Community Appraisal - a View from Histon

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Community Appraisal - a View from Histon
Impington

• Denis W Payne
• Group Chair

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Histon Impington

• Two villages - two parishes (and two Councils)
  but one community
• A small town? - 3,000 homes, 7,500 people
• Well resourced
• two Anglican churches Methodist Baptist
  Salvation Army
• two Post Offices, banks, building society
• food/non-food shops garage (petrol and repair)
• Library
• Nursery, Infants, Junior schools Village College
• Doctors, dentists
• local (private) hospital
• 35 people work locally (1991) 4000 jobs
• sheltered housing provision

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Histon Impington

• But
• no village hall
• no youth club (though uniformed groups exist)
• crime disorder target - youth
• no local newsletter/newspaper/village magazine
• significant traffic issues - just north of A14,
  north of Cambridge
• suffering from development pressures - and
  threats
• lacking public open space - what there is isnt
  necessarily where people are
• environment - litter, grass cutting, planting
  schemes
• Parish Governance?

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Project

• Parish Council initiated - significant ongoing
  contribution
• Support of ACRE (Deborah Willis)
• Launch event - team together
• Launch event drove questionnaire
• Questionnaire development challenging
• Distribution and collection June/July 2001 - 974
  questionnaires returned 1773 respondents plus
  returns from Junior School (200) and Village
  College (170)
• Data entry time consuming - large team doing this
• Planning event - May 2002
• Money not a problem - Parish Councils, District
  Council, Lottery etc

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Lessons

• Questions are difficult
• youll be accused of a political agenda whatever
  you ask
• they need not only to be relevant, but also
  things people may be prepared to have a go at
• A portion of residents will deny having received
  questionnaire - even though you know you put it
  through their door
• Teams are vital - managing group and
  distributors/collectors inputters
• It takes time
• You wont win everything, nor get action on
  everything that ought to be covered
• 30 can be a good turnout (cf local elections!)

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What have we achieved?

• Before appraisal results published - but after we
  started the process
• youth club
• village newspaper
• litter picking, bulb planting
• And now
• community centre group
• action re recreation facilities
• inter-working (at least communication) between
  groups
• youth shelter plans
• skateboarding club
• environment group - litter picks, bulb planting
  and much more

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Achieved?

• public open space opportunity
• transport actions
• material on development to take to SCDC
• some engagement with youth issues, and young
  people (joint Councils Youth Committee)
• Police vision (publicly stated) Neighbourhood
  Watch Village

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Not so good?

• Questions
• some very good, very relevant - but very limited
  number of people able to see, and commit to,
  actions
• lots of free text input - difficult to analyse
• Percentage return varies dramatically with
  distributor/collector
• Difficulty (to date) engaging with other Councils
  over results
• Community commitment to action