Carrick The best place to live, work, visit & play Contents Foreword 3 Executive Summary 4 Introduction 5 Chapter 1 – Context 7 1.1 Socio-economic Context of Carrick 1.2 Measuring Rural Deprivation 1.3 Rural Deprivation in South Ayrshire 1.4 The Rural Voice Chapter 2 – The Development of this Strategy 13 2.1 Carrick Economic Development Strategy 2.2 About Horizons 2.3 National, Regional & Global Context 2.4 Strategy Development & Methodology 2.5 Strategy Implementation 2.6 Schematic Outline of the CCCF’s Strategy Process Chapter 3 – Consultation 19 3.1 Consultation Process 3.2 Results of Consultations Chapter 4 – Aims & Objectives 31 A) Improving Access to Affordable Housing B) Developing Employment & Wealth via Tourism C) Improving Enterprise, Innovation & Employment D) Developing Active, Engaged & Involved Communities E) Improving Access to Services & Local Facilities F) Tackling ‘Out Migration’ of Young People Chapter 5 – Action Plan for Items A–F Above 47 Actions to be Taken Forward by Partner Agencies 51 CARRICK COMMUNITY COUNCIL’S FORUM Economic Development Strategy & Acttionion Plan © Horizons 2008 – All rights reserved page 1 Economic Development Strategy & Action Plan © Horizons 2008 – All rights reserved Foreword I commend the Carrick Community Councils’ Forum not only for producing this Economic Development Strategy and Action Plan but also for coming together in the first place to work co-operatively for the improvement of Carrick. The timing is good: • New relationships between local and central Government • New structures within South Ayrshire’s Community Planning Partnership • A renewed emphasis on working with communities as partners in, rather than merely recipients of, services and facilities • New funding streams targeted at rural areas all bode well for the future of our rural communities in Carrick and more widely throughout South Ayrshire. This Economic Development Strategy has been produced following extensive consultation and research in the area. It takes account of, and builds on, detailed consultations in villages such as Barr and Barrhill and on the local knowledge and contacts of Community Councillors. There are clear links between this Strategy and higher-level documents such as South Ayrshire Council’s Vision document, Securin g the Future, the South Ayrshire Community Plan, A Better Future Together, and the Ayrshire LEADER programme Local Action Group’s L ocal Development Strategy. I would encourage all stakeholders, including the partners in the South Ayrshire Community Planning Partnership and in the LEADER programme, to support the implementation of the Carrick Economic Development Strategy wherever possible. Together we can help to make a reality of the Forum’s vision of Carrick as: The best place to live, work, visit & play Signed: Hugh Hunter Leader of South Ayrshire Council October 2008 page 3 Executive Summary Carrick is a historic area, now part of South Ayrshire. It has a rich heritage in terms of history, culture, architecture, geology, flora and fauna. The area has a population of around 20,700 people, roughly 18.5% of the Local Authority’s population and 63% of its rural population. This Economic Development Strategy has been explicitly designed to dovetail both with local village-level strategies and higher-level strategies including the Ayrshire LEADER programme and various policies, funding programmes, and strategies of the Scottish Government. The document sets out the vision of the Carrick Community Councils’ Forum for Carrick to be ‘The best place to live, work, visit & play’. It identifies six priority areas as requiring ongoing focus and a step change to improve delivery for the benefit of the communities and businesses of the area. The priority aims are: • Improving access to affordable housing • Developing employment and wealth via tourism • Improving enterprise, innovation and employment • Developing active, engaged and involved communities • Improving access to services and local facilities • Tackling ‘out migration’ of young people These priorities have been identified through an extensive range of consultation processes with the local communities. They also address the key priorities of South Ayrshire Council’s Community Plan and will help in the implementation of the Scottish Government’s Economic Development Plan. A key intended outcome of the strategy is to align resource allocation and the work of partner agencies towards the priorities identified. Other key objectives will be to support regional and local delivery of services and to play a valuable role in influencing local policies to ensure they work to address rural issues. This Strategy covers the period 2008 to 2013. It will be reviewed on a regular basis. The Carrick Community Councils’ Forum (CCCF) will become the delivery body and will work with the key partners as necessary to effect change within the local area. These key partners with whom the CCCF will consult and co-operate include, for example, South Ayrshire Council, Job Centre Plus, VisitScotland and the NHS. The period of the Strategy coincides with the introduction of the LEADER programme in Ayrshire and with a massive growth in Community Benefit funding arising from windfarm developments. These new resources, coupled to the leadership that can be provided by the CCCF, offer huge opportunities to transform the future of Carrick. The Strategy is complemented with a set of Action Planning templates. The details will be added and monitored by sub-groups to be established within the CCCF. A separate Evidence Base Report provides an important source of baseline information and reference that can be updated on a regular basis. Extracts from the Evidence Report are available, via email from Horizons at [email protected]. Economic Development Strategy & Action Plan © Horizons 2008 – All rights reserved page 4 Introduction The Carrick Community Councils’ Forum (CCCF) was established in July 2006. As the name suggests, it is a Forum for representatives from the Community Councils of the Carrick area. Its role is to work with and on behalf of local communities to share information and knowledge of what is going on and to contribute to improvements in the area. To fulfil its role, the CCCF has adopted the following objectives: • To contribute to the relief of poverty in South Ayrshire • To promote the Economic, Cultural, Environmental and Social well-being of the Carrick area of South Ayrshire • To raise funds by means of events, donations, legacies, grants or other methods • To raise awareness of issues affecting the communities of Carrick by consulting, liaising and gathering views of those communities The aspirations of the CCCF are captured in their vision of Carrick being: The best place to live, work, visit and play By producing and implementing this strategy, the CCCF will achieve a more co-ordinated and planned approach to service delivery, community support and the future development of the whole of Carrick. Creating this ‘bigger picture’ will help to empower individual local communities by providing a context in which their aspirations will be more fundable and more achievable. Most importantly, the CCCF is about Action! And so, perhaps the most important part of this document is the action planning section at the end. The approach adopted by the CCCF is to address six priority aims and use this strategy to identify and prioritise objectives against each aim. The Forum, and individual Community Councils, will then map out and implement specific actions to help to achieve each objective. Key elements of the Forum’s ongoing role will be to: • Assist individual CCs to identify and implement actions • Implement actions best taken at the CCCF level •Raise awareness amongst other stakeholders of the strategy and the actions being implemented • Monitor progress • Facilitate an evaluation during 2011 • Produce a revised action plan taking account of the findings of the evaluation The CCCF recognises that it cannot implement the strategy in a vacuum. A key test of the effectiveness of the Forum, and a key factor in the success of this Strategy, will be the extent to which the Forum can influence the policies and actions of key stakeholders, including South Ayrshire Council. Economic Development Strategy & Action Plan © Horizons 2008 – All rights reserved page 5 Economic Development Strategy & Action Plan © Horizons 2008 – All rights reserved Chapter 1 – Context 1.1 Socio-economic Context of Carrick Carrick is a rural area. Definitions of ‘rural’ vary in different contexts as discussed in point 1.4 below. The definition used by the CCCF is the one used by the Scotland Rural Development Programme (SRDP) to decide eligibility for funding under its various streams. Under the SRDP, all settlements with a population under 10,000 are classed as rural. Therefore, all of Carrick, (indeed all of South Ayrshire outside of the three large settlements of Ayr, Prestwick and Troon), qualifies. Carrick does not equate precisely to multi-member wards or other statistical geographies and so it is difficult to be precise about its population. The CCCF has used the intermediate geography available via Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics to compile the following data: Geography Population Carrick South 5,763 Girvan Glendoune 3,392 Girvan Ailsa 3,394 Maybole 4,770 Carrick North 3,399 CARRICK TOTAL 20,718 South Ayrshire 111,670 With a population of around 20,700, Carrick is home to around 18.5% of the total population of South Ayrshire. About half of the people live in the two towns of Maybole (4770) and Girvan (6786), with the rest spread out across small villages and farms. Approximately a quarter of adults and children in the area live in households in receipt of key benefits and just over 8% of the working-age population are receiving unemployment or incapacity benefit. These figures are higher than the average for South Ayrshire. Three other factors merit comment: Firstly, the nature of employment in Carrick is strikingly different from that in the urbanised areas to the north.