Launch of Dalton Together

27th September 2020

Dalton Together is a new partnership organisation that aims to strengthen the community in the Dalton Ward area of Kirklees.

The Dalton Ward consists of Dalton | Kirkheaton | Rawthorpe | Moldgreen | Waterloo | Lakes | Standiforth | Town Estate

Its purpose is to:

Work together to make a bigger impact in our community

Attracting new resources, funding and ideas
Creating pride and belonging in our community
Encouraging community connections and sharing experiences

How did it all come about?

Ward Councillors, Peter McBride, Naheed Mather and Musarrat Khan alongside their Council ward support officer (Cheryl Reid), have for some time now been hosting and facilitating Ward Partnership Meetings as part of their commitment to ward partnership working and have regularly discussed their vision for improved ward working in order to develop a whole ward partnership approach …. Being Ward Wise (was then, a working title) to:

• Strengthening partnership working and putting in place governance arrangements across the ward
• Providing generous leadership across the ward to enable Cllrs, the community and partners to champion shared goals
• Responding to shared community priorities and needs through new partnership working arrangements
• Increasing the effectiveness and sustainability of community groups across the ward (existing and newly emerging ones – of all sizes and abilities)
• Sustaining current provision and develop essential community facilities across the ward
• Developing new activities and services and build on strengths and assets that exist across the ward
• Undertaking volunteer succession planning – by supporting existing volunteers and growing new generations of younger volunteers across the ward by putting in place a Volunteering Strategy bespoke to the area
• Developing strategic communication, community engagement, ward/funding plans for the ward to support ward working

So ….. the Councillors hosted two partnership residentials held at Northern College in Barnsley to help local partners, local community groups and local residents work through some of the opportunities and challenges to make the above ambitions a reality. 

The work undertaken on the residential then culminated into a creative but intense visioning session which Cummins, a multi-national organisation, kindly hosted, on behalf of the Dalton Ward Partnership.  Following this engaging process the message triangle (above) was created which sets out the vision for a new community led partnership organisation – named Dalton Together. 

Third Sector Leaders were then approached to work with the partnership in order to formalise its status and put in place all the relevant governance requirements for it to function in an open and transparent way, in order that it could also attract investment into the area.  The Councillors then invested a significant amount of Council funding to Dalton Together to help get it up and running and responding to local needs.  Syngenta, another multi-national organisation, then offered to host at their site, a Dalton Together ward partnership meeting, and invited over to Huddersfield – Keighley Big Local – a successful organisation who established itself to create lasting change in its communities.  Dalton Together picked up lots of learning, inspiration, lessons learnt and good practice which proved beneficial and Dalton Together is now in an exciting place to be able to promote more widely what it can offer to residents, partners, community groups and local businesses because as a community partnership … ‘together we make good things happen.’

We have focussed our approach to 4 key groups within our ward and they are:

If you would like to get involved in any way please contact us through the website or email info@daltontogether.co.uk

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