APPENDIX 1 Melton’s draft community strategy Consultation Stage Two August 2003 CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2. Information about the borough of Melton 3. Purpose of the Community Strategy 4. Melton’s Community’s priorities 5. The strategy • Community Development • Leisure and Culture • Jobs and Prosperity • Education and Training • Mobility and Transport • Housing • Environment • Health and Care • Safety and Protection 6. Suggested actions 7. What happens next? 8. Membership of the Melton Community Partnership. 9. Abbreviations 2 1. INTRODUCTION This is Melton’s first community strategy. It is the first time that we have tried to create an agreed view about what the borough of Melton should be aiming for and the best way to get there. It brings together the needs and hopes of local people and the organisations that work in the borough into a shared vision. The vision explains where we want to be. We want to enhance the quality of life for everyone in the borough of Melton to achieve a sustainable, prosperous and vibrant community…. a place where people want to live, work and visit. The strategy explains how we can all help to achieve this vision. Partnerships, organisations and the community have achieved a great deal in the borough of Melton. Most local people think that Melton is a good place to live, but there are still things that can be improved and this strategy can help to co-ordinate actions and carry them through the current decision-making processes. This strategy is all about: • making things better in the borough of Melton; • taking account of local views; • improving the quality of life; and • co-ordinating partnerships. Please read on. 3 2. INFORMATION ABOUT THE BOROUGH OF MELTON MAP The borough of Melton is in the north-east of the county of Leicestershire and centrally located within the East Midlands Region. Melton Mowbray is about 28 kilometres (17 to 18 miles) from the large cities of Leicester and Nottingham and the towns of Loughborough and Grantham. Profile • The area of the borough is 48,138 hectares. • 47,866 people live in the borough of Melton (2001 census). • Melton Mowbray is a historic market town which provides most of the borough with day-to-day services. • There are train stations at Melton Mowbray and Bottesford. Direct train routes run through Melton from Leicester, Stansted Airport, Liverpool, Birmingham and Cambridge. • There are regular bus services to Nottingham and Leicester. • The borough is linked with the national road network so is within reasonable distance of the A1, M1 and East Midlands Airport. The borough of Melton has rolling countryside and is famously known for its pork pies and Stilton Cheese. There are a number of major manufacturing and engineering firms, and a successful small business sector. 4 3. PURPOSE OF THE COMMUNITY STRATEGY What is the reason for having a community strategy? • A community strategy is a document that sets out the needs and hopes of a community. It should represent the overall views of the community. • Developing a strategy allows organisations that work in the community and the community itself to work together towards a common goal to improve quality of life. Who put the strategy together and how? • We, Melton Community Partnership (MCP) have developed the Melton Community Strategy. (The MCP is a Local Strategic Partnership (LSP).) • We were set up in May 2002 and are made up of representatives from organisations that work in the borough of Melton (including public, private, voluntary and community groups.) We have come together in a partnership arrangement to work closely with each other to make the best use of the resources each organisation has. (The members are shown on page 33) • We have developed the strategy from: 1. a day long session which we used to identify the main issues which influence the borough of Melton; 2. information gathered from previous consultation carried out in the borough of Melton; and 3. contributions from members of the MCP. • We will consult the local community in Melton about this draft community strategy, and include the views in the final Melton community strategy. • The Countryside Agency’s Market Towns Initiative has been developed to help revitalise market towns, which meet the needs of the local people. The initiative is carried out by completing a healthcheck with help from local people to appraise the strengths, weaknesses, future demands and opportunities of Market Towns from which an action plan is developed to help draw funding into the area. With support from the Countryside Agency and the East Midlands Development Agency (emda), the action plan will help to revitalise Melton Mowbray and the rural hinterland. The process by which the Market Towns Initiative and the Community Strategy are carried out is comparable and therefore the Melton community strategy now embraces the Countryside Agency’s Market Towns Initiative and the two are being run as a joint programme. 5 What will this strategy and the partnership do that has not already been done before? We were set up to do the following things. • Produce a community strategy which explains what local people need and how they would like the borough of Melton to be in the future. • Encourage local people to get involved by developing ways in which people in the borough can be given the opportunity to express their needs and wishes for their areas, comment on the draft strategy, and be involved in putting it into practice. • Co-ordinate partnerships by considering all existing partnerships to see how they can work together more effectively. We are a strategic partnership, which means that we examine the broadest viewpoint and try to find solutions that will improve things at all levels. We are also looking at what local people need and want for their area. It is only by recording and respecting these views that our work and that of the community strategy can be successful. Short term realism for long term aims • We cannot achieve everything at once so the process to achieve the vision will be ongoing. • Internal structures of many organisations are complicated and therefore working across organisational boundaries needs a great deal of negotiation and a lot of effort, but people work together better when there is an agreed sense of direction. • But on a positive note, an agreed sense of direction is emerging so we can concentrate on working towards it and improving the quality of life of people who live in Melton. What will happen as a result of this strategy being written? • When we have agreed the vision and what we are going to do to achieve it, we can start to work to put the proposed actions into practice. • The needs and hopes of people who live in Melton will change over time so we will update the community strategy when necessary and review the action plan every year. • A wide variety of agencies and organisations are responsible for putting the community strategy into practice, with as much help as possible from the people who live in the borough of Melton. • We will use the community strategy to start to carry out the actions that have been identified. 6 Where will the money and resources come from in order to carry out projects? • The wide representation on the Melton Community Partnership allows us to have a strong voice that will, for the first time, begin to represent the views of the Melton community. The community strategy will provide the vision and agreed actions for the future, which have been approved by the wider community and us. This will increase the chances of funding applications being successful for future projects. • It is expected that pooling some of the financial resources of MCP partners can pay for projects that benefit many sections of the community and areas of the borough. • As the Melton Community Partnership is a Local Strategic Partnership it is able to access funding from Sub-Regional Strategic Partnerships • Through the Market Towns Initiative, a Project Manager will be employed to help put the action plan into practice. The Countryside Agency, emda, Melton Borough Council and Samworth Brothers have already agreed to fund this post for three years. How will we know if things are getting better? The Audit Commission has developed a set of local indicators. Melton Borough Council was one of the authorities to pilot the scheme. The indicators are called ‘Quality of Life Indicators’ (QoL) as they measure a wide range of issues that affect local areas. The indicators that make up the quality of life set have been chosen as they provide a wide variety of information which can reflect quality of life, rather than the ease of their data collection. The indicators include economic, social and environmental issues. This strategy will use these indicators, plus others that are widely used (such as Best-Value indicators which are used by public services to monitor their own progress), to help monitor our progress in achieving the overall vision. 7 4. MELTON’S COMMUNITY’S PRIORITIES MELTON COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP’S VISION We want to enhance the quality of life for everyone in the borough of Melton to achieve a sustainable, prosperous and vibrant community….a place where people want to live, work and visit. Our priorities are: • tourism – food, equine and rural heritage; • to regenerate Melton Mowbray town centre for visitors and the community; • to promote the borough to residents and visitors; and • use Information Communication Technology to deliver services. We identified the need to deal with issues that affect both the rural areas of the borough and Melton Mowbray in a co-ordinated way and get the community involved.