image credit Jonathan Bean on Unsplash
Horseshoe being forged
Pevensey Parish Council is to publish a three year plan which will engage the community in a number of interesting initiatives
A well as a survey which will be delivered to every household, there will also be online opportunities for residents to comment about some of the possibilities that may emerge from the plan.
Simon Montgomery, editor of the Pevensey Bay Journal said, “whilst I am not privy to any of the details of the three year plan, the shape of the plan that appears to be emerging sounds both exciting and positive.
“There is so little money that Pevensey Parish Council has to offer for community initiatives, because of the constraints on them, difficult to see how a three year plan can do anything other than spell out a bleak message,.
“But maybe, what makes the publication of the three year plan interesting is both the speed of delivery to the local public, and, most importantly. the structure of the plan and the approach being taken.
The decision. for example, to include all residents in the process, both in print and online, is exactly the right starting point.
“In addition, the decision to move from a very small grant funding offer to the community on an annual basis, to something much more exciting that could include a degree of partnership with some new local initiatives is positive”
“New community projects would give the possibility of some kind of catalyst being added into the mix.
“What we need in the parish is new initiatives, most importantly new initiatives with a public purpose that become sustainable.
“I really do believe from the little that I am seeing about the shape of the emerging three year plan from Pevensey Parish Council, that we may be about to have happen here something new.
“So much of what happens in parish councils does not engage with communities, here we have something about to happen that will engage with the local community in an open and transparent way.
“All of this activity is to the credit of the leadership of Pevensey Parish Council and the hard work and industry being put into the forthcoming plan by councillors of the calibre of people like Shirley MacKinnon and new councillor Jayne Howard.
“There is no money, maybe that is the point.
“At critical times, whether those times are characterised by mass unemployment, or in our own case, by a decade of austerity, when public services in all areas of Government, down to and including parish councils, are put under such pressure that they break, there have to be new ideas and new ways of doing things if local communities are to survive.
“I see the three year plan emerging from Pevensey Parish Council in that light.
“If only one or two sustainable initiatives emerge from within the community as part of this process, supported in principle by the parish council, then what is about to be delivered will be something of note and long term value to the parish.
“If there is some kind of small chemical reaction from the catalyst of the plan, then those sparks could ignite interest from groups working within the community as well as from some new groups that might be fired up in the process”.
Pevensey Parish Council, along with a survey which will involve every household, is also to publish a series of media releases about the three year plan.
