The Community plan is a plan devised by the community – a vision of how they see the village they live in developing - and some actions to move towards that vision. It considers all aspects of local life – social, economic and environmental not just the spatial aspects.  Everyone gets a voice, gets chance to air their views.

Pen has a good feeling of community and is a great place to live. We are lucky to have what we have. Many have chosen to move here for what it is. We have an opportunity to influence the development of our surroundings.

More than 3000 communities across the country have already produced Parish or Community Plans. These have generally been developed by voluntary community groups, with support from the parish council.

The process will take us beyond anecdotes to provide some statistics. The Parish Council’s influence with local authorities is much stronger if it has a credible Community plan.

The Community Plan is being guided by a Steering Group which is a voluntary group representing a wide range of community with a small representative presence from the PC. The Steering Group's terms of reference follow an Open meeting held in August 2011; it will report to the community.  The group’s role is temporary, a typical plan taking 12 - 15 months to produce.

Open meeting notes

Terms of reference of the Steering Group contained the following objectives:-

• To facilitate the production of a Community plan for Pen Selwood.
• To oversee, coordinate and lead in creating a vision for the future of the community of Pen Selwood and some actions that will set the community moving towards that vision.
• To be inclusive in everything they undertake and encourage community involvement.
• To liaise with the Parish Council and other relevant authorities and organisations.

The Steering Group was rigorous in tracing its actions and proposals to the views of the community to ensure they were not furthering their own agendas.

Full Steering Group ToR

Following research, preparation and planning the Steering group held a number of consultation meetings at various venues around the village. People were asked what they liked about the village, what concerns and issues they had, and what they would change. Here is a summary of what was shared.

From the issues raised a questionnaire was prepared and circulated to every house in the community to explore how widely the views were held. Each individual was invited to fill the questionnaire in on an anonymous basis. As well as specific questions there were open questions to allow people who had not raised issues before to raise them. There was a 79% return rate though not every question was answered by all.  

Questionnaire

An Open meeting was held on 27 June 2012 to share the responses.

Analysis of Responses

Five working groups were set up to address five themes – Housing & Development, Heritage & Environment, Village Services, Transport and Communication. Those groups have prepared proposed action plans, which they will share at an Open Meeting on 21^stNovember.

After considering the response at that meeting the action plans have been consolidated into the Community Plan report.

The Plan Highlights have been delivered to every house in the Parish. If you want more detail you can find it in the full Community Plan. The estimated budget required to deliver the actions are detailed here.

If you want to get involved and help with the actions please contact Liz Carter or Geoff Parcell.

Here is a progress report at June 2013.

Here is the January 2014 update to progress.

The Rural Services network have been making it easy to look at the 2011 census data.