25th April 2012

BEAMINSTER: Encouraging residents to get involved in future of the town

PLANS to drive forward Beaminster’s future will be aired for the first time this week.

Members of the Beaminster Parish Plan Steering Group will present their goals during their first public engagement tomorrow (Thursday) at the Beaminster Parish Meeting.

It is an important week in the history of the group – also known as Beaminster Future – which was formed to draft a plan covering the next five to ten years in the town’s future.

The group will also host its first Open Day this Saturday and held a meeting with Beaminster School students yesterday.

At the parish meeting members of the steering group will be introduced to the public for the first time and residents will be informed about the group’s aims.

Michael Read, chairman of the group, said the idea of the first meetings were to give progress up-dates and to encourage residents to get involved.

He said: “For a lot of people it will be the first time they find out about us but also it will be a chance for us to give a progress report on what we have done to date.

“So this week is really about us putting our heads above the parapet in terms of engaging and gauging initial feedback, so it’s a very important few days for us.

“At the parish meeting we have assumed that some people will not know anything about us and some a little, so we will start from scratch and give a quick background on what’s happened so far and introduce the members.

“Then on Saturday we’ve got quite a bit more information about what’s happening locally, referencing West Dorset and Weymouth and Portland planning which impacts us here and we’ll go into much more detail of the process we are going through.”

The aim of the meetings is to generate information to produce a questionnaire which will be sent to all households in Beaminster.

The questionnaires will ask residents what they feel are the most important issues facing the town on a scale of 1-10.

The results will then be used to formulate a plan which will go to the town and district councils for approval. The plan will then be a fixed point in the town’s future development.

As part of the consultation process Mr Read and a colleague visited Beaminster School on Tuesday to learn more about how the group might best engage with and get involvement from the younger community.

Mr Read said: “We had all ages and had about 20 young people who asked quite a few questions so that was a good start.”

For more information on the group contact Mr Read by email at [email protected].

The group will keep residents informed via View From Beaminster and atwww.beaminsterfuture.com, where minutes of meetings and actions taken will be available to all members of the community.

PICTURE: Michael Read heads up Beaminster Parish Plan Steering Group which aims to drive forward plans for the town’s future

BEAMINSTER: Encouraging residents to get involved in future of the town

Comments

Add new comment