Participation in Community Planning Partnerships. The colleges of the Highlands and Islands further education region have generally and historically played a very full and close part within their local community planning partnerships and helped shape local priorities as expressed in the Single Outcome Agreements of the various Community Planning Partnerships. It is recognised as being absolutely vital that the colleges are key players in community planning and fully integrated into these increasingly important partnerships. However, it has been recognised in previous Regional Outcome Agreements with the Scottish Funding Council that there remained work to do before such positive and fruitful relationships could be said to characterise the involvement of the colleges across all of the local authority areas concerned. This is a matter that is currently been reviewed in order to establish the current status of these important relationships and which will be provided for in the University’s Operational Plan for 2015-16 as follows “Develop a regional report on existing participation in Community Planning Partnership mechanisms across the partnership identifying good practice and obstacles to participation and impact.” The 2014/17 Outcome Agreement set out in full the basis upon which the FE Regional Board had decided to make (or not) the Scottish Funding Council’s “National Performance Measures 2014-15” into targets. These targets were then set for the three year period covered by the Outcome Agreement. The Further Education self-evaluation of session 2013-14 that was undertaken as part of the process of refreshing the 2014/17 Outcome Agreement charted progress against each of these targets. In summary, the regional performance across these targets was very positive and has necessitated these targets being revisited and, in several cases, has led to the targets being raised over the remainder of the period covered by this Outcome Agreement. Since last year, the Scottish Funding Council has reviewed these National Performance Measures and these have now been reduced in number which is very much to be welcomed.
