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Growing Great Places, Spring 2024
Got a great idea for your local place? Looking for some support to make it happen? Pitch your idea to our Growing Great Places crowdfunding programme by 17th April. You could get a pledge of up to £5k from Kirklees Council. Or check out the local projects who are crowdfunding right now…
Growing Great Places
Growing Great Places projects
Welcome to Your Vote
We celebrated Welcome to Your Vote Week with a special event for some of our Democracy Friendly Schools participants, at Fairfield School. Our free programme helps children and young people to learn about local democracy and to get involved. Join in any time.
Democracy Friendly Schools
How do you feel about getting involved?
How do you feel about getting involved in your community? Please fill in our quick online form to tell us whether you feel it’s worthwhile to get involved and what you think helps people to become active citizens. It takes 5 to 10 minutes. We’d love to hear from you.
Tell us how you feel
Democracy happens where you are
What is local democracy? It’s about you – and it’s about us.
Shaped by People
Shaped by People is our shared goal, created by people from local places across Kirklees. All of us – individuals of all ages, families, neighbourhoods, businesses, community groups, local organisations and Kirklees Council – can share in it and take responsibility for achieving it. We make our places what they are.
Shaped by People
Our stories, our places
We’ve all got a story to share
Our stories, our places celebrates the stories of people in our communities who are working together to make our local places even better. We’d love to hear your story….
Our stories, our places
We are working alongside
Kirklees Council, our partners and citizens are working together to make the local places where we live, work and play better. Get involved…
We are working alongside
How good is our place?
Our towns, villages and communities are the strength of Kirklees – and local people have asked us to do more to recognise this. So we’re working with citizens, councillors and colleagues to make sure that everyone has a stake in the place where they live, work or visit. Activities are open now:
How good is our place?
We are with you
We’re working alongside our citizens and local organisations to make sure that together we can all support our neighbours and communities. We’re working especially closely with voluntary organisations and mutual aid groups in our local places, with our partners at Third Sector Leaders. Together we’re sharing advice, information and local stories to help everyone who is part of the Covid-19 Community Response in Kirklees.
We are with you
Latest neighbourhood stories
Democracy Friendly Schools
Our Democracy Friendly Schools programme is helping our young citizens to get involved in local democracy and civic life. If you’re part of a school community, if you have a child at school anywhere in Kirklees, or if you’re connected to a local school then you can help by encouraging your school to get involved. We’d also like to hear from other organisations who are interested in being Democracy Friendly.
We are democracy friendly
Growing a stronger youth council
We’re proud to have launched the “Growing a stronger youth council” report, about the future of Kirklees Youth Council. Our report shares what young people told us about having a voice, getting involved in community life, and how we can help them to grow the skills, confidence and connections that they want, in the way that they want.
Growing a stronger youth council
Working Group
Our Working Group for the Kirklees Democracy Commission are overseeing our practical work to grow a stronger local democracy.
You can watch all our meetings via live webcast or follow via @kirkdemocracy on twitter.
Get involved: Working Group info
Our local democracy is changing… How are we doing?
Kirklees Question Time
Our latest Kirklees Leaders Question Time event was at Holmfirth Civic Hall on Tuesday 23rd October 2018.
If you missed it, you can watch our webcast archive or look back at our live tweets from the evening.
Our next event will be in 2019.
Watch our webcast archive
Live tweets from #KirkleesQT
Kirklees Question Time
Growing a stronger local democracy
Our report | Executive summary | Chapters | Taster booklet (PDF) | 48 recommendations
Read our report on the future of local democracy:
Growing a stronger local democracy,
from the ground up
Published 30th June 2017
Our report | Executive summary | Chapters | Taster booklet (PDF) | 48 recommendations
Previous events
Want to catch up on an event you missed, or take a second look? You can find out what’s already happened here – stories, webcasts & more…
Events archive
Launch event | Videos | Slides
Reviewing the evidence
Over 1,000 people have talked to us about local democracy in Kirklees and beyond. Thank you to everyone who has got involved so far.
- 88 people took part in discussions at our local democracy roadshow events across Kirklees.
- We met with the Kirklees Youth Council, Huddersfield University Students Union, partner organisations and other groups.
- 43 witnesses gave evidence during our public inquiries and evidence gathering sessions.
- 318 members of the Kirklees e-panel shared their views.
- 441 Kirklees Council staff shared their views.
- We have heard from councillors and political groups in Kirklees.
- We have visited some other councils to learn from their experiences.
- We’ve also received comments in writing, via social media, via our web site and by email.
We reviewed and deliberated all this evidence to help create our landmark report. You can look through the evidence too:
Our evidence
What should local democracy be like in Kirklees?
Local democracy is about being part of the decisions that affect our everyday lives. It’s about what happens on our street, in our neighbourhoods and across Kirklees. It’s important because it affects all of us.
And because it’s so important, the Kirklees Democracy Commission are working with our citizens and others to grow a stronger local democracy, from the ground up.
Hear from local citizens in our 4 minute film
We’d like you to be part of helping to shape a strong and healthy local democracy here in Kirklees – for the next generation, and beyond.
How should we do democracy here in Kirklees?
Join the debate to help us find out.
We’ll also keep you posted via twitter and email: