progress

June 20th 2008

The inaugural Addingham Business Forum was held over wine and nibbles on Thursday 19th June by Addingham Parish Plan Steering Group. The free networking event was held in the Memorial Hall and local business owners were given the opportunity to have their say in terms of what it’s like being a business in the village, the problems faced by Addingham businesses & the help or support they need. 

The issues and ideas that were discussed will be fed into the Parish Plan for the village, and the Parish Council has already started working in close partnership with officers from Bradford Council to deliver some of the help businesses in the village said they need.

April 20th 2008

In producing the Parish Plan, we need to understand and prioritise the key issues we have in the village, and go some way to considering solutions. The Keighley Area Office team at Bradford Council will feed in local statistical data to corroborate the need for the issues to be addressed (e.g. demographics etc).

The document we produce will be a living document to be updated as issues and priorities change through bi-annual village forums, which the Keighley Area Office team will facilitate.

The Parish Plan doesn’t need to be a statistically robust or detailed analysis of the village issues, nor does it have to be a lengthy document. As such, what we have done so far goes a long way toward what needs to be done as we have captured the key issues people in the village have.

There is an overall plan for the Bradford District which is based around 6 themes:

1. Prosperity & regeneration

2. Children & young people

3. Safer Communities

4. Health & well being for all

5. Improving the environment

6. Strong & cohesive communities

We’ve taken your feedback on what you think is good and bad in the village, together with your ideas for the future and have tried to fit them into these themes so that we can work in partnership with Bradford Council to address the needs of the village going forward.

The summary of what you’ve told us can be read here

Our next steps will be to work with you, the community, to prioritise the issues you’ve told us about, and to start identifying ways they might be addressed.

More to follow soon...

February 1st 2008

The steering group is running a campaign across the month of February to find out what people in the village think are the social, economic and environmental issues affecting their community, and how they’d like to see it improved in the future.

The steering group recognises that the different age groups in the village have different needs, and is using three different communication methods for the community to tell them what they like about the village, don’t like about the village, and what they think needs to change.

It's important that the whole community is involved in producing the plan, not just those people who usually come along to parish council meetings. The views of young people and families need to be included, so we’ve decided to use modern technology such as SMS text messaging and email as well as postcards.