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Community (parish) Plan Support

 

How can the Community Council for Somerset support the Community (parish) planning process?

 

Our Community Development Workers have a wealth of experience of helping rural people to produce community (parish) plans.  We have an understanding of what works and what is useful to know when developing a community (parish) plan.

 

The support available to communities from our team ranges from signposting and advice, to information sharing and encouragement.  Unfortunately, it is not possible to provide unlimited visits to groups.  However, we try to be flexible where posssible.  We also welcome telephone and email contact, also offering people the option of coming into our offices to meet with us, where we have a variety of resources at our fingertips (including the 9 step ACRE toolkit). We keep in close contact with groups needing our support, providing a community (parish) plan e-newsletter when relevant news becomes available.  This helps to share best practice, hints, tips and experiences.  Relevant funding updates are also included.  If you do not currently receive this e-bulletin and would like to do so, please contact us.  This news bulletin compliments our quarterly magazine "Thatch"; which features local projects, achievements and features from across Somerset.

 

When demand arises, the Community Council for Somerset will hold training or information sessions.  We are also available to provide support with the production and analysis of consultation documents (such as questionnaires) [for a fee].

 

 

To view some recent case studies click here

 

The Community Council for Somerset's "Parish Plan Impact Survey 2008"

 

As part of our ongoing work with Parish Plans, Katy Calvert (Field Officer at the Community Council) did some research work in April 2008, involving an online survey (using the "SurveyMonkey" software).

 

The aim of this survey was to contact all those Somerset parishes that have completed a Parish Plan 3 or more years ago and find out what the impact has been in each parish; determining whether the benefits outweigh any negatives and how the Plan has been used (eg. establishing links with service providers / local authorities, setting up a new group in the parish, providing evidence of need to bid for funding, etc). It was also a chance to re-establish contact with these parishes and offer further support, advice and guidance as required.

 

There were 30 respondents in total (which equates to a very pleasing 60% response rate). The information we collected included both statistics and comments. The full results are available on request. If you would like more information about the survey or the results, please contact us.

 

 

If you would like to find out more about "SurveyMonkey", please visit www.surveymonkey.com . It promotes itself as an "intelligent survey software for primates of all species - with a single purpose: to enable anyone to create professional online surveys quickly and easily".