The
London Borough of Tower Hamlets
An English Local
Authority of 50 elected Councillors - 20 of whom are Bangladeshi-
and approximately 12,000 staff providing Education, Social
Services, Housing Management, Town Planning and a range of
other services to 172,000 people living in East London. Responsibility
for establishing successful private / public / community partnerships
to secure funds for and deliver multi million pound regeneration
projects to some of the most deprived communities in the country.
The London Borough
of Tower Hamlets (LBTH) is divided into 19 wards covering
172,000 people covering 11 sq.km The Bangladeshi community
makes up 26% of the population.
As the lead Partner,
LBTH is responsible for the overall co-ordination of the project.
LBTH has a proven track record of delivering high quality
multi -million pound regeneration programmes of the European
Commission and UK Central Government.
Prior to the signing
of the Accord LBTH has always held very close ties with Sylhet,
Bangladesh primarily through it's resident community. LBTH
local authority is responsible for the provision of education,
personal social services, public housing, town planning, environmental,
health, trading standards, tourism/regeneration, road construction
and maintenance, libraries, arts sports and leisure.
LBTH has hosted
numerous trade, business and governmental delegations from
Bangladesh. Our Sylheti councillors are frequent visitors
to Sylhet for both business and personal reasons that result
in regular delegations and exchanges with public officials
from Sylhet and the Bangladesh government. More recently we
have hosted two business seminars on behalf of the UK Government's
Department for Trade & Industry (DTI), in partnership
with the Bangladesh Export Promotion Bureau.
The concept of
the Sylhet Partnership office has therefore been borne out
of the experiences and exchanges that have taken place over
the years with our partners in Bangladesh. LBTH has worked
in partnership with the UK Bangladesh Education Trust set
up to support educational development of children in Sylhet.
This has been an extremely successful project gaining support
from a wide range of agencies including the British Council.
We also have close links with the DTI who have shown a keen
interest in the project and whilst not being able to commit
in financial terms have indicated the need for such a pilot
project to pave the way for attracting foreign interest and
investment in Sylhet.
LBTH
Expertise
LBTH has effectively
managed and disseminated several major European Commission
programmes. The bulk of funding from European comes in the
form of the structural funds: Objective 2, Objective 3 and
Community Initiatives, together with competitively won contracts
addressing social exclusion and community economic development
in Inner City Urban areas in difficulty.
These include the
highly successful Article 6 "1000 people into work"
contract and the Urban Initiative which has developed a five
million package of community capacity raising, organisational
development, business planning and economic interventions,
on behalf of an area which includes the most deprived wards
of the entire United Kingdom.
Additionally, it
has participated and managed trans-national experience exchange
contracts and drawn up models that can be replicated on a
European wide basis.
The partners are
confident that they have the capacity to carry out the proposed
actions. The tri-partite relationship has been developing
for over three years now, with delegations from the lead body
(LBTH) visiting Horsens and Bangladesh to reinforce those
links and build the partnership.
The UK Government
has increasingly recognised the importance of economic, social
and cultural links between Sylhet and LBTH, which has the
largest Sylheti population in the World outside of Bangladesh
itself. This has been reflected in that since 1996 the UK
Government has held it's annual investment seminar on Bangladesh
within LBTH, at which the Council of LBTH has been a key contributor.
This commitment is reinforced by the work of the local Member
of Parliament to the UK government who has visited Bangladesh
in support of our initiative
It is envisaged
that we will utilise our expert staff to develop and work
in close co-operation with the City Corporation in designing and
implementing urban management programme which repositions
the City Corporation at the centre of urbanisation, developing
its structures, personnel, financial and legal framework,
and uniquely establishing a partnership model response to
the development and realisation of the vision for Sylhet.
Most importantly,
LBTH has completed a major transition itself, having streamlined
its responsibilities and central services, concentrating on
the strategic planning and contracting role, whilst managing
and delivering a series of service areas (e.g. community and
economic development) through commissioned external partnerships,
such as our CitySide Regeneration Company for the 'BanglaTown'
and adjoining areas of this borough.
It has further
refined it's relationship with other sectors and used the
partnership model to successfully forge links with the private
sector using a range of techniques e.g. Business mentors in
schools, Skills Match Job Brokerage agency, guarantor of employment
of local people in the corporate sector and the 'Graduates
Forum Programme', to raise employers perceptions of the skills
and talents within the local community.
Furthermore, we
have used the Grameen model pioneered in Bangladesh and re-invented
this in a model appropriate for the UK economy, as a business
start up and development package for Bengali entrepreneurs.
A key component of our bid will be to look at the creative
re-interpretation of projects in each of the three partner
regions, to test their applicability in Sylhet
 Home I Project I Partners I Demo Projects I Contacts I FAQs I Events
I Site Map
|
