Your Voice Your Town (YVYT) is a new structure that Ealing Council is supporting, as a better way of working together with communities to identify and lead responses to community needs and priorities. It aims to create the conditions to support communities to bring together resources, create activities and commit to action on key priorities.
Some people in a local community may want to be involved in leading and shaping the overarching approach, others may want to be involved in projects and activity, so there will be different ways to get involved.
The Town Team acts as the local decision-making body, guiding the direction and priorities of YVYT in each of the borough’s seven towns.
In relation to the award of grant funding, Ealing Council retains sole legal capacity to award grants, but will in good faith, endeavour to accept the Town Team’s recommendation.
Town Team members are volunteers who join a Town Team in their area and commit to working together to achieve shared goals. They are made up of residents, community groups, faith groups, businesses and councillors. This is to help ensure that there is a brilliant diverse range of people who are more reflective of the different views across a Town. It also enables the Team to hear from a wide range of perspectives. Ealing Council also hope this enables the work of Town Team to reach and involve lots of different people through the different networks and connections of the group.
Being a Town Team member is a voluntary role and by signing up, you are agreeing to a participation agreement which commits you to:
The commitment will be for 12 months and typically will be in line with the cycle of committing Town Team funding annually (e.g. May – April). This timeline will be agreed with the individual Town Team. Town Team members may want to continue the role for more than one year, but the Town Team will review the composition of the group to ensure diversity of views and perspectives are reflective of their Town. The ultimate authority for who joins the Town Team will be with Council Officers.
The Town Team will be supported by a Council Officer. The Officer is from the Strategy and Change directorate of Ealing Council and leads on community engagement for each Town. The Council Officers will:
Council Officers may involve and draw on the expertise of other council services, community groups and organisations in your area to support the Town Team when needed or useful.
Ealing Council is the data controller for all the Town Team participation data.
What Ealing Council collect about you: name, email, phone, postal address, biography (including membership of other groups), demographic data and photograph.
Why Ealing Council use your data: To recruit and onboard members to the Town Team, providing training and updates and meet audit, transparency and information rights duties linked to Town Team activity.
Lawful basis: Public task (UK GDPR Art 6(1)(e)) as the primary basis. Substantial public interest (UK GDPR Art 9(2)(g) and DPA 2018 Sch 1 para 8) as legal basis for processing special category data.
Who Ealing Council share’s it with: Relevant Council officers and fellow Town Team Members and/or any other body as required by the law.
Messaging groups: Use of WhatsApp (or similar) and MS Teams for communication between Town Team members is permitted. All of the data in these communications must not be disclosed to individuals not part of the Town Team.
Ealing Council is the data controller for all Town Team business. The Town Team members act under the Council’s authority and are not separate controllers/processors (Article 23 UK GDPR).
The Town Team members must:
The UK GDPR singles out some types of personal data as likely to be more sensitive and gives them extra protection. The type of Special Category Data that Town Team members may expect to process during the term of their role includes:
Ealing Council generally will not share special category data with Town Team Members. If required, handling will follow Article 9(2)(g) (substantial public interest) with DPA 2018 Sch 1 para 8 (equality) or para 18 (safeguarding). Town Team Members will expect to process special category data when reviewing grant funding applications.
Confidentiality: All information relating to the Town Team business is confidential and must not be disclosed to anyone other than fellow Town Team members and Council Officers, unless agreed otherwise with Ealing Council.
Data breaches: Any suspected data breach must be reported to a Council Officer within 24 hours.
Freedom of information: Meeting notes and recommendations may be published with personal data minimised and/or redacted. FOI requests are handled by the Council.
Ealing Council supports Town Team members and recognises the opinions of Town Team members are their own. Ealing Council has a commitment to work with residents, community organisations, businesses and faith groups to help address local challenges and take action to help people in the London Borough of Ealing live healthier, happier lives. The policies and position of Ealing Council as a democratically led organisation represent the views of the people who elected their councillors.
The Your Voice Your Town approach works hard to promote equity and provide residents and communities with a way to work together to share their views and to take action. The Ealing Council Team would only step in to take any appropriate action if Town Team members expressed and promoted views which were defamatory or were discriminatory with regards to any protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010.