Belfast LSP – Defining our Role

Within Belfast , the LSP was established as a company limited by guarantee in February 2002. Its Board is comprised of 28 Members, drawn from elected representatives of Belfast City Council, Senior Managers from Central Government Departments and from the Social Partners, including representatives from Community Organisations, Trade Unions, and the Business and Agricultural Sectors.

Belfast LSP has been allocated a budget of Ł25m. to invest in projects that promote peace-building, economic development and training, through three Measures:

Measure 3.1 (ERDF) seeks to promote Local economic initiatives for developing the social economy
Measure 3.2 (ESF) seeks to promote a range of actions at local level which will ensure that the training and development needs of the local community are met
Measure 2.11 (ERDF) seeks to promote the integration and inclusion of marginalised and disadvantaged groups, to achieve higher and more meaningful levels of cross-community participation in the regeneration of community interface areas.

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In line with our organisational mandate, and following a formal consultation exercise in the Autumn of 2002, Belfast Local Strategy Partnership has produced a strategic framework that targets four separate, but inter-related themes:

It is felt that the principal thrust of the BLSP Strategy should be to bring a clear focus to the BLSP's contribution, through the investment of the Peace Programme, to the process of regeneration within the City. In so doing, it is our intention to make a unique but complimentary contribution within the context of the Regeneration Agenda within Belfast .

Our niche is identified as promoting necessary preliminary work in the policy arenas of division and disadvantage. Our role is based on the hypothesis that, economic growth will be stymied if our self-image and our international image remain shaped by violence and division. This represents a long-term investment; there is no quick fix; and it demands a shared responsibility to address deep rooted problems.

Implementation of the strategy will be underpinned by a number of critical principles: in essence, the approach will be:

Evidence based
Needs driven
Proactive and selective
Accountable to all of our stakeholders

In defining our role in an already crowded marketplace, the Board has made clear its commitment to:

Demonstrate an ‘added value’ role
Pilot best practice, in conjunction with key stakeholders; thus
Influence mainstream policies and budgets
Demonstrate value for money, through independent, formal evaluation of individual and collective initiatives

Under each theme, targets have been developed, and, as projects roll-out, we will monitor and evaluate performance indicators of individual projects and thematic initiatives.

This is not a “mile wide, inch deep” approach: we intend to show what Belfast gets for this investment.

At a strategic level we will continue also to champion collaborative leadership as a critical condition for progress. This form of new governance – that welcomes inclusive civic involvement and inter-agency co-operation – informs the practice of our own Partnership, and is a quality we wish to promote throughout the city.

The conundrum of a Board like the Belfast LSP is that, on the one hand, it should be representative of Belfast. Yet, being so, it will by the same token reflect the divisions of Belfast . Its challenge is to be at once reflective of the City and a challenge to the City.