Market Town initiatives, along with Parish Plans, are one of the rare opportunities for local people to express a voice in the future of their communities. The Tiverton and Exe Valley communities have taken full advantage of this initiative by setting it in the local context, and using it to launch and publicise ideas and projects to benefit the
area. The Exe Valley Plan has followed the process described in Planning for your Community:
• The Steering Group and the eight Focus Groups started by identifying the Vision in terms of the way it related to the individual themes.
• After this, the Focus Groups looked at the current situation in their themed areas, and considered goals,principles, values and strategies, before moving on to consider appropriate projects. The focus group reports in Part 2 reflect this process.
A year before the official launch of the initiativ in September 2004, founding members of the group formed an ad hoc Steering Group to gain MCTA funding for Tiverton and the Exe Valley. Once that was achieved in March 2004, these members set out to broaden community representation, recruiting a number of local councillors and volunteers onto the Steering Group. The group were supported by Mid Devon District Council and Devon County
Council, and by Caroline Walker, the Devon MCTA Community facilitator.
The components of Exe Valley Plan
The group took an early decision that the Exe Valley Plan should be holistic. Dr. John Blewitt from Exeter University kindly offered advice,and came onto the Steering Group. Under his guidance, three core areas for the plan -economy, community and environment - were identified as the three fundamental components
for the Plan. The community launch and workshops on 17th September 2005 were structured on these components.
Early consultations with local communities
The launch was attended by almost a hundred local people, and was preceded by four parish consultations in venues across the Exe Valley, giving a total of five early stage consultations to identify issues and crystallise a vision for the area. From the twelve themed workshops at the launch, eight received very
considerable interest from members of the public. In most cases,the chairs of the themed groups were keen to continue leading the exploration of the theme. They became Focus Group Leaders, and encouraged participants and other members of the community to join their groups.
The Focus Groups
The themes of the Focus Groups were:
Economy
Commerce
ICT
Community
Education
Health,
Housing and Voluntary Sector
Heritage, Arts and Culture
Environment
Agriculture and Tourism
Sport and Recreation
Transport, Water and Waste
Three members of the Steering Group pursued an interest in Renewable Energy which fed into the work of other Focus Groups. From the beginning, the ICT Focus Group liaised with other groups so that their area of expertise could inform and assist a variety of themes.Most groups met monthly, first working on the vision as it related to their theme, and then on goals identified as specific targets needed to
fulfil the vision. They identified the principles and values relating to their theme and a variety of strategies for achieving the vision. By the time the AGM was held in February 2006, these goals, principles, values and strategies could be displayed for public comment. A good attendance at the AGM ensured a lively interest
in the process locally. Later meetings of the Focus Groups focused on developing projects that embodied their
strategies, and in developing relationships with contributions from all the volunteer groups, Fern drafted the Plan, with assistance from Jill, and, with Warwick and David, arranged for its publication, in hard copy and as a web book.
The Healthcheck and Needs analyses
The work required for the healthcheck, particularly detailed questions and SWOT analyses drawn up by outside agencies, notably the Countryside Agency, proved something of a burden for the Focus Groups. Most groups
focused on collecting information that was immediately relevant to their projects through their own questionnaires. In the case of some projects, members of the focus groups gained insight into the issues involved through visits to areas that had already established projects of a similar nature. This provided a clear understanding of best practice, and a window into the practice of how similar projects elsewhere had been achieved. In other projects, the process of networking with other organisations provided the necessary inside information on what was actually available to the local communities. Developing a statistical base for the current
situation was considerably aided by the new Tiverton town profile developed by Devon County Council. Other recent reports commissioned by or provided to Mid Devon District Council provided detailed information on some
themes. Most other statistics and information were researched by the Community Co-ordinator. This information is detailed in Part 5, where it is related to the projects.
Impact of issues facing the MCTi process
In 2004, towns further on in the process were facing two major issues, provision of project funding and the relationship of community plans to the statutory planning process. On both these key issues, the Devon Towns Forum has provided guidance and insight, and the MCTA has worked hard to alleviate bottlenecks in the
process. For towns such as Tiverton, this has meant additional aspects to the original brief, including developing a working knowledge of:
• partnership working between councils, statutory
agencies, the voluntary sector and business
organisations.
• community strategic planning at regional, county
and district level
• the new statutory planning legislation;
• the current state of project funding;
• exploring the legal niceties of governance.
The Strategic Context of the Plan
The context of the local Market and Coastal Towns initiative, illustrated diagrammatically on the next page, shows the extent to which it remains dominated by the agenda of the public sector. The Exe Valley Plan straddles the voluntary, private and public sectors. For the Plan to have a lasting influence, ongoing partnership
working between the new implementation organisation, Exe Valley Enterprises Ltd., and the public, private and voluntary sectors will be essential.
In the statutory planning context, the published Exe Valley Plan will form part of the evidence base for the Local Development Framework, feeding local views into a top-down planning process (Core Strategy COR 6 8.22), particularly with regard to the forthcoming Exe Area Development Document. The Exe Valley Plan belongs to and represents views of the communities from which it has sprung.
The nature of the Exe Valley Plan
Over a hundred local residents have worked actively over many months to achieve the published Exe Valley Plan. It is not a plan set in stone, but a local community view of the way forward at a particular point in time, 2005-7. Unforeseen events in the future will, no doubt, mean that there will be a perceptible change in
direction resulting from emerging new needs and opportunities. We hope, however, that the vision, goals, strategies and projects crystallised by the themed groups will have a continuing dynamic adaptable to any changing needs and situations, providing for stability and sustainability in Exe Valley communities in the years to come.
Exe Valley Community Strategic Plan 4 February 2007
The Exe Valley Plan -