Community Assembly Meetings and Consultations

Community Assemblies are here!

Seven Community Assemblies have now replaced the old twelve area panels. With the new initiative and the experience gained from Area Panels, Sheffield City Council hopes to bring the services it delivers even closer to local people, allowing them to influence the issues and services that directly affect them and ensure that local priorities are reflected in all plans.

Every area of the city is covered by one of the Assemblies, each of which is made up of four wards, the twelve City Councillors representing those wards and a back up team of five. Assembly meetings should take place four times a year, once in each ward represented.

It is very important to realise that these formal Community Assembly meetings are, in effect, a meeting of the twelve Local Councillors and their team, who will be taking decisions for the community in public. Assembly Meetings are not intended to be open discussion meetings although there is a slot for petitions. Councillors are ultimately responsible for spending the money and have to take the final decisions. It is intended, however, that these decisions should be based on feed back from local meetings and consultations set up between main meetings. If you want to make a difference, it is essential that you make your voice heard at these local meetings then hold the Councillors to account for the decisions they take. Watch out for details of these meetings and consultations in your area on our website, on our fortnightly page in the Mercury and in other local press and on local notice boards and make sure older people’s views are taken into account.