Mayfield and Easthouses Community Futures Neighbourhood Plan Five Year Plan: 2012-2017
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MAYFIELD AND EASTHOUSES COMMUNITY FUTURES NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN FIVE YEAR PLAN: 2012-2017 PRODUCED BY Mayfield and Easthouses Community Futures Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group Midlothian Community Planning Partnership Coalfields Regeneration Trust THE KIND OF PLACE WE WOULD LIKE MAYFIELD AND EASTHOUSES TO BE: OUR VISION FOR THE FUTURE MAYFIELD AND EASTHOUSES COMMUNITY FUTURES NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN 2012-2017 A great place to bring up a family, learn about the world, build a foundation for working, and enjoy life to the full A community built between the city and the countryside, with good access to green open space and to life enhancing jobs A safe community where people of all ages respect each other A clean and attractive place filled with colour and pleasant outdoor spaces A real community trusting its heritage, where people look out for each other and continue working together to improve the lives of all our residents This statement summarises the main views of local people and organisations about what they want for the future of Mayfield and Easthouses. MAYFIELD AND EASTHOUSES COMMUNITY FUTURES NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN 2012-2017 CONTENTS Section 1: About The Mayfield and Easthouses Community Futures Neighbourhood Plan ...........................................5 Section 2: Our Community Now: Profile of Mayfield and Easthouses .........................................................7 Section 3: Community Views ...........................................................................................14 What People Like About Mayfield and Easthouses ....................................................................................................16 What People Do Not Like About Mayfield and Easthouses ...................................................................................18 Section 4: Main Strategies and Priorities ..................................................................20 Section 5: Action Plan ..........................................................................................................24 Theme 1: Safe Mayfield and Easthouses .......................................................................................25 Theme 2: Families and Children .............................................................................................................29 Theme 3: Community Facilities, Services and Activities.....................................................34 Theme 4: Employment and The Economy .....................................................................................39 Theme 5: Townscape and The Built Environment ...................................................................45 MAYFIELD AND EASTHOUSES COMMUNITY FUTURES NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN 2012-2017 SECTION 1: ABOUT THE MAYFIELD AND EASTHOUSES COMMUNITY FUTURES NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN Neighbourhood Plans are being consultation and development THE STEERING GROUP created across Midlothian support to the community for Each Neighbourhood Plan is between 2008 and 2015. a period of one year, with the led by a steering group, which Neighbourhood Plans are part aim of producing a community brings together Community of Midlothian’s Community action plan. Additionally, it Planning Partners and local Planning process. They give would bring an investment of community organisations. local people chances to £30,000 to be used to support The Mayfield and Easthouses express their views about the community-based projects Steering Group has involved opportunities, services and the arising out of the action plan. partners from: environment where they live, Mayfield and Easthouses were and to work with Community fortunate to be chosen as • Mayfield and Easthouses Planning Partners to make one of the three communities Community Council improvements. Neighbourhood Scotland-wide to take part in • Mayfield and Easthouses Plans are being produced for this programme in 2011/12. Development Trust each community council area. The Mayfield and Easthouses • Mayfield and Easthouses In April 2011, an opportunity Community Futures Youth 2000 (Y2K) arose for Mayfield and Neighbourhood Plan is • McSence Easthouses Neighbourhood the product of successful Plan to benefit from some partnership work between • Midlothian Sure Start (Family investment by the Coalfields Midlothian’s Community Reachout) Regeneration Trust. The Planning Partners, the Coalfields • Midlothian Council Coalfields Regeneration Regeneration Trust and their Trust sought to identify three development practitioner from • NHS Lothian ex-coalfield communities in STAR Development Group, and • Lothian and Borders Police Scotland to participate in its the local community. • Midlothian Patient Community Futures Programme. Participation Forum This programme would bring MAYFIELD AND EASTHOUSES COMMUNITY FUTURES NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN 2012-2017 5 The Steering Group partners • Articles in the local press; and was returned by just will continue to work together over 200. The survey was • Regular meetings of the to ensure that the actions Steering Group; distributed and collected are delivered. This includes by hand by volunteers from a new forum of community- • Interviews or focus groups the Steering Group and based organisations which will representing a wide cross the local Army Cadets, and come together to develop joint section of the community, efforts were made to return projects and continue to work including equalities groups to homes where people were in close association with public (18 separate groups not in at the time of the first sector partners. The Steering including young parents, visit. An online version of Group will also distribute the kinship carers, older people, the survey was also made CRT funding. children and young people, available; Black and Minority Ethnic A community profile detailing LOCAL PEOPLE HAVE THEIR SAY community members and • business people, people with facts and figures about the The Plan was prepared community; following extensive community disabilities, and others); A Community Futures Open engagement over the second • A community views • half of 2011. Community survey that went to 1,000 Day in October held in engagement included: households (1/3rd of the the Mayfield Church Hall, households in the area) attended by roughly 100 people. MAYFIELD AND EASTHOUSES COMMUNITY FUTURES NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN 2012-2017 6 SECTION 2: OUR COMMUNITY NOW: PROFILE OF MAYFIELD AND EASTHOUSES LOCATION AND HISTORY roads against a backdrop of A local newsletter, the Mayfield Mayfield and Easthouses stretch woodlands on the upper slopes. and Easthouses Reporter, was out across the hillside south of established offering information Mayfield was built with four Dalkeith, separated from the and advice to people suddenly primary schools (including the town by open green space. having to face the problems first shared primary school of unemployment. A local Easthouses, one of the oldest campus in Scotland) and a high social enterprise, McSence, mining villages in Scotland, was school, a new parish church, was founded in 1988 to bring built early in the 1900s to house a park and a shopping area work and jobs back into the the families of miners working in what was then the centre community. Over time, a range mainly in the Easthouses Drift of the village. Not long after of community organisations Mine. It still has its Miners Club, came the library, the Catholic was established including the Bowling Club and fine park Church, the Labour Club (now Community Council, MAEDT, but the primary school closed the Community Club) and, in Y2K, the Family Reachout project (the local branch of when the new ones opened time, the community centre Midlothian Sure Start). New in Mayfield and the shops are and a further row of shops. housing was built and the now mainly fast food outlets. People worked hard to create population of Mayfield and Expansion of other neighbouring a sense of community. MECA, Easthouses expanded to nearly mines – including the Lady the Mayfield and Easthouses 8,000. Victoria and Bilston Glen - Community Association, was created an urgent need for established and the annual In 2012, Mayfield and workers and the construction Gala, firework display and Easthouses is a hard-working of Mayfield was begun in other celebrations rolled out community with the majority 1952. New housing and the of that. Jobs were the bedrock of its people in work, although jobs associated with the mines for families. By the mid 1980s, recent austerity measures, attracted people from across however, jobs and work suffered frozen wages, higher fuel the Scottish coalfields and from greatly, the pits shut and male and food costs and inflation further afield. Photographs show unemployment in Midlothian was as well as the reform of the hillside scraped for new 12% in the early 1990s. welfare benefits, are directly MAYFIELD AND EASTHOUSES COMMUNITY FUTURES NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN 2012-2017 7 affecting families throughout and Scotland respectively. around 350 are privately let. the community. Accessing Conversely, the proportion of Mayfield and Easthouses have employment, training and further people over the age of 65, a higher proportion of social education is particularly difficult although growing, is marginally rented accommodation than for young people. lower than in Midlothian and in either Midlothian or Scotland Scotland more widely. In the and a lower proportion of The community and its 2001 Census, less than 1% of owner occupation than either organisations are determined to the population of Mayfield and Midlothian or