Histon & Impington Community Appraisal Project

Community Appraisal - a View from Histon & Impington

Denis W PayneGroup Chair

Histon & Impington Community Appraisal Project

Histon & Impington

• Two villages - two parishes (and two Councils) but one community• A small town? - 3,000+ homes, 7,500 people• Well resourced:

– two Anglican churches; Methodist; Baptist; Salvation Army

– two Post Offices, banks, building society

– food/non-food shops; garage (petrol and repair)

– Library

– Nursery, Infants, Junior schools; Village College

– Doctors, dentists

– local (private) hospital

– 35% people work locally (1991); 4000 jobs

– sheltered housing provision

Histon & Impington Community Appraisal Project

Histon & Impington

• But:– no village hall

– no youth club (though uniformed groups exist)

– crime & disorder target - youth

– no local newsletter/newspaper/village magazine

– significant traffic issues - just north of A14, north of Cambridge

– suffering from development pressures - and threats

– lacking public open space - what there is isn’t necessarily where people are

– environment - litter, grass cutting, planting schemes

– Parish Governance?

Histon & Impington Community Appraisal Project

Project

• Parish Council initiated - significant ongoing contribution• Support of ACRE (Deborah Willis)• Launch event - team together• Launch event drove questionnaire• Questionnaire development challenging• Distribution and collection June/July 2001 - 974 questionnaires

returned; 1773 respondents plus returns from Junior School (~200) and Village College (~170)

• Data entry time consuming - large team doing this• Planning event - May 2002• Money not a problem - Parish Councils, District Council, Lottery

etc

Histon & Impington Community Appraisal Project

Lessons

• Questions are difficult– you’ll be accused of a political agenda whatever you ask

– they need not only to be relevant, but also things people may be prepared to “have a go” at

• A portion of residents will deny having received questionnaire - even though you know you put it through their door

• Teams are vital - “managing group” and distributors/collectors; inputters

• It takes time• You won’t “win” everything, nor get action on everything that

ought to be covered• 30% can be a good turnout (cf local elections!)

Histon & Impington Community Appraisal Project

What have we achieved?

• Before appraisal results published - but after we started the process:– youth club

– village newspaper

– litter picking, bulb planting

• And now:– community centre group

– action re recreation facilities

– inter-working (at least communication) between groups

– youth shelter plans

– skateboarding club

– environment group - litter picks, bulb planting and much more

Histon & Impington Community Appraisal Project

Achieved?

– public open space opportunity

– transport actions

– material on development to take to SCDC

– some engagement with youth issues, and young people (joint Councils Youth Committee)

– Police vision (publicly stated) “Neighbourhood Watch Village”

Histon & Impington Community Appraisal Project

Not so good?

• Questions– some very good, very relevant - but very limited number of people

able to see, and commit to, actions

– lots of free text input - difficult to analyse

• Percentage return varies dramatically with distributor/collector• Difficulty (to date) engaging with other Councils over results• Community commitment to action