Eric Pickles appeals to council workers for their cost cutting ideas

Community Empowerment is about people and government, working together to make life better. It is about more people being able to influence decisions about their communities, and more people tackling local problems themselves, rather than expecting others to.

The idea is that government can't solve everything by itself, and nor can the community: it's better when we work together.

The National Empowerment Partnership (NEP) is a programme from the Department for Communities and Local Government( CLG) committed to supporting and improving empowerment activities across England. It gathers evidence of effective community empowerment activities from across the country and promotes the positive benefits of involving communities in the decisions that affect them. The practical work of the NEP programme is carried out by organisations working together in each of the nine English Regions through Regional Empowerment Partnerships (REPs).

The South East Regional Empowerment Partnership is the SE arm of the National Empowerment Partnership supported by CLG through the Community Development Foundation.. The REP brings together a range of statutory agencies, voluntary and community organisations, networks and people who are running community empowerment activities.

The Partnership collects and shares examples of good practice in empowering activities from across the region. It uses its collective expertise to support local authorities, statutory agencies and community organisations to work together. This helps to give more power to communities and local people to make decisions about what happens in the areas where they live.