Three-year improvement programme launched for Belfast

Belfast City Council has agreed an ambitious three-year programme of work to improve the city in the hope of making it a better place to live, work and do business.

‘Framing our Future’, the Council’s new corporate plan, focuses on key challenges facing the city and prioritises a series of initiatives and actions aimed at influencing and shaping a better future for Belfast and to strengthen its position in terms of economic, environmental and social development.

The plan sets out a number of key objectives, revolving around four main themes:

• providing civic leadership, by highlighting the challenges that face the City and working with others to achieve co-ordinated solutions
• improving quality of life, by creating a cleaner, safer and healthier city with a strong economy
• promoting good relations, by encouraging fair treatment and respect for people of all cultures
• delivering best services, by providing value for money services them.

Within this framework, the plan identifies a number of prioritised issues which the council will be undertaking or initiating in the near future.

Commenting on the plan, Councillor Chris McGimpsey, Chairman of the Policy and Resources Committee, said: “This plan, and the actions arising from it, will be complementary to the work of all the other agencies striving to make our city a better place in the future. It is the council’s earnest desire to engage with the business community, other partnership agencies and the people of Belfast to develop these programmes, and others, and bring people and organisations together for the betterment of Belfast."

Mr McGimpsey said that as the sole elected body in Belfast, the council was in a "unique position" to contribute to the development of the city and that the new plan set out its strategic aims and priorities for driving forward the development over the next three years.

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