F - Benefits and Limitations of the Parish Plan: the Future of Arnside
F. Benefits and Limitations of the Parish Plan: the Future of Arnside
F.1 As anticipated from the first, many benefits have already accrued to the Parish from the very preparation of the Parish Plan – in a sense regardless of the content of the Plan itself :-
· Facilities acquired specifically in order to complete the various phases of the planning process - for instance, a photocopier, an overhead projector, a new website - will be available from the autumn onwards for the use of residents of the Parish, under the general supervision of the Parish Council.
· Certain new initiatives that have been taken in the Parish over the past months are not unrelated to preparation of the Plan; for example, the plan to create a skateboarding/roller-blading/biking area on the Parish’s Memorial Field and to link this initiative with the pre-existing Arnside Youth Project was set in motion on the occasion of the Parish Plan Open Day organised in November 2002.
· Over 30 individuals in the Parish have been directly involved in the work of either the Parish Plan Steering Group or the Task Groups that it set up in May 2003 (more came forward to join Action Groups at the public event of 21 June). Others still have participated in aspects of the process like delivering leaflets, preparing and displaying posters, etc. Not only is such participation a good thing in its own right, it also augurs well for future co-operation in the carrying out of the Plan.
· This is just a particularly tangible manifestation of the fact many people in the Parish have begun thinking about its nature and its future in a way that would not have come about had a Plan not been in preparation.
· Along the way to the Plan itself, the Steering Group has produced documents and computer files that can be of use in the Parish for some little time to come, especially those relating to the questionnaire, which constituted the most extensive survey of Parish opinion carried out in living memory. Further scrutiny of these at any future stage could prove productive in a number of ways.
F.2 Under the terms of the ‘Vital Villages’ scheme, the Steering Group enjoyed extremely wide freedom in deciding what form the final Parish Plan should take. As explained above, the Group thought it crucial, from the beginning, not just to carry out an extensive survey of Parish opinion, but also to use the results of that survey as the framework of the Action Plan. Moreover, at the public occasion on 21 June, 2003, as well as elsewhere, a draft of the Action Plan itself was made available to all Parish residents, whose comments on it have been fully taken into account. For most people, the Action Plan will constitute the core of the Parish Plan, being the section of it that can actually be put into effect and achieve – directly and indirectly – certain concrete, practical results. The material surrounding the Action Plan will be seen by many as secondary. It is certainly largely intended to be considered as leading up to, and setting into context, the Action Plan proper. But it also explains in some detail what the Steering Group, in the light of all of the information and opinion gathered, regards as the current state of the Parish, as well as tracing in various directions some of the implications of the actions proposed. Providing an opportunity for all residents to vet a draft of this Parish Plan in its entirety was not possible, but anything in the text that may come to be regarded as controversial should be seen in relation to an Action Plan that everyone has had an opportunity to scrutinise and comment on.
F.3 Inevitably, developments and changes took place during the twelve months or so of the planning process. In some cases, even the February 2003 survey was overtaken by events in a way that undermined certain specific questions (e.g. local policing, recycling). But, equally, the Steering Group was often able to react to quickly-changing circumstances, by incorporating elements into the Action Plan that constituted a response to the latest factors or worries (e.g. recent reports on the future of local rail services).
F.4 There can be no legitimate disappointment that the Parish Plan is not more radical. From early on – certainly after the Open Day in November 2002 – it never seemed likely that the view of Parish residents would be that great changes are needed in Arnside. The survey results confirm this (answers to question 7 in particular). What is more, it gradually emerged that it would not be possible to make, in the Plan, specific, practical recommendations concerning some dramatic, large-scale new project for Arnside. Most projects of this kind suggested in the survey (marina, restaurant on stilts, pleasure boats, footway over the viaduct …) are either not practicable or cannot be assumed to command sufficient support within the Parish. Nevertheless, far from ruling out certain major new projects at some future date, the Plan itself may promote discussions and consultations that eventually lead to such a result. If the right opportunities present themselves, for example, the survey and the Action Plan could lead stage by stage to a new community building of some kind, as envisaged under Facilities and Spaces above.
F.5 If the Parish Plan has its limitations, it also doubtless has its faults. Hard as the Steering Group has tried to take the known opinions of residents as the essential guide, the Plan might have come out differently if produced by a different group of individuals. Some residents will be aware of omissions – perhaps major ones – and a long document almost inevitably contains errors of one kind or another. But nothing that may be wrong with this Plan is irretrievable. In fact, one criterion of its success would consist in its coming to be regarded as no more than the first stage in a long ongoing process. In some cases, the Steering Group has manifestly had to bring its deliberations to an end where there is still ‘unfinished business’.
F.6 In recommending and facilitating the establishment of a Parish Plan Management Group (PPMG), the Steering Group has made what it considers to be the best set of arrangements not just for carrying out the Action Plan, but also for monitoring its implementation in the light of the broader Parish Plan as a whole, subjecting both to periodic review, and eventually giving consideration to extending the Plan’s five-year span. These should constitute PPMG’s major terms of reference, and it is suggested that its membership should include the elected Chair of each of the Action Groups (or substitute), at least one Parish Councillor, and perhaps one member of the Steering Group, for purposes of continuity. The Steering Group itself was never empowered to go further than recommendations of this kind: what actually happens once the Plan becomes public property will be in the hands of others. Furthermore, since the majority of actions in the Action Plan necessarily involve asking/recommending that some other group do – or at least consider doing – something in particular, the Plan anticipates that its execution will have to involve ‘partnerships’, formal or informal, between the PPMG and other bodies of various kinds.
F.7 The importance of Arnside Parish Council in the whole process of carrying out the Parish Plan can scarcely be over-estimated. The Plan has been prepared by a Steering Group that has operated entirely independently of the Parish Council (although it has included Parish-Council members). It is an attempt to express the collective wishes and views of the residents of Arnside as a whole. But the Parish Council is also autonomous, and has the authority that comes with being the only elected body that officially represents the community. What is more, from the very first it has had a certain kind of stake in the planning process, which it initiated: it was required by the Countryside Agency to make a financial contribution to costs, and it has been responsible for handling the funds granted by that Agency and by Cumbria Rural Development Programme. Above all, most of the areas in which the Parish Plan recommends actions are to one extent or another the legal responsibility of the Parish Council. Of course, the hope must be that there will be little, if anything, in the Parish Plan that the Parish Council feels obliged to oppose, and this is one interface where it seems essential that the Parish Plan Management Group should enter into some sort of partnership. The Parish Council is fully committed to becoming a ‘Quality Parish Council’ under a new government scheme, and a recent document from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has made it clear that there is a particularly close relationship between such an intention and the existence of a Parish Plan:
‘A Quality Parish Council will wish to develop a Parish Plan in partnership with its local community. These plans … include an action plan with details of how to realise the objectives within the plan …’;
‘Quality Parish Councils will be in a better position … to help realise the ambitions and goals contained within their parish plans. They will be in a better position to represent the views of local people and to ensure that principal local authorities and other service providers listen to and respond to the needs of local people.’ (The Quality Parish and Town Council Scheme, 2003).
F.8 The existence of Action Groups which derive from the Task Groups set up in May 2003 should also be a major factor in the implementation of the Plan. Certain broad terms of reference have been suggested, and precise actions to carry out have been assigned to them in the Action Plan. But these groups are, again, independent of any other body, and will elect their own Chair. They are likely to have influence only insofar as they can be seen to be speaking on behalf of the great majority of Arnside residents and, for some time at least, to be working within the parameters set by the Plan and survey. Their strength lies in the fact that they will each operate in a relatively narrow field, being able to make good contacts, acquire and evaluate very specialised information, and adopt well-informed positions on specific issues. Part of the role of the new Parish Plan Management Group will undoubtedly consist in encouraging and co-ordinating the work of the Action Groups. It is already clear that there are some projects (for instance, in the area of communications and a possible Newsletter) that ought to draw together certain strands from the work of different groups.
F.9 There is also a continuing role for the residents of Arnside as a whole in this. Their vigilance may be a major factor in ensuring that anything done in the name of the Parish Plan does in fact fall within the framework of opinion that emerged from the survey. They have a responsibility to demand clear and honest explanations where this is not the case, and, similarly, a right to expect some kind of justification whenever a body rejects – or even procrastinates over – any recommendation in the Action Plan.
F.10 The setting of a time-limit to the scope of a plan often has something arbitrary about it, and the five-year span envisaged here springs largely from a norm in the ‘Vital Villages’ scheme. The Steering Group has established certain priorities/timings in the proposed Action Plan, but has engaged only minimally in the process of precise phasing or setting targets that have a dateline attached to them. One of the early tasks of the Parish Plan Management Group might be to sift the recommended actions in order to produce greater precision on the question of timings and set up some sort of year-by-year programme.
F.11 If this were to be done, it might or might not bring residents a little closer to what it would be fashionable to call a ‘vision’ of Arnside in five years time. There are a number of reasons why the Steering Group has not been anxious to make such a vision a major aspect – much less the guiding light – of the Parish Plan. For one thing, it will not be clear until the appropriate Census information is available what basic trends it would be sensible to take account of – if, for instance, Arnside’s population is increasing, then at what rate; and is this expected to continue? More generally, the task of acquiring all of the detailed information required to make serious, well-grounded predictions in the appropriate areas would be a massive one. It would, of course, have been easy to be much less realistic, much less bound by facts, and simply to have taken a ‘vision of Arnside’ to mean some model of how residents would like it to be in five years time. To some extent, such projecting and imagining is a part of what everyone does in thinking about the future, what respondents did in completing the questionnaire. Yet the dangers of having a small group attempt to define such a vision and make it the centre-piece of a Parish Plan will be obvious to all. The whole exercise of drawing up a Plan has been conceived as a ‘bottom-up’ rather than a ‘top-down’ one. That is to say that it has been driven by a concern to elicit and express, as far as this is possible, the general views of residents, rather than to impose anything upon them. And it is very far from clear that the 1160 visions of Arnside in five years time that may or may not be discernible from the survey could be merged in a useful collective ‘vision’ that would satisfy even a significant majority.
F.12 At the same time, if the Parish Plan is a broadly accurate representation of residents’ views, then the ‘Aims’ formulated in its Action Plan should, taken together, go some way towards countering any worries that, without a ‘vision’ as such, a plan is rudderless. In other words, it is possible to say something non-prescriptive about how Arnside would be five years from now if the aims of the Plan were achieved. The best way to visualise this is to imagine that all of the present good and satisfactory features of the Parish are preserved and that improvements have either been made or are in the process of being made in the following respects:-
o residents would be better informed: more statistics would be available in the Parish about the people who live here, their status, their homes and general trends; measures would have been taken to extend and improve the communication of information within the Parish (via the website, extra pages in the Directory, more notice-board space, and a regular Parish Newsletter); all of this would constitute one aspect of Arnside’s achievement of ‘Quality Parish’ status
o residents would be in a better position to see Arnside’s plans for the future in relation to the plans of broader bodies within which the Parish is situated (AONB, South Lakeland DC, Cumbria CC), and hence to be involved in critical decisions relating to these bodies; the Parish would – by sometimes making common cause with surrounding bodies – be in a stronger position to ward off threats and to make claims on funds available from various sources
o the Parish would have a strategy for preserving the open spaces within its boundaries, but would also have been consistently pressing for rather more sheltered accommodation and, especially, for more affordable housing to be available; its concern to retain young families would also be reflected in the provision of new work-opportunities in the Parish, where things would have been made easier for those wishing to become self-employed and set up new businesses – partly by the creation of new workspaces and partly by virtue of the existence of an Advice/Information Centre linking to various agencies (this might be combined with information facilities for visitors)
o much more hard information about visitors/tourism in the Parish would be available, enabling key decisions to be well-based; certain selected kinds of tourism and modes of visitors’ travelling, as well as environmentally-friendly activities, would be encouraged by specific measures
o the use of both the house and the grounds/woodlands of Ashmeadow for the benefit of the Parish would be permanently assured; some other buildings that are currently scarcely used would have been brought into use, and a new community building might have been constructed (or be in the planning stage), which would house the Library and incorporate some combination of other public spaces
o pre-school children, young children and youths in Arnside would be better provided for in a number of ways (including a skateboard area and an ongoing Youth Project); and there would be a dedicated Youth Centre of some kind
o extended opportunities for Adult Education would be available in the village; clubs and societies would have more access to public spaces of one kind or another, and a village forum would develop greater contacts between organisations, thereby encouraging the sharing of facilities
o the deficiency of some types of shops and services in Arnside would be to some extent remedied by a regular indoor market and outreach facilities; a watchdog group would exist to ensure that every effort was made to avoid further critical losses
o a systematic traffic and parking survey would have been carried out in the Parish, and, in the light of this, the situation with regard to traffic circulation and road safety would have been improved; major measures to cope better with the problems caused specifically by the parking of visitors’ vehicles would have been taken, or would be in motion
o there would be better access to railway platforms and improved facilities at the station; and a variety of established means would be available for the expression of users’ detailed views on all transport services in and around the Parish, as well as for pressing the case for desired changes
o thanks to a range of particular measures, the roads, pavements and verges in the Parish would be in a better state; there would be considerably less litter, and less dog-fouling
o the presence of a local policeman would be assured; certain police initiatives in the Parish would be supported; better facilities for contacting the police over emergency and non-emergency matters would be in place; all of the ‘rescue’ services that operate in the Parish would be better supported and given more positive help by residents
o arrangements would be in place to ensure that parish-planning involving all Arnside residents was an ongoing process, entailing regular review and revision of aims for the Parish and of the means for achieving these.
It would be surprising – though pleasantly so – if all aspects of this ‘vision’ were to be realised. Apart from anything else, there will be unexpected events and developments at all stages of the five-year period, which will require flexibility of response on the part of all involved. However, if ‘Quality Parish’ status is achieved by Arnside, the Parish Council may have the opportunity of taking on many responsibilities currently carried out by one or other of the principal local authorities (e.g. maintenance of highway verges, pavements and footpaths, parking restrictions, street lighting, litter control): there are still uncertainties about this process, but such a development could ultimately have very significant practical effects on many aspects of life in the Parish. Furthermore, one of the great advantages of setting out an Action Plan in terms of both ‘Aims’ and ‘Actions’ is that, if a particular action, for whatever reason, should prove not to be the best way of achieving a specific aim, then another – more appropriate – action can be substituted for it without in any way undermining the objectives and intentions of the Parish Plan as a whole.
F.13 At the very least, the Parish Plan and everything that its preparation has entailed will have raised awareness of the issues that Arnside faces and helped to formulate those issues in the terms that residents consider most appropriate. The extent to which its value proves to be greater than this will now depend upon the determination and commitment with which its implementation is pursued by the whole community. All in Arnside will, in any case, wish to express their gratitude to the Countryside Agency, to Cumbria Rural Development Programme, and to Arnside Parish Council, for the funding that made it possible to create a Plan. And the Steering Group would like to thank all those in the Parish who have given assistance of one kind or another along the way.
