Community Services
Our Community Services department combines important services tasked with keeping our residents safe and services such as culture and leisure which contribute positively to the wellbeing of local people.
It is home to our Emergency Planning team, which works to build community resilience and plan for incidents such as flooding, fires or other emergencies so that the district is as protected as possible. It also includes the Public Protection Partnership, a team which works at regional level to regulate public-facing licensed businesses and make sure the public are not at risk.
The other teams in the department include our passionate Libraries team who look after the district's 8 libraries; our Leisure team who manage our playing pitches and leisure centre contract; our Culture team who oversee Shaw House, the Museum and our other heritage assets; and the Building Communities Together Team, who work closely with the Police and other partners to support community safety.
Leisure Services
The focus for the Sport and Leisure Team is to increase participation in, and enjoyment of, physical activity across the district.
The team manages the contract for the leisure centres, working with the operator to ensure a diverse and comprehensive offer is provided.
The team also works in partnership with others to deliver on the priorities of the Leisure Strategy and the Playing Pitch Strategy including a number of capital projects to develop and improve local provision.
Culture and Libraries
Our Libraries and Cultural Services play an essential role in engaging with and supporting our communities to achieve sustainable social outcomes.
Our mission is to enrich people's lives by providing free access to reading, information, advice, learning and culture in our buildings and online.
Building Communities Together
We are a team of officers from West Berkshire Council who work to support the Building Communities Together Partnership, which is the Community Safety Partnership for West Berkshire.
We help the agencies that make up the Building Communities Together Partnership to fulfil their statutory duties. We support multi agency working across to District, to ensure that West Berkshire continues to be a safe place to live, learn, work and visit.
We support a number of partnership forums and, importantly, work with communities and individuals across West Berkshire, helping them to do more for themselves and to help each other. We help communities to become stronger and to be more self-reliant and will always help those that need it and protect those who are most vulnerable.
Public Protection Partnership
Our Public Protection Service is jointly responsible for delivering Environmental Health, Licencing and Training Standards to over 450,000 people and 10,000 businesses alongside our Partners, Bracknell Forest Council and Wokingham Borough Council.
The multi-disciplinary nature of the service and the different Local authorities the partnership covers provides the opportunity to gain a wide range of experience. Training and development is a key part of what we do, we have many options to gain professional qualifications via our Apprenticeship Scheme to grow your career in the direction you choose. Across the service, there are diverse roles for Apprentices, Investigators, Food Safety Officers, Environmental Health Officers and Licensing Officers to name just a few.
Emergency Planning
The Joint Emergency Planning Unit (JEPU) coordinates the council's readiness and ability to respond to emergencies and supports the community in the recovery from emergencies.
The JEPU is a service provided by West Berkshire District Council in partnership with Bracknell Forest and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead councils, ensuring a consistent approach to emergency planning and response across all three areas.
Emergencies happen all the time and are managed by the relevant emergency services, utility companies and the council. This service gets involved when there is a major incident or more complex multi-service or multi-agency emergencies or business continuity incidents. Examples of the kind of incidents this team gets involved with include:
- Severe weather, such as wide-spread flooding, extreme cold or extreme heat,
- Infectious diseases, such as flu,
- Industrial accidents
The service works to identify potential risks within the council area, develops our plans, provides training and exercising opportunities for staff and other agencies, supports the response to emergencies and the recovery from these emergencies. We also work with other agencies, such as the emergency services and our neighbouring councils, to ensure all our emergency plans complement one another so that we can keep residents safe as possible providing information and support to individuals and communities so they can build their own resilience.
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