NOTES OF TENTH PROJECT STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING

Thursday 11^th January 2007 -- at PSJ, Beacon Hall, small Lounge Meeting Room

R.W.G.Butt, Chair, Peasedown St.John Village Plan Committee (RWGB)

Kathy Thomas Vice-Chair, Peasedown St.John Village Plan Committee (KMT)

P.R.Provest, Secretary, Peasedown St.John Village Plan Committee (PRP)

Terry Nicholls, ‘Social Facilities’ and Peasedown Opportunities Project (T_N)

Nathan Hartley Topic Leader ‘Faith’ (NLRH)

Gail Coleshill B&NES Councillor for Peasedown St.John (GMC)

Guy Matthews Parish Councillor, PSJ P.C. + monitoring of VPlan finances (G_M)

Alan Shamp representing Dunkerton Village Plan project (AJS)

Francis Day representing Peasedown St.John Methodist Church (FJD)

Apologies for Absence received from the following :

Josephine Stockley (former Vice-Chair), now adviser to Village Plan Committee (J_S)

Bridie Marshall Topic Leader ‘Youth’ (BFM)

Michael Gregory Topic Leader ‘Sport’, also representing CSAG (MJG)

Celia M.Jones Topic Leader ‘Consumer Interests ( Retail )’ (CMCJ)

Dave Dixon Local Partnership Co-ordinator, B&NES (D_D)

Emily Jolliffe interested from Carlingcott viewpoint (ESRJ)

Donna M.Schofield interested from Carlingcott viewpoint (DMS)

Sue Hawkey interested from Carlingcott viewpoint (S_H)

Specific Apologies for Absence in respect of special item.5 below :

Rev.Ruth Farrant Minister, Peasedown St.John Methodist Church (CGRF)

Rev.Matthew Street Vicar, Peasedown St.John’s Parish Church (MGS)

Draft Minutes had been fully circulated and -NO- bids for amendment had been received.

Minutes were signed as a true record

Peter Provest reported although Ruth Grant was unable to regularly attend meetings, we had been keeping in regular communication with her via e-mail. However her e-mail address in use from the beginning had now failed. Members felt this may result from a recent job move.

Terry Nicholls said he would be seeing her soon and would elicit her current e-mail address. ++

PRP pointed out although we met on Thursdays as the ‘best’ night for the majority, there were now more members for whom Thursday was proving difficult due to new regular commitments, this included new difficulties for two of our regular stalwarts, Bridie Marshall and Mike Gregory.

Chairman Bob Butt confirmed that our application for Grant funding had now been submitted and an acknowledgment received from a Mr O’Sullivan of ‘Quartet’. RWGB said Dave Dixon of B&NES had been helpful in the processing of this. RWGB said there was a difficulty over the required method of demonstrating costs. Tangible costs were easy, but the Grant scheme expected evaluation of resource that was input via volunteers’ unpaid efforts as well, and it was difficult to conceive how this could be dealt with, in practice, in monetary terms.

Ross Thompson offered to work with RWGB on refining a budget plan to assist with this. +++

As there had been no Treasurer nomination following the resignation of Ian McInnes,
RWGB asked Guy Matthews to particularly monitor the finances of the Village Plan project, this would become of greater significance following receipt of finances from the formal Grant.

As agreed at last Steering Group, it was felt the local church community must surely have a collective opinion on village affairs which they should be invited to give to the Steering Group.

As Nathan Hartley was doing good work in amalgamating components of the ‘Faith’ Topic within the Plan, he had agreed to approach leaders of each church and invite them tonight for that purpose. This to include Methodist, Anglican, Christadelphian and Catholic representation.

As a direct result of this, Francis Day was warmly welcomed to the meeting as representative of the Methodist community.

Nathan Hartley said he had received a specific apology for inability to attend tonight from Rev.Matthew Street of Peasedown St.John’s parish church, but he had not been able to obtain a response from the other church groups in the village.

Francis Day first explained he was deputising for Rev.Ruth Farrant who was not in good health. He explained the current organisational situation regarding the Methodist church, which was a ‘circuit’ system and with the overall reduction in number of available Ministers Rev.Ruth Farrant now needed to cover some four church communities. In PSJ this included Carlingcott as well as Bath Road. FJD described the wide range of current activities which extended beyond the immediate church activities of worship and prayer to serve the wider community with coffee mornings, lunch club, women’s group, a variety of social activities and in support of initiatives run by the Health Visitors. The premises had recently undergone extensive modernisation and also acted as host to activities for pre-school age children. FJD gave members copies of an attractive leaflet "Open and Welcome" which is distributed to provide full details to anyone interested.

In discussion members felt this had amply demonstrated the Methodist church was acting in a wider remit than the immediate church-going community. From the Village Plan viewpoint there were some opportunities there to specifically consult with particular groups of people and we should follow these up. +++

A latent demand for some form of simple café or tea bar in the village had already been noted, but realistically such a venture was unlikely to succeed on a purely commercial basis, but would inevitably need subsidy in the form of shared premises and/or voluntary staffing.

As Rev.Matthew Street had been unable to attend tonight, to avoid extending timescales until the next scheduled meeting, RWGB and NLRH agreed they would go and see him and ascertain his views comparable to the presentation by the Methodists. +++

Francis Day was warmly thanked for attending and giving detail of the Methodists’ activities.

In an earnest endeavour to accelerate the activity of public consultation, a series of public exhibitions had been held at the Youth Centre, Beacon Hall, St John’s parish church, ( in conjunction with Remembrance Day assemblies ), and the Methodist Church ( with display down at Carlingcott ). Members of the Steering Group had attended each event to discuss with attending members of the public and facilitate reaction responses.

Total public numbers attracted to the displays had been disappointing, and commitment from these to providing any written response at all had been minimal.

Reviewing this brought up the following points :

Ross Thompson felt we lacked anyone with marketing and advertising skills. As an example he lives in the heart of Carlingcott but was totally unaware that the display had been brought there.

Kathy Thomas commented that persons attending seemed misled as to what they had come to see. Most were expecting a display of a finalised Plan and were disappointed to only find the ‘existing’ situation, though we were all at great pains to explain over and over that was because we needed to seek -their- views !

Experiments with giving attendees blank pieces of paper so they could freely express their thoughts without constraint had proved no more successful than guiding them with pre-formed questions. There was clearly an intractable problem over this, the local population were just unwilling to initiate written responses. After much discussion Gail Coleshill suggested the answer for future Public Consultation / Questionnaire strategy should be centred around direct approaches by the Steering Group into targeted areas of the community.

Bob Butt said it was clear our Village Plan project was losing momentum in regard to timely and positive advancement. We had been meeting as a Steering Group for over fifteen months now and consistent incremental progress towards a final Report and Action Plan had slowed to ‘minimal’. It was indeed time to shake-up the way we were doing things. One difficulty lay with the Steering Group itself. It had originally been envisaged the Topic Leaders would individually self-motivate through from assessing the ‘existing’ situation to preparing the public consultation to contributing to a final Report within their Topic. In practice this course was only being followed by a minority of the Topics, and several had not yet even completed a satisfactory first stage ‘existing’ review.

The potential Steering Group composition of some thirty members was also over-large, and although there would always be occasions when people could not attend for particular reasons, the average actual attendance was similar to tonight’s i.e. about ten or so persons who were
in fact die-hard regulars. We now needed to concentrate this smaller grouping into being an effective Task Group who would pro-actively motivate progress wherever it was needed.

The inputs from the other, more ‘latent’ members would always be welcome, but we should no longer just be waiting around indefinitely and having to ‘nag’ to get any contributions from them.

Ross Thompson said he had anticipated the need for such debate at tonight’s meeting, and he had prepared and sent out to all members (to e-mail listing who had been sent PRP’s Agenda)
a two-page discussion paper for tonight. This was then reviewed ( q.v. ) and debated.

Members felt the salient point was the page-2 identification of "Networks" and that the first pro-active steps by a re-vitalised Steering Group would be to make contact with each of these and infiltrate as appropriate. The page-2 list itself was not necessarily complete

( e.g. C.S.A.G. was omitted ) but it was a simple matter to add other groupings of people.

Several members offered to make individual first contact with the various "Networks"

( particularly if they were already involved with them ) and report their findings as to what exactly was "out there".

Terry Nicholls supported the idea as breaking down the resistance to ‘giving views publicly’.

The trick was to engage people in ‘one-to-one conversation’ and note down what they said.

KMT said there was a temptation to encourage people to express desire for dream wish lists, in which items like "swimming pools" frequently became quoted. It was more practicable for those conducting the public consultation to have a reasoned discussion with those they were interviewing, outlining the reasons that needed to be considered to make projects feasible.

RWGB said this latter point opened up a whole arena of enquiry with residents : did they regard PSJ as a small ‘town’ for which the amenities were clearly inadequate ? or did they merely regard it as a ‘dormitory village’ to which they owed no allegiance ( and for which the existing range of facilities might even be considered already adequate ) ?

It was agreed RWGB and RRT would also specifically consider detail questionnaire strategy when they met to discuss project budgeting aspects ( see item.4 above ) +++

RRT said that, apart from his recommendation there should be a specific qualified person to take on ‘advertising and marketing’, a simple measure might be to condense the original set of display boards on to just one board giving a summary, which could then be displayed in minimal space at a variety of on-going locations around the village, giving an updated report.

Although it was a temptation ( to be resisted ! ) that it would be so much easier to launch into preparation of a PSJ Village Plan without the intermediate formality of properly conducting a public consultation phase, it was still sensible to give some advance thought into the way our final document might best be formatted. There were now dozens, possibly hundreds, of completed examples to be found on the internet, with an almost unbelievable range of styles, content and composition. As a generalisation on length alone, examples up to sixty pages long can be found, but those around 15/25 pages seem the most manageable yet informative.

A phased Action Plan into the future is a universally essential feature. Members were asked to spend some time looking at typical Plans on the internet before our next meeting.

Some members had found difficulty adding Village Plan Steering Group meetings into their diaries as they had already entered other commitments. To meet this point Beacon Hall has now been pre-booked for the following dates ( so can be put into diaries already ! )

( no day is best for -everyone-, but Thursdays still seem best for the -majority- )

---all are at 19.00hrs, at Beacon Hall ( small lounge room )

It was felt that, in line with our determination expressed at this meeting to revitalise progress timescales, if we have still not finalised, and still need -regular- meetings beyond 14^th June, then surely we have "lost our way" somewhere along the line ?.

Nathan Hartley suggested it would be a minor but welcome informal incentive to members of the intended smaller concentrated Steering Group if tea/coffee could be made available ?.

It was agreed to enquire of Beacon Hall management whether there were any logistic or diplomatic problems over opening the kitchen area for do-it-yourself tea-making during our meetings ?

It was agreed that at next Steering Group meeting ( 15^th February ) a new line of thought should be explored regarding impact of Commercial businesses on our Plan for PSJ, and the more general question of the role of services provided by Councils, both Parish and B&NES.