News & Events

MCTi Towns share lessons learnt

SMTF organised a meeting yesterday of four Town Partnerships who have been through the Market & Coastal Towns Initiative.

This was an additional Networking event specifically to help the most recent MCTi Towns - which included Watchet and Frome - by sharing the experiences of Wiveliscombe and Shepton Mallet, who completed their MCTi Plans in 2002 and 2005 respectively.

We discussed the common issues that arise, how other towns have addressed these and the future environment in which Market Town Partnerships will be working.

The following is a narrative including links so those who didn't attend can pick up the discussion. You can now comment too - on our Google Group - just visit http://groups.google.com/group/smtf?hl=en and request membership.

MCTi Towns Meeting Narrative

We began by discussing Vision for Frome's current position. They have very nearly completed their Community Plan - redrafted after the MCTA's deadline of last June - and have visited other towns including Lyme Regis to help them decide what kind of structure and role they want to create in the 'delivery' phase.

There was also concern that some town councillors apparently still saw V4F as a threat to their elected role and not as a complimentary community body willing to work in partnership with it.

One member explained that it was up to V4F to 'make it happen' - she had faced a similar (but more difficult) position and had become a Town Councillor to make the case for the Community Plan in her community. This hadn't solved everything - there was still some negativity (often from a lack of understanding about Community Regeneration Partnerships) - but had helped to integrate the Plan with Town Council 'thinking'.

Matt Day pointed out that the Town Council should have been a key partner during the process to create the Frome Community Plan - there were certainly Town Councillors who were on the Partnership. He queried whether the Town Council has adopted the Community Plan - as Town Councils have done in some South Somerset districts and elsewhere. SSDC (through its Area Committees) itself also 'endorses' Community Plans in Market Towns.

Wiveliscombe Area Partnership (WAP) recounted that, along with a number of their Partnership Directors being Wiveliscombe Parish Councillors, they presented a monthly report on their activities to the Council, and used District Councillors to relay the same info to the other Parishes.

The discussion moved back to role - Frome has many existing groups and V4F or its successor body has to be sensitive to these. The coordination and monitoring role should be a key part of V4F's future mission. WAP sees itself very much in this way; facilitating groups to deliver projects in the Plan and lobbying Local Authorities and Agencies as the 'guardians' of the Community Plan - which everyone in the community 'owns' but 'someone' (ie WAP) has to monitor progress and flag up where there are issues.

One member also pointed out that having a certain flexibility helps - if opportunities arise (for funding or support from others) that match the general aims of the Plan (ie addressing the needs of the community), but arn't specifically mentioned as Objectives or Projects, go for it!

The discussion moved on to look at Delivery bodies - Matt Day told of a town in a neighbouring county where a Development Trust had been created after a Community Plan process; though it has had some success on a small number of projects, it had failed to monitor the whole plan or coordinate effectively with other groups in the town or indeed with the Town Council. This isn't an inherent problem with Development Trusts; more about the importance of having agreed roles.

Ongoing community engagement - all Partnerships see the need for and value of ongoing engagement (beyond the launch of the Plan); not only does it help with awareness-raising ('Profile'), it looks good to funders and gets new people involved in the Partnership. Michael Perry from Shepton 21 mentioned use of ICT - specifically mailing lists - to get and keep local people involved.

Resources

1. Matt Day quoted from parts of the South Somerset Market Town Vision Report (from 2005 but still relevant); you can download this from our Resources page.

2. The WAP Case Study is available here.

3. The SMTF Google Group - a new facility to enable Members to share information - is available at http://groups.google.com/group/smtf?hl=en You will need to request membership which is simple.

4. Parts of the MCTA's Re:sourcebook may be helpful - especially Section 6.1 'Developing your local organisation'. These are available on the SWMCTN site here.

Created on January 14th 2009

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