ACT Gazette Issue 27 Summer 2017 ACT champions community & rural issues Come chat to us at the Show! See page 10 for details of the Cumbrian Shows we’ll be at this year. Look out for the ACT information stand and come pick up your free Household Emergency Plan leaflet and balloon! Hallmark Quality Award for Thursby Parish Hall Congratulations to Thursby Parish Hall on achieving Hallmark One quality standard for charity administration and management. Hallmark is a nationally recognised quality standards scheme for community buildings. It’s a great way to ‘health check’ your practise and evidence this to funders, insurers (some offer policy discounts) and ACT Development Officers, Rose Lord and Hellen others. Contact us at ACT for more information. Aitken with the new Household Emergency Plan leaflet What’s inside this issue: Save the Date: Communities Community Planning Workshop Case Study: Kirkby Stephen Good Neighbours Scheme Wed 27 Sept 4pm - 8pm Copeland Venue TBC Good Councillors Guide to Neighbourhood Planning Community Buildings Event Community Buildings Sat 7 Oct 10am - 2pm Case Study: Gamblesby Community Centre H&S File Warcop Parish Hall Managing Risks for your Village Hall ACT Annual General Meeting Community Buildings Event Fri 8 Sept Insurance Broadband Eden Network Group Sedbergh People’s Hall Brief Guide to Risk Assessment Charity Commission - top queries Contact Dani at ACT to book a place Tel: 01228 817224 Community Re-Paint Email: [email protected] ACT News - Project Updates & Events Household Emergency Planing Visit ACT at the following ACT at Cumbrian Shows Cumbrian Shows: New ACT Development Officer for West Cumbria Sat 1 July - Skelton Show Lake District Partnership - Vibrant Communities Wed 26 July - Ulverston & North Lonsdale ACT AGM Cumbria Rural Panel Thurs 10 August - Appleby Show Sat 12 August - Dalston Show Other News - Events, Funding Opportunities etc. Mon 28 August - Keswick Show Twitter Use this QR Code and Follow us @ACTCumbria your smart phone app to ACT go direct to our website. Roll out good broadband and mobile Hi All, connectivity to reduce the impact of Another election and all our remoteness on rural businesses and pupils. sitting MPs have been Provide resources to local groups to develop returned. So now is a good their own community responses to poor time to speak them about the broadband and mobile provision. issues you would like to see them take up on your behalf. Hold broadband and mobile providers to account through consistent use of regulation I will be raising issues from the ACRE (Action and licensing to ensure rural communities with Rural Communities in England) Election are connected, including the most difficult to Asks paper. Not surprisingly these are issues reach, and that they do not ‘cherry pick’ only we often mention in these pages such as: customers that can be served at lowest cost. Building growth in rural businesses as part of Provide support and resources for producing future industrial policy, with a new up-to-date Rural Evidence. ACRE believes community-owned approach to very local that rural policy must be based upon well investment in rural enterprise. evidenced data about rural areas. Encourage rural housing schemes which If you want to discuss any of these issues remain affordable and available to local please do get in touch with me. To read more people in perpetuity by maintaining from the ACRE document please visit: protection from the Right to Buy. www.acre.org.uk/cms/resources/acre-general- Continue the availability of capital grant and election-asks-2017-5.pdf loan funding for improvement and rebuilding ACT has been encouraging communities to of community buildings to adapt to modern think about their future and how they want to demands, for example the Big Lottery Fund, Message from Lorrainne, CEO Lorrainne, Message from shape it for many years. Now, as part of our and LEADER funding. Rebuilding Together Big Lottery Project, we are Deliver rural focused approaches to reduce also encouraging families and households to the pressure on acute services, joining up think how they will plan for, manage and stay in health and social care services through touch if an emergency, like the 2015 floods, initiatives that maximise the impact of heavy snowfall, or extended loss of power were primary care locally. to happen. Maintain the current network of rural Post Raising awareness is a major way to protect Offices, to ensure that residents are still able your family, so we have produced a Household to access vital services effectively. Emergency Plan leaflet. I would encourage you all to look this and discuss it with your family. Invest in community-led, community-owned See page 10 for more details. solutions to service provision in rural areas where a service has been lost due to a Congratulations to our Vice closure or withdrawal. President Olive Clarke OBE who was recently celebrated Further investment in community transport for her 50 years as treasurer initiatives to address market failure and to of Preston Patrick Memorial enable rural dwellers to access employment Hall. Olive’s involvement with and services. ACT goes back a long way Summer 2017 Summer - Encourage growth of, and community and she has always supported engagement with, smaller local schools to our work with Village Halls. protect them from closure. Increase access to rural childcare, through the provision of appropriate finance and support for rural childcare providers and ACT GazetteACT 27 Issue facilities. Remember if you support us - we can better support you! Sign up now! 2 This includes tasks such as: doing the weekly shop; DIY jobs and gardening; accompanying on a hospital visit; reading the newspaper; and regular company. The scheme is co-ordinated through the Centre, and delivered by a team of volunteers. It’s advertised using posters, local newsletter and online, but word of mouth has been most successful. Initial contact is made with the Centre where Communities Case Study: Wendy or Zelda take the referral, check out Kirkby Stephen some background information (being local Good Neighbours Scheme really helps!) and contact a volunteer to see if they can meet the need. Kirkby Stephen is a parish with around 2000 residents in over 1000 households. There is All volunteers are DBS (Disclosure and Barring a GP practice, range of shops, a primary Service) checked and volunteer meetings are school and secondary school. The nearest held to offer support and training if needed. hospitals are in Penrith - 21 miles away, or Kendal - 27 miles away. Referrals are also taken from Penrith Hospital, the Beacon Centre and other local Kirkby Stephen Good Neighbours Scheme organisations such as Age UK. Many of the has been supporting people in Kirkby referrals are for older people but young parents Stephen and the surrounding area for and others in need have also received help. almost a year now. They have a dedicated team of volunteers who visit people at home Local volunteer Sue Capel said: “I wanted to do to complete odd jobs and tasks, for anyone something useful when I retired from work and of any age, in the local community. thought this scheme was just the thing. I helped someone on a hospital visit, going with them on Background the patient transport, helping them find the eye Kirkby Stephen Community and Council clinic and then helping them home again. It’s Centre is a community managed Local Links good to know that with a little commitment the centre which has become a ‘one stop shop’ for Good Neighbours Scheme can make a information, community support and access to difference to peoples lives.” services, including the library and children’s centre. The befriending visits are usually 30 to 45 minutes a week and volunteers go out when The Centre, which opened in 2011, is aware of the Centre is open so they can make contact if local needs and therefore well placed to start they need to. If people need more help than the new projects to support the community. scheme provides, volunteers can also suggest Residents had been asking for help with small referrals to other services available through the tasks such as DIY and gardening. Having Centre. heard about Good Neighbours schemes, staff at the Centre thought this could be a good way What has been achieved? to meet these needs. The scheme currently has 17 volunteers who support 21 residents in Kirkby Stephen and the Summer 2017 Summer - The Project surrounding area. In the autumn of 2016, using the Good Neighbours Toolkit and a small grant from A relative of one of the scheme users reported: ACT, they put a call out for local volunteers “After a long, lonely time of grieving for the loss interested in becoming Good Neighbours. of a family member, my mum hit rock bottom Following a positive volunteer response, things and I was really worried about her. took off really quickly and they now have 21 Cont. on page 4 ACT GazetteACT 27 Issue residents benefitting from support. Title photo: Wendy Hamilton and Zelda Bromfield with 3 the Kirkby Stephen Good Neighbours leaflet “I finally managed to persuade mum, who is a very private person, to meet a Good Neighbour volunteer. The volunteer got on so well with The Good mum that they now meet weekly and I feel a lot of the pressure of being mum’s only contact Councillors Guide has been eased. to Neighbourhood Planning “I can see that my mum now has a reason to get up in the morning and this has brought a real breath of fresh air to our lives.” The National Association of Local Councils (NALC) and Locality have published a new The Learning guide aimed at helping parish and town Communities The Good Neighbours Scheme works councillors support their community and council because local people are supporting other in deciding whether to produce a local people - we’re being good neighbours.