Empowering You in Swale

Swale Borough Council has set out plans to improve health, education, and support for struggling households across the borough.

The council has worked with local charities, organisations and the public to create a strategy to create lasting, positive change over the next three years.

The strategy - Empowering You in Swale - aims to:

• Create skilled, educated, and working communities by improving access to education and training, with a focus on helping young people get on track
• Growing healthy communities by reducing health inequalities in the borough by making healthcare more accessible and promoting healthy lifestyles through partnerships with local organizations
• Empowering stronger, more sustainable communities by helping people struggling with day-to-day hardships, such as fuel poverty, through innovative and joint working solutions
• Developing strong partnerships that deliver for our communities by working with charities and other groups and creating a more resilient voluntary and community sector

The council will work with, and help support, partners to achieve the best education outcomes for residents, improve and promote the health of the borough and support people through financial hardship.

They will also leverage existing services, such as the housing and leisure teams, create new initiatives and seek external funding to work towards their goal of improving residents' lives.

A consultation on the priorities took place last year to make sure they reflected what mattered most to local people.

Find out how they plan to improve the borough by reading the strategy here.

Cllr Elliott Jayes, vice chair of the Community and Leisure Committee, said:

“Everything we do here at the council is to try and better the lives of the communities we serve, because the wellbeing of our residents is our number one priority.

“Our Empowering You in Swale strategy sets out what we want to achieve and how we will go about doing it, including working together with partners and other Swale services and creating and promoting initiatives within Swale.

“But we know that without working together with the local charities and organisations, that are doing amazing work in the borough, we won’t be able to achieve our ambitious goals.

“Thank you to the public and the organisations who helped us make sure the strategy lines up with the needs of locals, we look forward to bringing forward these benefits to Swale residents.”

The council has already been working to deliver improvements in these areas.

The One Swale Roadshows - which have been extended for the year - bring together organisations who can offer crucial support under one roof, who have helped over 3,500 people access bill reductions, food and fuel vouchers, debt advice, free health checks and much more across the borough.

The council provided £125,000, funded by the UKSPF, to The Swale Voluntary Alliance (SVA) who are working towards ensuring the future financial stability of the local VCS in the borough. Their mission is to support the sector to become stronger together, and promote collaborative working and resource sharing, already working towards the council’s priority.

They also created smoke free zones across the borough, funded by Kent County Council, and launched a campaign to educate smokers on the risks of second-hand smoke. The project is helping improve the health of the borough by promoting One You Kent’s Stop Smoking Service, to help people quit.

Their People and Skills Grant, funded by the Government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), worked towards this aim last year by enabling Swale’s non-profit’s to deliver initiatives that help locals with education opportunities, digital skills training and access to vital employment support.

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