Community Boards: Buckinghamshire Council

Background

Buckinghamshire Council was established on 1 April 2020, when a county council and four districts reorganised into a single unitary. Community boards were established to maintain close links between the council, councillors and communities.

16 community boards were initially set up, with 147 councillors as members. This has since reduced to 8 boards and 97 councillors following boundary reviews reducing the number of unitary councillors and work to balance appropriate resourcing for boards with reducing council budgets. 

Structure

All of the unitary councillors for the area covered by the community board are board members. All town and parish councils in that area (this can be anywhere from 5 to 53) are also members, with all voluntary and community sector organisations also encouraged to participate. Any organisation or resident within the area is also welcome to participate. Finally, a service director from the council helps to lead; this both demonstrates the support of the council at a senior leadership level and helps to unblock issues where needed.

Each board has a chair and vice-chair who is appointed by the Leader of the Council. They help to ensure that the boards are ward-driven and member-owned, as well as maintaining a focus on what is deliverable.

As a result of boundary changes and the variations in population and demography across Buckinghamshire, some of the boards are much larger than others; however, structuring the boards around what made sense to communities rather than trying to make them of equal size has helped to ensure the boards are community-focussed and is working well to date.

Funding and resources

Initially, the total budget for the boards was £3.7 million with a requirement to spend a certain proportion on highways, the environment, economic regeneration and health & wellbeing. 

Generally, the council found that this presented a number of challenges in terms of the level of funding available:

• The focus of many of the boards ended up on highways projects, rather than a wider focus on the range of issues that matter to communities.
• The board became seen as a grant funder, rather than a vehicle for strong community engagement and collaboration
• Additional resources were required to assess bids and implement financial and audit controls.

To address these issues, the council reviewed the operation of the boards to place more emphasis on community engagement, along with identifying savings for the council.

The boards now share a budget of £250,000; half of this is split equally across the boards, with the rest allocated according to population and levels of deprivation. Each board therefore has a budget of between £29,000 and £32,000 to spend on the delivery of local priorities. 

Each board also has a community board manager who is responsible for delivering the local priorities through strengthening local partnerships and building and maintaining partner relationships. arranging meetings, progressing actions and building local relationships. This post was originally a board coordinator post but was revised to enable a stronger focus on community relationships, with post-holders now well respected for their important role in the community and in supporting engagement with councillors and the council.

How they work

Buckinghamshire Council has moved the mode of operation for the boards away from formal meetings and more towards workshops and conversations in community settings. This enables the council to build upon its data driven approach to supplement data with the voices and opinions of communities, providing clarity around what is important to residents and informing the prioritisation of actions for each ward. The council has found that this approach has improved attendance and engagement, leading to more valuable discussions.

Community boards do not have devolved powers, and they do not cover planning or statutory services. Instead, they focus on bringing the right stakeholders in communities together to focus on local solutions to local issues. Following the reduction in budgets for the community boards, the council has also found that those participating in the boards are working more effectively together to identify solutions that either don’t require funding or can identify other sources of funding.

Some of the projects taken forward by the community boards include:

• Design and delivery of a campaign to celebrate the positive outcomes of volunteering and to encourage more people to get involved.
• “I’d Like a Bike” – a project to refurbish donated bikes to be passed on to recipients referred by local services to support healthy lifestyles and sustainable travel
• Collaborative creation of a youth project providing safe activities for local young people in a rural area to support local young people to thrive
• Delivering a series of engagement events to support residents and businesses to understand how to reduce energy bills and cut carbon emissions to enable the community to make cost effective sustainable changes
• Tree planting projects and woodland maintenance.

Lessons to share

• Take town and parish councils with you. It is valuable to work with them from the outset to be clear how the different structures will work together and to be clear on their differing roles. Buckinghamshire co-produced a charter with town and parish councils, and have a dedicated officer who is the single point of contact.
• Too high a budget for a community board can move the focus away from community engagement towards a solely grant funding role. Strong community engagement with partners, stakeholders and residents is far more powerful.
• Consider how to select, train and support board chairs. This role is very important and ensures that the board focuses on key issues where it can have the most significant impact.
• The skillset of the community board manager is vital. They need to be experts in community engagement, and able to build and maintain strong and complex local networks.

Useful link:

• Buckinghamshire Council Community Boards Annual Report 2025

Contact: [email protected]