Call for people who live in Whittington parish to share their views about life in the area
Shropshire Council is issuing a call for between 30 and 40 local people from the parish of Whittington to take part in a one-off event, to be held at the Senior Citizens Hall in Whittington itself on the evening of Thursday 4 October 2012. This is a separate event to the large public meeting being arranged with regard to National Grid proposals. It will be Number 40 in the series of community toolkit events held in Shropshire over the last three years.
Participants will be asked to share their views with other local people on a range of topics like housing, local jobs, and local services, as well as telling the council more about the different social and leisure activities that go on in the area. Local Shropshire Councillor Stephen Charmley will be there to listen to what people have to say about what life is like in the parish, and Shropshire Council officers will be taking the notes.
The event has a 7pm start, finishing at around 9.45pm.
People will be mixed up into group discussion tables depending on their ages and interests and where they are from in the parish, in order to share their local knowledge and views with each other, and there will also be a parish councillor on each table. People will be sent more information ahead of the event, so contact details are also needed for this purpose.
Councillor Stephen Charmley said:
“Previous events in other rural parishes in Shropshire have seen young people aged 11 taking part with their parents, right through to people in their nineties. It would be really good to have a mix of perspectives from young and old here as well, and I do encourage people to get in touch. The information will help Shropshire Council and the parish council to make sure we have the best-quality and most up-to-date information possible about life in the area, from the people who know.
“It will also help us to work with local people to update the parish plan. The council is very keen to hear from people who may not have been involved in anything before but would be able to give up an evening on this occasion, as well as from people already active in the community who want to share their views.”
Anyone interested in taking part in the event is asked to please contact Lois Dale by 1pm on Monday 1 October 2012, to make a provisional booking, on 01743 255667 or via email lois.dale@shropshire.gov.uk. If there are more than 40 people who come forward, names will be drawn from a hat at that point. Lois Dale will then contact people and further information will be posted out to participants ahead of the event itself.
The deadline date has been set to allow for people find out about this event through the Whittington Ripple due out the previous week, as well as through other publicity. The aim is also to avoid clashes with the large public meeting about National Grid proposals.
The event will use an interactive toolkit approach, based on a set of questions about what makes a community sustainable. The same questions are asked wherever it is used in Shropshire, so the answers can be used as a guideline for planning priorities and community priorities in that area.
People will also be asked to give their views on what community benefits might be important to the area, and help their community develop and thrive in the future. The results on the day will be an improved evidence base about the local area, and a visual snapshot of the community arrived at using a colour wheel.
Gwilym Butler, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for flourishing Shropshire communities, added:
“We need people to come along and take part to tell us what living in the parish of Whittington is like, its positives and negatives. This will form a base for us to work from to plan for the future, delivering what the community wants and needs. I am delighted that we have now reached number 40 of these events; people have said that they enjoy taking part, and I very much hope that will be the case for Whittington as well. Every event brings something different, because every locality is different, and I am sure that we will learn something new and different from this one as well.”
