Work is well underway reviewing the Joint Melksham Neighbourhood Plan, we have been working hard with the steering group to expand the scope of the plan, making sure it is as up to date and comprehensive as possible to give it maximum weight in future planning decisions.
A big part of this is community and stakeholder engagement. This engagement can take many forms. There are two key approaches that are working well in Melksham:
Regular web and print updates – For the Joint Melksham Neighbourhood Plan our team at Place Studio has produced a Neighbourhood Plan website to act as a hub where the community can get news and updates on the plan and register their interest to get involved. We have also shared the outputs of various strands of work for comments and feedback from the community. This links to a facebook page where updates are posted, and regular updates in the Melksham news. The clerks of the Town and Parish Council covered all bases and also had a slot on a local podcast.
Face-to-face – Online / print material alone is not enough – there is so much value in getting out and chatting to people. Together with the Steering Group and Town/Parish Council Officers, Place Studio designed and ran a series of face-to-face engagement events in the centre of Melksham to allow people to get together and give their views in person. The events consisted of exhibition boards that showcased the progress on the town centre masterplan and the neighbourhood plan combined with a survey which asked for feedback on the work done so far. The information boards were also on show at the Town Hall and Library for 6 weeks.
“A big THANK YOU, Vaughan and our team of officers, for a very successful evening at The Campus. There was a lot of work setting that up!! Lots of useful engagement and good to see so many people, and inputs on the maps and people going around filling our responses.”
Graham Ellis, Melksham Town Council
“….lots and lots of very public and very powerful consulting going on!”
Joe McCann, Melksham Independent News
Photo credit: Joe McCann, Melksham Independent News