorities and our commitments in relation to those priorities.

The draft strategy sets out 8 key priorities to support carers across LLR to continue in their caring role and to maintain their own health and wellbeing, these are:

• Carer identification
• Carers are valued and involved
• Carers are Informed  
• Carer friendly communities
• Carers have a life alongside caring
• Care with Confidence  
• Carers can access the right support at the right time
• Supporting Young Carers

Each of these is explained fully in the strategy along with the proposed actions.

Each partner will support these key priorities through their own individual action plans, based around their carers offer.

Additional information

What happens next

After the consultation closes in July, we'll analyse the results and share with cabinet and residents in autumn 2022.

Net Zero Leicestershire Consultation 2022

Date: 4 May - 26 July 2022

Leicestershire County Council launched a consultation from 4 May to 26 July 2022 to invite residents, councils, businesses, and others across the county to have their say on the council’s draft Net Zero Strategy and Action Plan. 

We asked

Individuals were invited to submit their response via a ‘Have Your Say’ consultation survey.

Throughout the consultation period, the council also ran a series of events and activities, including meetings, roadshows, and workshops. At these events, residents had the opportunity to make a climate pledge, vote for their most important net zero theme from the action plan and take part in the consultation.

To capture the voices of young people, youth engagement was undertaken by independent specialists, Participation People. This included a bespoke youth survey designed by young researchers, as well as a series of listening labs and a creative competition.

You said

Over 1,400 residents and stakeholders took part. In total we received 593 main survey, 570 youth survey responses, plus feedback from workshops and events. Respondents to the Net Zero Consultation were generally aware of net zero as a concept. However, their views were split between agreeing with the visions and goals, calling for more ambition and stating that climate change is a natural phenomenon or not an issue.

Upon analysing the responses, we found 12 key themes that respondents are keen for us to address. These are:

• Collaborate and work with others to deliver net zero
• Leadership, buy in and ambition
• Ensure the Strategy is understandable and accessible
• Interim targets, monitoring, and achievement reporting
• Cost benefit implications
• Raise awareness, engagement, education, and behaviour change
• Improve and promote transport solutions (public, active and freight)
• Importance of local planning policy and growth
• Importance of renewable energy
• Prioritise energy efficiency and low carbon heat
• Importance of nature and access
• Waste management service, education, and provision

See more information about the outputs of the consultation:

We did

The outcomes of the Net Zero Consultation have helped define and shape the final Net Zero Leicestershire Strategy and Action Plan. As a result, the Strategy and Action plan has gone through a significant restructure with an added emphasis on leadership, collaboration and how you can help.

A framework for delivery has been included to enable easier navigation to the monitoring and reporting plan. Additionally, key action themes have been updated and reorganised including renaming Net Zero Infrastructure theme to “Buildings and Energy” and creating a new action table for “Resource and Waste.”

The updated plan will be published on our Net Zero Leicestershire webpages, once approved at County Council on the 7 December 2022.

Leicestershire County Council would like to take this opportunity to thank all residents and stakeholders who participated in the Net Zero Consultation, your comments and views have been invaluable in shaping and improving our plans to become Net Zero Leicestershire.

Date: 8 June - 13 July 2022

We asked

Leicestershire and Rutland County Councils are producing Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) chapters on End of Life. These are assessments of the current and future health and social care needs for local people in this stage of life. Once complete, the JSNA chapters can be used to improve how the councils provide health and social care services for residents. 
As part of this work, we developed a survey to help better understand the experiences and priorities of those who:

• have experienced a bereavement
• either currently or have previously been a carer for a friend or family member nearing the end of life
• currently work as a formal carer or in end of life/palliative care services

You said

37 people who had cared for a loved one or were recently bereaved responded for Leicestershire and 15 for Rutland.  36 staff across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland responded to the survey.

A summary of what was said for each of these groups of people can be found in the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) chapters (see below).

We did

Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNA) chapters for Leicestershire and Rutland covering the end of life have now been completed, including the views of people responding to this survey.

Once uploaded, these will be available on line at Leicestershire 2018-2021 JSNA for Leicestershire and Joint Strategic Needs Assessment for Rutland.

Date: 28 February - June 2022

Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PNA) public questionnaire

We asked

The council ran a public online survey examining Pharmacy supply in the county. The survey examined services people use and how they use them. It also asked their views around Pharmacies, and some questions were based around available services to establish how well known these services are..

You said

62 People completed the public questionnaire for Leicestershire. The majority (73%) are satisfied with advice from pharmacies. Satisfaction with advice from GP dispensaries is more varied (40% very/fairly satisfied, 12% neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, and 8% dissatisfied).

Quality of service, availability of medicines, private areas to speak to a pharmacist, physical accessibility, and location, are the most important issues for respondents.

The majority (81%) agree that the pharmacy provides a good service and provides clear advice (71%). Some responses highlight some concerns about speaking to a pharmacist without being overheard. Access to medicines on time and busy pharmacists were also raised as issues.

Services with the lowest levels of awareness were advice on physical exercise (13%) and healthy eating advice (17%). Access to specialist medicines in stock was quoted as an issue by some.

Full details of reponses are available at Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment.

We did

The public questionnaire results were included in the Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment and used to inform conclusions about Pharmacy provision in the county.

In particular the survey responses were used to shape recommendations provided by the Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment. 

With the need to review public and community transport to ensure accessibility of physical pharmacy locations being one such recommendation. The promotion of healthy lifestyle pharmacy services highlighted as being less well known by the survey was another recommendation brought about by questionnaire responses.

Date: 31 January 2022 - 25 April 2022

We asked

The strategy examines what happens to your recycling and waste and how this can help reduce climate change and save raw materials.

The way we view ‘waste’ has changed. It is no longer something to just get rid of, but is potentially a valuable resource to be retained and reused or better still avoided altogether. Using the resources from waste can help to reduce the raw materials we need for producing new goods, which in turn has environmental, social and financial benefits.

The strategy has 11 pledges that sit alongside the government’s proposed national changes to waste collections in order to meet the 65% national recycling target by 2035.

The draft pledges include:

• supporting and encouraging waste prevention
• delivering reuse services
• separate food waste collections
• reducing waste sent to landfill to less than 5% by 2025

Each pledge is explained further in the full strategy and summary documents:

What happens next

We will report the results back to the Leicestershire Waste Partnership and each council will feed back through their own decision-making processes throughout the early part of 2023.

Date: 1 November 2021 – 18 February 2022

We asked

The council consulted a wide range of stakeholders including council officers and elected members, citizens, community groups and partners to identify the extent to which there was agreement with its long-term vision for Leicestershire and its priorities for 2022-26. The consultation included a public survey, interactive presentations including live polls and direct engagement through meetings and focus groups.

You said

The public survey received 259 responses, and further direct engagement with council officers through an interactive presentation led to further 200 responses. There were also many more responses received from stakeholders through direct meetings and focus group sessions. There was a high level of support for the council’s vision (79% of public survey respondents agreed with the outcomes and only 10% disagreed). The outcome with the least, albeit still substantial, support was the ‘Strong Economy, Transport and Infrastructure’ outcome (68% survey respondents agreed and 17% disagreed). The reasons for this are set out in Appendix A. 

There was a suggestion to reduce the length of the document and to add further clarification around what the council is specifically aiming to achieve over the next four years. 

Some suggested that the Plan should more clearly differentiate between those aspirations for which the council would have the lead responsibility, and those where it would have a contributing/partnership role; specifying which partners it would work with to deliver the actions in the Plan.   

Some highlighted concerns that the ‘Clean and Green’ outcome, which reflects the council’s aspirations to protect the environment and tackle climate change, may not be entirely compatible with the ‘Strong Economy, Transport and Infrastructure’ outcome, which sets out its vision to have a productive, inclusive and sustainable economy and infrastructure which meets the demands of a growing population and economy. This appeared to be primarily due to concerns that there would be housebuilding in greenfield areas. 

We did

There were several key findings from the consultation which are outlined in further detail in Appendix A. Key changes made to the Plan in response include:

• The length of the Plan has been reduced by removing unnecessary text (wordcount reduced by 25%) and images have been added to enhance the visual appeal of the document.
• To help clarify what the council is aiming to achieve by 2026, each sub-outcome now includes, under ‘how we will measure success’, the performance indicators which will be monitored to identify if each aim is being achieved. Each sub-outcome also includes a summary of current performance which provides a benchmark against which to measure future progress. 
• The Plan also now refers to specific partners which the council will need to work with to deliver certain actions. Additionally, the Plan highlights examples of effective collaboration which the Council intends to build on, such as work with district councils during the Covid-19 pandemic to establish community hubs to support the most vulnerable people.
• The sub-outcome around housing has been removed, with the council’s actions to support housing development shown instead to support the sub-outcome around infrastructure (7.2).
• The Introduction/Foreword now acknowledges the challenges involved in supporting economic growth whilst achieving a ‘Clean and Green’ future for Leicestershire and highlights how the council intends to achieve this. Additionally, further actions have been added to the Plan to show how the council intends to work with partners to enable and promote sustainable transport and encourage and support environmentally-friendly businesses and the development and adoption of low-carbon technologies.

View the full Cabinet papers for the Strategic Plan.
 

Date: 1 November 2021 – 18 February 2022

Whilst the official survey is now closed, you can still get in touch with us to give your views and help with the development of the Council's Approach.

We asked

Our communities make living and working in Leicestershire special. They are vital to supporting our health and wellbeing and provide many of the opportunities for people to contribute and support others. The Covid-19 pandemic showed how powerful community action can be and how much can be achieved by the skills, strengths and resources of communities.

The county council is committed to collaborating with, and working alongside, Leicestershire Communities and this commitment is central to our Communities Approach which sets out our proposed way of working with communities over the coming years.

The key principles of this Approach are:

• Prevention - how the whole council works towards providing preventative and self-help support
• Engagement - building trusting relationships to collaboratively define and design local solutions
• Catalysts - supporting voluntary organisations and town and parish councils to provide local services and activities

Supporting documents

If you need help reading the document, or still want to give your views, please email communities@leics.gov.uk or call 0116 305 7743.

What happens next

You will be able to find out about the feedback the council received and read the Cabinet Report and final document. They will be available on this page in Spring 2022.

Date: 20 January - 20 February 2022 (Engagement 1)

Map based forum engagement was undertaken between 20 January - 20 February 2022 on draft cycling and walking networks for the Loughborough area and south of Leicester area.

Date: 2023 (Engagement 2)

Further engagement on these Draft Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPs) is planned to be undertaken in 2023.

We asked

In 2021, following the adoption of our:

we are now in the process of developing Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans for county towns and the urban areas surrounding Leicester City. The Loughborough area and south of Leicester area are our current areas of focus.

During the first engagement, we asked for feedback on the draft key cycling and walking networks for the Loughborough area and south of Leicester area through a map based forum. 

We invited feedback on:

• The draft key cycling and walking network, eg. were there key routes missing that lots of people currently use, or could use if improved, or did you feel a change to a route was needed.
• Comments on types of infrastructure improvements you would like to see on the cycling and walking network – eg. dedicated cycle lanes, junction improvements, benches etc.
• Other feedback you thought would be of value in developing the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans for these areas

Feedback on these draft plans will be used to help shape the final Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPs) for these areas. These plans set out the vision and priorities for cycling and walking improvements in these areas to create convenient and practical cycling and walking networks to help and encourage people to travel more sustainably. 

You said

For our map based forum engagement for the Loughborough area there were over 800 visits to the engagement portal with 158 comments, and for the south of Leicester area there were 750 visits and 114 comments. These comments included lots of useful enthusiastic feedback on the draft networks, and the infrastructure people would like to see in these areas.

You will be able to see a summary of the comments given as part of this engagement following further detailed analysis.

We did

Feedback received is being considered alongside the data evidence collated as part of the LCWIP development process, to help shape and create an updated network plan and identify potential concept plans of infrastructure for inclusion in the final draft LCWIP.

There will be further opportunity to provide feedback on the final draft LCWIP in 2023, and a summary of engagement will be available to view on this page.