Salford’s trailblazing initiative, The Salford Way, was launched by the City Mayor one year ago. It highlights the city’s ambitions as a leader in building a fairer, greener and healthier city for all.
About the Salford Way
The Salford Way model is constructed around ‘The Great Eight’ which encompasses the city’s core objectives to be embedded within their work, including the ambitions they plan to realise as part of their three interlinked strategies under The Salford Way:
- tackling poverty
- inclusive and green economy
- equalities and inclusion.
This ensures a coordinated approach in how the Council tackles inequality, recognising it needs wide-ranging solutions that encompass a number of different factors. Budgets, policies and strategic decisions are aligned around The Salford Way to ensure they prioritise a local approach that focuses on communities.
In line with the development of The Salford Way, the city has done a considerable amount of work to ensure co-production and lived experience is embedded throughout all our endeavours. This includes work with Salford’s Poverty Truth Commission and further commitments within Salford’s recently launched Equalities and Inclusion Strategy to increase the diversity of representation in any place where decisions are taken in the city.
In addition to this work, Salford launched the refreshed Tackling Poverty Strategy last year which provides a framework to tackle the root causes of poverty, recognising that support is needed to both prevent people falling into poverty and assist those already experiencing this issue. The strategy also notes the unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown on the most vulnerable of Salford’s residents. As part of this recovery, the Council made a key commitment to voluntarily adopt the Socio-Economic Duty, recognising this as a guiding mechanism to shape decision making and showcase Salford as a leader in tackling poverty and improving equality of outcome.
A major strand of this tackling poverty work is furthering the use of innovative solutions and integrated pathways to ensure all service delivery is inclusive and adopts solutions tailored to local needs. One of the most pivotal developments has been the launch of the BetterOff Salford website which provides an easy way to find out benefit entitlement and information on jobs, childcare, and debt or money management. During COVID-19, the brand-new cloud Coffee and Chat sessions were launched, offering face to face chats for customers to meet with a member of a locality team via video calls to replace the drop in BetterOff sessions usually held in the Gateways.
In addition to this, the Council has illustrated its dedication to further enhance our robust anti-poverty work through the launch of the ethical housing company, Dérive. This significant achievement recognises that a lack of decent, affordable and accessible housing is one of the major contributors to poverty and inequality. This includes the ambition for 3000 new affordable homes to be built in Salford through direct delivery over the next 10 years with actions outlined within Salford’s annual housing strategy.
Resources
Website: The Salford Way
Contact
Catherine Connors ([email protected])