East Winch and West Bilney Village Plan December 2014.
NOTES OF VILLAGE PLAN MEETING HELD 1 DECEMBER 2014
1 Public Transport. To contact both Connect and the Xl service to see if they could arrange to come through the village. Also to see if it possible to have a new bus stop in West Bilney (by post box coming from Swaffham) ACTION - Letter from Chair 2 Community Bus Service The "providers of the service" are meeting shortly. Establish if there will be a route to Swaffham and how to keep parishioners advised of services provided. ACTION - Keith Harrod will attend and follow up. 3 Speeding in the Village The concem with speeding extends to not only the A47, Gayton Road and Station Road but also to Paws Lane, Common Road and Ashwicken Road. The problem is made worse by the amount of heavy and agricultural vehicles which now use roads which were not designed to accommodate them. Thus erosion of banks and any paths which exist continues to occur as these vehicles pass each other. ACTION - Clerk will write to Henry Bellingham MP and to Highways continuing to express parishioners concerns. 4 Speed on the A47 Speed of traffic from the Blackborough End turning through to West Bilney Church. Safety concerns of using the road by many parishioners and the poor visibility when exiting Station Road, Common Road, Church Lane and Gayton Road support the need to reduce the speed of traffic from the current 50mph. ACTION -
Chair will continue to communicate with Highways Authority. (See here) 5 Play Area ACTION - Keith Harrod to complete analysis of the survey in this area. 6 Footpath to the post office Discuss with Highways the feasibility of putting in a TROD. ACTION - Joint Chair, Vice Chair and Clerk to follow up.
7 Paths, footpaths and Rights of Way Produce detailed maps etc and arrange a monitoring strategy. ACTION - Keith Harrod will follow up as a project.
8 Awareness of village news and events The Voice of the Village is the obvious route and to include both East Winch and West Bilney in with the Middleton Group of parishes would help this. Promotion of the excellent web site would also be a benefit. ACTION - Chair to follow up.
9 Broadband and mobile phone reception. ACTION - Parish Council to monitor progress in this area
10 Parish Council There appears to be a low profile of what the Parish Council is and who are the Councillors. Suggested that some form of open day at the village hall to promote the activities of the Council (and other local organisations) might be a suitable way of resolving the issue. ACTION - Parish Council to discuss and decide the way forward.
September 2014.
The analysis of the questionnaires has now been completed and may be downloaded - see here.
About 50% of those who replied never use public transport, though the great majority are satisfied with the service available. Some people would like buses to come into the village and not just pass along the A47. August 18th. Parish questionnaires have been collected from households and are now being analysed. This task is expected to be completed by September. July 22nd. 2014 Copies of the Parish Questionnaire have been delivered to all homes in the villages. Initially, one copy per household has been delivered. If you wish to have additional copies for others in the family you may download it - see below...Please take the effort to complete the form - without your doing so the value of the project is diminished. Completed forms are now being collected from households. You may download a copy of the questionnaire here. The file is in .pdf format and is 1680k in size. May 2014 Parish QUESTIONNIARE In order to be able to create a plan for the future needs of the parish, and to make the best use of the resources available to it, the Parish Council has devised a questionnaire to be distributed to all households in the parish. The aim is to gather information from residents about their views of the parish as it is and what they see as being necessary for the future. The questionnaire has been designed as a series of 'TICK' boxes - to avoid the necessity of too much hand writing. To protect your privacy, you are not asked to provide names or addresses. To ensure that the results are truly representative it is necessary for as many people as possible to respond. This is an opportunity for you to make your views known and to influence the future of the village. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT EXERCISE AND YOU ARE ASKED TO MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO COMPLETE THE FORM. HELP REQUIRED Forms for completion will be delivered and collected by hand, probably in June; Your help with distribution and collection would be very much appreciated. If you are able to help, please tell the Parish Clerk - telephone Bob Pannell on 01553 775724 March 2014 A revised draft is currently being considered by the Parish Councillors, prior to it being distributed to households for completion. January 2014 A draft questionnaire has been drawn up and Parish Councillors have been asked to scrutinise it and consider whether it will provide the information that the Council requires in order to plan for the future of the villages. The questionnaire will be amended if necessary before being delivered to households for completion. Update at 6 September 2013. A questionnaire is in preparation, to be delivered to households at East Winch and West Bilney, seeking the views of the villagers about what is good, what is not so good and what may be done to change things for the better within the villages. Expect to see this questionnaire in the not too distant future. Please do respond - don't just drop it in the bin when you receive it. Whilst it may not be possible to do anything much about some problems, unless attention is drawn to concerns then it is certain that nothing will be done. Unless a problem is known about then it will not be addressed. A view from the gallery. At a routine meeting of the Parish Council on 7th January 2013, the matter of the proposed preparation of a Village Plan was discussed. Prior to this, in May 2012 (see below), a speaker from Norfolk Rural Community Council attended a public meeting at the Village Hall. The meeting, was arranged to explain what a Parish Plan was, and to enlist the help of local people in preparing such a plan for East Winch and West Bilney. The speaker explained that the function of the NRCC was to support parishes in projects that improved the quality of village life. To that end, a Village Plan was thought to be necessary It was clear that a village plan would help in the following ways: -
Since the meeting in May 2012 (see below), nothing much has happened. Despite there being expressions of interest shown by those attending the meeting, no one has offered to take the project on board. To move on to the present time……… The Parish Council, at its meeting in January 2013, was obliged to discuss matters concerning the precept required for the year 2013/2014. This precept would be part of the Community Charge to be applied from April 2013. The Clerk told the meeting that he had had to take account of the expected expenditure of the Parish Council for 2013/14 when advising the Council upon the level of the precept required. However, the lack of a Village Plan made it difficult to forecast what the expenditure might be. A Village Plan would be expected to form the basis of future spending by the Parish Council, to satisfy the needs of the community. If it were known what projects the Council might support, and over what time scale, then costs could be estimated and used to forecast the level of precept required. Without a plan, and with no knowledge of what the Parish Council might be asked to support, estimating future spending was at best uncertain. This writer is pretty
convinced that the arguments put forward for the need for a Village Plan are
valid. It just needs someone with the necessary skills to take the stick and
run with it! East Winch and West Bilney Village Plan A meeting held at the Village hall on 14 May 2012 was addressed by a representative of the Norfolk Rural Community Council. The following is a report of that meeting.
Meeting to discuss the drawing up of a
Parish Plan. The meeting, arranged to
explain what a Parish Plan was, and to enlist the help of local people in preparing a plan for East Winch and West Bilney, was attended by 16 people. A speaker from Norfolk Rural Community Council explained their function to support parishes in projects that improved the quality of village life. Except for some funding for village halls, they no longer handle money, this is now the responsibility of the Norfolk Foundation.
It was clear that a village plan would help enormously in the following ways:- to find out what people value that's here already, and what they want to be improved; to prioritise projects, as it's unlikely we'd get funding for everything that needs doing at once; and to show potential funders that the projects we say we need money for have been really well researched.
Plans produced by nearby villages, for example Middleton, Gayton and Marham, were circulated. Many of these being very impressive looking documents, in full colour on glossy paper. However, we were told that funding to produce a plan is no longer available, and there were advantages in having a simpler format, for example, a ring binder, which would enable the frequent updating that the funders now require. The ways in which information can be gathered was discussed. A questionnaire is comprehensive, but many people can't be bothered to complete it. Chatting to interest groups, for example,The Mothers and Toddlers group, can be helpful. Informal methods of collecting information and views from people, like sticking post-it notes on a board are possible. Most plans take between a year and 18 months to prepare. Volunteers need to gather the information and process it, but the NRCC are pleased to help. Six people volunteered to help in some way or other. Not all of them can spare huge amounts of time. So, if you think you can help, or can persuade someone else to help, PLEASE contact Simon Conway tel 07789654247. Thank you!
There are a lot of things that could be done to improve the life of our villages, for example, an improved play area, somewhere for teenagers and a footpath along Station Rd. The Parish Council can't do any of these without funding from elsewhere, and we have to be sure that the projects we want funding for are what you really do want! Many local villages already have a village plan, compiled by a team of volunteers who hand round a questionnaire, collect it, and report on the results. This provides invaluable information, enabling us to determine which projects are the most important, and bringing to light other needs and ideas. |