Plan 27 concepts

Fife Partnership Board has agreed a direction of travel.

We need to develop a plan that links long-term ambition for people and place to focused, medium-term action - and makes it easier to work as one system, monitoring progress and tacking towards the shared vision. In parallel we need to redesign community planning partnership arrangements to support the new way of working.

The key components that we need to co-develop through 2026 are:

1. A clear, long-term direction to guide all partnership strategies and plans
2. A smaller number of shared priorities - 3–5 year missions
3. Simpler partnership working and governance
4. A shared way of measuring progress using data and lived experience
   

We're dealing with generational issues so, instead of a 10-year plan, we’re exploring a shared, generational vision for Fife - looking 20–25 years ahead.

We can't predict what the world will look like by 2050. This is about describing the kind of place we’re trying to build to guide all our decision making and activity, and keep us accountable to a clear set of principles.

It will need to be relatable and talk to the things that shape health and life chances: good homes, good work, strong economy, resilient communities, and support that reaches people early.

The shared vision would be clearly reflected in every partner organisation’s plan and strategies going forward.

The long-term direction will guide all work across the partnership - and collaboration should become part of our day-to-day way of working. But, alongside this, the new plan will set out a small number of shared priorities where we think focussed collaboration can have the biggest impact medium-term.

We could agree 3–5 missions to run for  1-3 years, with clear outcomes, leadership, resource alignment and measures of success attached. Then we’d review our progress and overall position against long-term vision and set new missions.

Through 2026 we need policy and delivery experts to consider what impact a new, intensive partnership approach in your area of work - and what we should prioritise for the plan's first set of missions. The kind of “wicked issues” we may choose to tackle include:

• Redesigning the child poverty and family support system

• Improving early child development

• Reducing emergency admissions and delayed discharge by strengthening support at home / in communities

• Enhancing community-based mental health support

• Improving school attendance and positive destinations

• Improving economic opportunities in priority places

• Maximising renewable energy opportunities in a way that retains value locally

When community planning works well, it helps organisations align effort, work across boundaries and intervene earlier. But we know the current system can feel fragmented, cluttered and hard to navigate.

This is a chance to simplify planning, activity monitoring and reporting by establishing clearer roles and fewer overlapping groups. Freeing people up to spend more time designing and delivering joined-up, mainstreamed solutions.

The focus of our governance through partnership groups should be to drive collaboration and accountability for results.

To act as one system, we need a shared language to describe performance and impact. If we can agree what success looks like, we can align plans, funding and activity more confidently.

We need to create shared framework for measuring the success of our missions - but also of wider work governed by individual partner organisations' plans.

Outcomes for communities and the impact of our work will be monitored by combining good data and evidence with lived experience, staff insight, and what communities tell us on an ongoing basis. And the system needs to support better shared learning and quicker adjustments to our practice in response.

 

• Plan 27 concepts

• Our evidence base

• National context

• Actions for 2026