Sperrin

Any form of Citizens' Assembly must have flexibility built in to robustly maintain the views and priorities of an increasingly diverse population and be adaptable to those changes. The regulation of HMOs must be based solely on addressing the needs of a growing population who find it hard to find affordable decent housing and NOT to profile or negatively target any section of our local or immigrant communities. Surveillance of homeless provision must ONLY ever be for the protection of service users and to prevent targeted attacks, not not intrude on the identity or dignity of users of these facilities. Whilst so many of these suggested issues are hugely important in terms of education, I believe that the current school curriculum is already very burdensome on teachers who are quite often struggling to manage a growing workload alongside lessening real terms pay. Any proposals to include more on the syllabus at all educational phases must be matched with comprehensive and regularly updated awareness and training for teachers, sufficient funding to resource lessons and strategies and also time/funding opportunities to consult and engage with parents and to utilise existing experience and expertise from established charity, healthcare and community providers in these areas. Sticking plaster or tick-box, lip-service solutions are not good enough and can even do more harm than good. Pedestrianisation of town centres must be done effectively, in full consultation with local residents and businesses, being mindful of environmental impact and/or damage and in a way that ensures safe and accessible open shared spaces for all. The community wealth building model has some good intentions but we must be very careful that it does not become just localised capitalism, profiteering off a low-wage or zero-hour economy and that REAL community awareness and ownership of proposals are enshrined in all CWB projects.