Debate contribution: Westland Community Centre, North Belfast

Debate contribution by Mrs Emma Little-Pengelly on 9 September 2024.

MLA: Mrs Emma Little-Pengelly
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 9 September 2024
Type: Debate contribution (made as a minister)
Business: Oral Answers to Questions
Heading: Westland Community Centre, North Belfast
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4511347

Text

I thank the Member for his question. I mentioned the 13 capital projects, but, of course, the revenue schemes have proven to be very successful, with a very healthy uptake. Since the inception of the Urban Villages programme in 2016, over 34,000 people from the North Belfast community have engaged with or benefited from it. A total of 534 training places and 502 workshops have been delivered. Ninety-eight per cent of participants reported that the project had helped them, so that is a really good evaluation for those projects. You will be aware that the Urban Villages project was very much about doing things differently and really getting down into the community and asking people in the community about the challenges that they face and what issues they would prioritise and then working with communities to find local solutions to local problems. That is why it has been so successful in getting that level of buy-in and participation from the local community. Those are definitely lessons that we need to learn, and hopefully we can move forward with them in the roll-out of other programmes, including the new Together: Building a United Community revised strategy.

195 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.03 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.03	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.01	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.02	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.02	No
Controversy escalation	0.02	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.52	No
Overall judgement	0.03	At or below not-flagging threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	1.00
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.00
Adopts it	0.00

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
No identity-related subject	0.61
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.34
Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism	0.03
Education structures, integration and community division	0.01
Another identity-related subject	0.01

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:58 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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