There was an meeting in the Village Hall on Thursday 9th October 2008, to introduce the work being undertaken to create a Parish Plan for Thorncombe. The Chairman of the Parish Plan Committee, Richard Peacock, gave a short talk to describe the What and How of the Plan.

The purpose of the plan is to provide a working document which will allow The Parish to let people know about how we want the Parish to develop over the next few years, and how we intend to go about it. The document, although not legally binding, will provide a blueprint of activities for both the Parish Council and the Parishioners to work to so that we can achieve the stated objectives. It will also be available for outside bodies, such as West Dorset District Council, to see what we want and how we see our lives in our Parish.

The how, is by getting as wide a consensus of views as is possible. This will be done through talking to people, either individually or in groups in public meetings. The individual interviews programme will be started by sending letters to the various organisations and businesses in the Parish asking them for a representative to talk to us about what interests them. Of course, if any individual wishes to make their views known they only have to call 01460 30135 (Bunny Snellock) and their name will be included in the interview programme. That is not to say that the views expressed in the interviews will be linked to any particular source, we believe that anonymity should be maintained.

Initially, the Committee has already identified a series of ‘Issues’ which people are known to be interested in. These include things like Council Services, the state of the roads, Public Services like the NHS and Police. This has allowed us to put together a questionnaire which will shortly be distributed throughout the Parish. The questionnaire includes plenty of space for additions and comments over and above our questions. We hope that the feedback we get from this will allow us to expand our search and eventually allow us to identify the requirements of the Parish. We are awaiting a grant from Dorset Council which will allow us to carry out this part of the work and cover later expenses.

Also as we identify specific items of interest we will hold Public Meetings to discuss them in more detail. This will then allow finalisation of the views on such a subject. Eventually, in about a year, we will gather together what is needed and what actions have to be taken to achieve them into one document. This will be the draft plan. The draft plan will be discussed both by the Public and by the Parish Council. After this a final version will be prepared and distributed Parish-wide.

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If you have any comments or questions please contact us by ringing either

01460 30135 (Bunny Snellock) or 01460 220234 (Richard Peacock)