Domain 5 asks how the board hears from and acts with communities and the VCFSE as an input to its own decision-making: who is in the room, how community knowledge shapes board priorities, and whether the commissioning environment enables or fragments collective VCFSE capacity. Place-based community infrastructure and neighbourhood-level community resilience are addressed in domain 6.
Does the board draw on the knowledge, assets and voice of communities and the voluntary sector in shaping its priorities, and does it actively support the conditions in which the voluntary and community sector can contribute effectively?"
Healthwatch
The planned transfer of Healthwatch functions to local authorities from 2027 will require boards to ensure that the community voice mechanisms currently anchored in Healthwatch are actively sustained and strengthened, not left to erode. Boards at all levels of this scale should be aware of this transition and planning for it.
Score 1: Not evident
The board's engagement with communities is primarily limited to periodic consultation on the strategy.
Communities are asked to comment on priorities that have largely been shaped without them, and it is not clear how responses are considered or fed back. There is no systematic mechanism for bringing community intelligence into the board's ongoing work, and the board has not changed its priorities in response to what communities have said.
The VCFSE sector has limited or no representation at board level beyond Healthwatch. Where the sector is engaged, individual organisations are involved episodically rather than as part of a sustained relationship. The board's commissioning and funding decisions, including the use of competitive tendering, have not been considered in terms of their effect on the VCFSE sector's capacity to work collectively. The sector is treated as a delivery vehicle, not as a source of knowledge or a strategic partner.
Score 3 note: Growing
The board has VCFSE representation and engages communities more regularly than through strategy consultation alone.
The board has begun to consider how community intelligence can inform its priorities, and there is at least one example of a priority or approach that shifted in response to what communities said. However, engagement remains episodic and the commissioning culture has not yet changed in ways that build collective VCFSE capacity.
Score 5: Embedded
Communities and the VCFSE are active participants in shaping the board's priorities, not consultees.
The board has invested in diverse, accessible and sustained mechanisms for community and resident voice: these are structural features of how the board works, not periodic additions to the agenda. Community intelligence is a standing element of the board's business, treated with the same seriousness as clinical data or financial performance. The board can point to specific priorities or approaches that changed as a direct result of what communities said, and members can name those changes. Community members are involved in defining problems and framing priorities, not only in responding to proposed solutions.
The board actively invests in the conditions for VCFSE collaboration rather than fragmenting the sector through competition: commissioning and funding approaches are designed to build collective capacity, nurture long-term relationships and recognise the sector's contribution as a source of knowledge and civic infrastructure, not only as a deliverer of contracts. The board understands the difference between commissioning services for communities and building the capacity of communities to address their own needs, and its approach reflects that distinction.
The VCFSE's contribution to population health and wellbeing and wellbeing is visible in how the board frames its priorities and assesses its impact. The health and sustainability of the voluntary and community sector across the area is understood as a shared responsibility of the board. The board has actively considered how to sustain and strengthen resident and community voice as institutional arrangements change, and does not rely on a single mechanism or statutory structure to carry this function.
Related resources for the Rationale, HWB Maturity Matrix, HiAP and the PHIP page