Council leader Steven Purcell has stepped down as chairman of an organisation set up to make Glasgow vibrant.

While Mr Purcell prepares the city for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Councillor James Coleman takes over at the Glasgow Community Planning Partnership.

Here Mr Coleman explains what the partnership does and how it will help shape every Glaswegian's life.

IT has a big name and it's got a huge role to play in our city. Glasgow Community Planning Partnership is the bridge that links every single resident with the agencies that provide services and help make their lives better.

I sometimes wonder if we could have picked a snappier name for the GCPP, but as the saying goes, it does what it says on the tin.

The GCPP is here for everyone in the city - listening, helping and working for residents in every street, road and block of flats.

When you look at the partners involved - the City Council, Scottish Government, NHS, police, fire service, GHA, Communities Scotland and a wide variety of voluntary and residents groups - you start to get an idea of how vital the GCPP will be to the city's future. That's why I'm honoured and delighted to become chairman.

It has taken some time to get our community planning right, not just here in Glasgow but throughout Scotland.

The structure we now have in place in the city reaches down to the grassroots, right into communities. Centralisation didn't work, but this form of devolution does.

The GCPP has five strategic planning areas in Glasgow and in each of these we have two community planning partnerships - with tenant representatives sitting side-by-side with senior people from our partner organisations.

Our city-wide strategic objective is to create a healthy, learning, safe, vibrant and working Glasgow.

I have watched the GCPP working in my local area in the East End of Glasgow.

One great example that takes in several of the organisation's themes is its work with the East End Community Academy.

GCPP funding has helped the academy employ tutors to help many long-term unemployed back into work. Courses offering computer and office skills have helped hundreds to find jobs and a new direction in their lives, giving cause for optimism to some people who had lost hope.

Projects such as this are mirrored throughout the city and there will always be a place for funding and encouraging these kind of schemes through the Fairer Scotland Fund. But the GCPP also has a more tactical role to play.

We must ensure that the mainline agencies who sit around the Partnership table with us direct their resources to best address the five themes involved in the creation of a healthy, learning, safe, vibrant and working Glasgow.

Community planning will ensure all agencies work closer together to get best value and deliver a better product - and by that I mean better services.

Joined-up thinking, joined-up working.

The GCPP will be diligent in attempting to ensure our funds are used in the best possible way and that inefficiency and red tape do not dilute our efforts.

We will also monitor changing trends. Groups or organisations that were relevant in 1980 may not have such an important role to play in 21st-century Glasgow.

Society's hopes and aspirations change and evolve. It is up to us in the GCPP to touch the pulse of the city, detect the needs and invest where it will make the most positive changes, especially for those who most need our help.

One of our priorities is to address the city's enduring problems of ill health, alcohol and drug addiction.

Alongside this we must encourage those who have no experience of a working environment into jobs. With the new Partnership structure in place, we believe we have the right people round the right tables to help them.

Every section of our community must be encouraged that they can play a part in Glasgow's success story.

Driving everything we do will be the spirit of community engagement. By spring we hope to have community reference groups up and running across the city.

With approximately 20 residents in each group, the hope is they will ensure local voices are heard on local issues.

There will also be community panels, where people who perhaps don't have the time or enthusiasm to attend meetings can still have their views recorded.

Community planning without community involvement is just a non-starter.

From GCPP area boards through to the community reference groups, focusing on and moving towards a healthy, learning, safe, vibrant and working Glasgow will be our united goal.

We're in this together, and working together we can make our city an even better place.