Buckland Dinham Parish Plan
About The Plan
What is the Parish Plan and why is it important for Buckland Dinham.
What is the Parish Plan?
The Buckland Dinham Parish
Plan will be a statement of how
our community sees itself and
the village developing over the
next few years, highlighting the areas that we feel are important for action in the future. It is a living document that develops over time, reflecting the views of the community as a whole and containing a community-led Action Plan with practical steps to help the us achieve our vision. The development of this community-led Parish Plan allows everyone in the village to come together to share their opinions and create a document which is the collective voice for our community.
Why are we developing a Parish Plan?
There have been several changes in recent years, not least the demographics within our village as we welcome younger and growing families moving here. We have changes in employment and working patterns as many of us now work remotely. Word of mouth isn’t keeping up with the pace of change as social media and advances in technology provide wide-ranging communication channels for information sharing and interacting.
Meanwhile, three issues came together during 2023 drawing further attention to the importance of our community developing a Parish Plan for our village.
Firstly, there had been no previous Parish Plan nor Community Review. The Parish Councillors felt they wanted a clearer democratic mandate from the community about our village’s priorities, and to ensure that the thoughts, opinions and aspirations of the village are understood in making local decisions. They wanted to develop a unified vision for the village to work towards.
Secondly, Somerset’s governance was significantly changed in April 2023: from Somerset County Council with 4 District Councils (we were in Mendip) - to Somerset Council (Unitary Council with no district councils), and the introduction of 18 Local Community Networks (we are in the Vale of Frome LCN – Frome and 17 villages). This this new phase of local government meant it was important for our village to develop a clearer, louder voice if our needs were to be heard in Taunton. Our Parish Plan’s evidence will help feed our community's priorities into the wider Community Plan being developed by our Local Community Network. This in turn will help inform Somerset Council decision makers.
Thirdly, Somerset Council declared a financial emergency. There are major cuts across all services. We may have to do more things for ourselves, to consider ways of doing so, and to develop greater resilience in the face of climate changes.
The Process and Methodology
Introducing the idea
On 22nd May 2023, the Buckland Dinham Village Gathering (aka Annual Parish Meeting) agreed that our village wanted to develop a community-led Parish Plan. This decision was reported in June 23’s 5Alive! magazine. It was then unanimously welcomed by the Parish Council and funding was agreed to support costs in developing the plan.
Forming the Team
Following the Village Gathering, villagers were given the opportunity to be a part of the Parish Plan team, which had its first meeting on 6th July 2023. This group of village volunteers took responsibility for the development of the Buckland Dinham Parish Plan, giving their time and skill to the project - from conception, through consultation, to the interim report on the survey findings, and ultimately to the full publication of our village's Parish Plan by the end of November 2024.
The Buckland Dinham Parish Plan team (BDPP team) initially needed to work out what to do, how to do it, and then to set up the website www.bucklanddinhamparishplan.org explaining the project.
Ideas Generating phase
As there had been no previous village consultation it was felt that some initial ideas from the community were needed before the survey was designed. This was to help identify themes to be covered in the survey, and issues that needed to be explored in more detail. Ensuring everyone had chance to contribute their ideas was important.
We held our ‘Soft Launch’ at the Village Christmas Fayre on 8th December 2023. This is a particularly popular annual event with a high village turnout. There was a large screen projection outside the village hall announcing our forthcoming ‘An Evening to Ignite Ideas’ event, which was to be our ‘Full Launch’. The BDPP Team were on hand to chat about the Parish Plan project.
To ensure everyone was included in how to share their ideas there were two ways to submit ideas (a) through the online submission form, and (b) through writing them on the specially handcrafted postcards-and-collection-boxes located at the village hall, church and pub.
The second part of our ‘Ideas Generating’ phase was our ‘Evening to Ignite Ideas’ event on 17th January 2023. The Bell Inn displayed the notice on their TV screen. We put up posters on notice boards, posted on Facebook and went leafletting and doorstepping to spread the word about this over the weekends beforehand.
Over 60 of us were there on a bitterly cold January evening sparking innovative ideas and lively discussion across the room. The breadth of topics and themes raised was impressive. The event began a good level of debate, and discussions continued long afterwards. The deadline for ‘Ideas Generating’ closed a fortnight later. The ideas collected were then sorted and resorted into themes.
Applying for CCS Support
Meanwhile, at the end of November 2023, a week before the applications deadline, we heard about the Community Council for Somerset (CCS) ccslovesomerset.org/community-review/ and the support they provide to Parish Councils who in the process of developing a Parish Plan or Community Review. We applied and fortunately were successful; their support has been invaluable.
Survey Phase
At the end of March the CCS provided us with banks of questions relating to the themes that had been identified in the ‘Ideas Generating’ phase. Selecting the 30 questions from this vast array was an iterative process over the course of a few evenings. It gradually became apparent that we needed two surveys: one for the adults and a shorter one for the children and young people. We had ongoing support and advice from CCS during this process.
As the survey was the main consultation phase we decided for ease of interpreting the results we would only have an online version open for a period of 3 weeks over Easter 2024. It was launched online on 27th March and closed on 22nd April 2024.
To ensure it was accessible to everyone the BDPP plan team joined and hosted various village events to help spread the word and gather responses, assisting with the online element as needed.
Posters were displayed on notice boards, along with leafletting and doorstepping. The Pub Quiz team made encouraging announcements during the Quiz break. Several reminders were posted on Facebook.
The survey closed on 22nd April 2024 with a response rate of 44%. This is a really good response rate and adds greater confidence to our findings. We are advised by CCS that online community surveys generally get an average response rate of 20 – 30%.
The impartial analysis team at the CCS then commenced analysing the survey responses. They managed to provide headline results in time to for us to announce them at the Village Gathering (aka Annual Parish Meeting) on 20th May 2024, one year on from when the idea was first raised at the Village Gathering on 22nd May 2023.
Following the analysis of the survey results, the summary written report was published in time for the village Summer Barbeque on the 24th July 2024, along with poster displays.
Findings and Report
The survey-findings report was published on the Buckland Dinham Parish Plan website on the 11th September along with bound hard copies for those who requested them. This was to ensure all villagers have an opportunity to absorb and consider the findings.
Action Planning
On Wednesday 18th September 2024 we held the village's Action Plan meeting, and the village decided together on the prioritisation of our community’s ambitions, and how we wished to collectively set our identified goals in motion. This formed the basis of our Action Plan. From this meeting, four areas were prioritised and working groups were formed to continue the Action Planning process to move our aspirations forward. We have further support and advice from the CCS team including identifying sources of funding as needed. By the end of November 2024 we will then publish our Buckland Dinham Parish Plan, a living document, to steer us to towards an evidence-based vision with community-led agreed outcomes for our village.
