Report of second Steering Committe meeting held on 27th June

The steering committee of the Balcombe Parish Plan Action Group held its second meeting on June 27 and was due to meet again on July 25.

Just to reiterate: the purpose of compiling a Parish Plan is to provide the Parish Council with informed guidance on what it should do to maintain, improve or change the aspects of life in Balcombe which residents believe to be important.

At the Balcombe Fete the Action Group organised a stall with red and white balloons and a magnum of Champagne to tempt people over to find out what we were about.

The stall consisted of boards displaying photographs taken around the village and examples of the sort of questions about the village that might be put on the questionnaire for people to answer.

The idea was to publicise the process taking place and to make people aware that a questionnaire would be coming through their door very shortly, which they would be asked to fill in.

We had a fairly constant stream of interest in the stand throughout the afternoon and almost 30 people took up the invitation to submit a question and thereby have the chance to win the magnum of Champagne. The winner was the first piece of paper to be pulled out of the box at random.

At the committee meeting on June 27 progress was made on deciding what format the questionnaire would eventually take, what size paper it would be printed on (A5), how many sides it would consist of (eight) and how the questions would be phrased in order to make it as easy as possible for people to answer, while also making it simple to analyse afterwards.

Two thousand questionnaires are to be printed and everyone over the age of 16 is to be asked to fill one in. Delivery will be at the beginning of September with two questionnaires going to each household and more available if needed. The mammoth job of collection will take place during the third week of September with members of the Action Group and others, who have volunteered to help, collecting.

Again, it has to be emphasised that in order for this to be a truly democratic process, we need as many questionnaires filled in and returned as possible, so please, look out for your questionnaire in early September and fill it in and ask everyone in your household over the age of 16 to fill one in as well.

Carolyn Robertson

Publicity