Chance to share views about life in the Burford and Tenbury Wells area
People who live or work in the communities of Burford and Tenbury Wells and surrounding rural area are being invited to share their local knowledge about life in the area at a special evening event on Tuesday 22 November 2011.
The one-off event will be held at Tenbury Wells Primary School, with refreshments from 6.30pm ahead of a 7pm start. The event will finish at around 9.45pm.
Richard Huffer, the Shropshire Councillor for the Burford area (in Clee division), is very much involved and will be looking forward to finding out about community views not only from people in Burford and places like Boraston, Greete and Nash, but also from people living across the river that forms the border with Worcestershire. This will be the first time that Shropshire Council has held an event like this for communities living each side of a border, and the council is working very closely with Malvern Hills District Council and Worcestershire County Council.
The aim is to use the outcomes to guide ongoing work locally, and to help guide how the council and other local authorities can build on joint work with each other and with other communities across other borders as well.
The local councils are looking for between 30 and 40 local people to take part in the event, from all backgrounds and ages. The parish councils have also been invited to get involved.
The event forms part of the drive to review the Burford and Tenbury Wells Parish Plan, being led by the Tenbury Area Partnership, and the results will feed into this work.
Anyone interested in taking part in the event is asked to please contact Lois Dale by 9am on Thursday 17 November 2011, to make a provisional booking, on 01743 255667 or by emailing 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.
The event will use an interactive approach, already in use with rural parishes in Shropshire, and based on a set of questions about what makes a community sustainable. The same questions are asked wherever it is used, so the answers can be used as a guideline for planning priorities and community priorities in that area.
Richard Huffer, Shropshire Councillor for Clee division -which includes Burford, said:
“We are 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. This will help make sure we have the best quality of information possible about life across the whole of the area, including the smaller rural villages, based on local knowledge and views, as well as on the information that we already have as a council. This information will help shape how we meet the future needs of our communities in Burford and Tenbury Wells and the surrounding rural areas, as well as helping in parish planning work by the communities themselves.”
Gwilym Butler, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for community working, said:
“We need people to come along and take part to tell us what it is like in this area, 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 planning to be at the event myself and am very much looking forward to it.”
Councillor Ken Pollock, the Worcestershire County Councillor for the Tenbury Wells area, and Councillor Tony Penn, the local Malvern Hills District Councillor, said:
“We are delighted to be working with Shropshire Council on this and building on our close relationship with them. We know that what matters to communities is the quality of the services that they get from their council, wherever they live, and we are sure that we will find out that there will be much that we all have in common.”
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 end 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.
