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Aston on Trent Village (Parish) Plan |
Content
Questionnaire results discussion
Aston on Trent Village (Parish) Plan
In June 2004 S.A.V.E (Save Aston Village Environment) and Aston Parish Council decided it would be beneficial to the village to have a Village (Parish) Plan and the Steering Committee was formed – open to anyone to join.
The Steering Committee have no powers to implement the actions listed in the Action Plan below. They are recommendations based on the wishes of the majority of parishioners where there is a significant number of people concerned about an issue.
The issues have been compiled following analysis of the Drop in Day feedback, the Pilot Questionnaire and the Village Questionnaire and approved by the Steering Committee.
The objective of the Report is to set out the views of the Village on a wide variety of issues of Village life. From this an Action Plan was developed to indicate to interested parties and other agencies, suggested areas of activity.
In conjunction with a number of groups, a series of questions was devised to form the basis of a questionnaire distributed to the whole of the Village. A number of volunteers completed a Pilot version of the questionnaire in order to develop the final version.
The response from the questionnaire was overwhelming with a 70% return on the number issued. The task of entering the data was significant but the deadline of July 2005 was met.
Whilst many of the results could be predicted, some of the concerns related to :-
· The control of increased development and the possible loss of the “village” atmosphere, which so many cherished.
· The lack of adequate public transport – mainly late buses from Derby.
· The need to provide a Youth Club.
· Parking and traffic issues
· Eating out in the village
· More Recreational activities
On the positive side
· The Parish Council received a vote of confidence.
· The Memorial Hall was supported in its redevelopment / extension project
· The Well Dressing plays a large part in the enjoyment of the village
These are just some of the results of the exercise.
The report to be submitted in draft form to the Village at an open day and when finalised, it will be circulated to all interested parties.
The Government wishes to give rural communities a
bigger opportunity to run their own affairs, and to set out a vision for their
town or village to guide its future development. Some communities have already
prepared Village Design Statements or carried out a Parish Appraisal. Many have
looked at local housing need and the allocation of land for industrial and
commercial development.
But a Parish Plan is more than a design statement or survey of housing needs.
It should cover everything of relevance to the people who live in the parish
including social, economic and environmental issues. It will need to address
the needs of the entire community and everyone should have the opportunity to
participate in its preparation.
In short the Village/Parish Plan:-
·
Identifies
the issues that are important to that community.
·
Highlights
the needs and the aspirations of the community.
·
Pinpoints
the opportunities that exist for improvement.
·
Every
household and business in the Village has been consulted giving them the chance
of being heard, not just those who speak up at local meetings.
·
Enables
future projects to be planned with the knowledge that the community will
support them.
·
Through
working towards a common goal the Plan brings groups and individuals in the
community together.
Introduction:
Aston-on-Trent
is an unspoilt village situated 7 miles south of Derby centre with over sixteen
hundred residents. It is noted in the
Doomsday Book in 1086 and has had several “owners” through the intervening
years.
It
is a thriving village with good amenities including a post office, shop, two
pubs, two churches, school, sports ground and a very active social calendar.
History:
The
original settlement, which probably came from the neighbouring village of
Weston, dates back to the Angles invasion
in the mid 6th
Century. The two settlements Acetum
(Aston), the East Farm, and of course, The West Farm at Weston, were formed.
Acetum
was recorded as a single settlement in the Doomsday book in 1086.
The
settlement lay on land higher than the 125 feet contour, above the marsh and
meadowland of the Trent flood plane.
Prior to the sixteenth century records indicate that Sir William Paget,
who rented Weston Hall, sold lands at Aston to the Roper family who in turn
sold to Robert Holden of Shardlow in 1649.
He also acquired land from the ancient “Hunt’s of Aston”. The squirearchy resided at Aston
for a further 250 years and the Holden’s became the “Holden’s of
Aston” until they in
turn sold to Col. William Dickson Winterbottom in 1898.
After
the war in 1924 the hall and land were sold to Nottingham County Council who
developed a hospital for mentally handicapped patients. The Health Authority have held the land until
recently when some land was sold off and the Bloor Estate was built on part of
that land. The old Hall outbuildings and
nurses homes have been either refurbished or knocked down and rebuilt. A small exclusive number of dwellings occupy
part of the grounds.
The
rest of the village has also seen changes since the Great War. A Memorial Hall was erected in 1926 and now
that too is subject to refurbishment. In
1931 the church Lych Gate was erected in memory of Rector Shuttleworth Holden.
During
World War II a decoy was set up on the northern edge of Aston to distract enemy
planes bound for Derby. An earthquake in
the early thirties rattled windows and Aston even suffered a “tropical style”
Tornado. Twenty-seven degrees of frost
was also recorded in the late thirties.
In
more recent times the village has prospered and expanded with additions of
Shirley Park, Manor Farm Road, Compton Avenue and more recently the Bloor
Estate. The A50 Trunk road was bitterly
opposed by the village and S.A.V.E. was established in 1988 to negotiate
environmental issues effecting Aston, particularly the new road and service
station.
Evidence
still exists of the farming history of Aston, even if the farms are now houses,
local Alabaster in the church reminds residents of the Gypsum mines now marked
by the brickyard plantation. A new,
third cemetery, has been opened on the north edge of the village and the
hospital is finally to close opening a new chapter in Aston Village History.
One thing is certain, Aston-on-Trent has a great tradition of community and this can clearly be seen by the committees and groups active in the village. Twice voted Derbyshire Large Village of the Year and a finalist in the National Competition. Aston’s pride and spirit lives on.
The whole project has been managed by a
Steering Committee consisting of: -
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Les Brooks – Chairman (April 04 – January 05)
Trish Cyster – Chairman - Parish Council |
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Kim Jones – Secretary
Chris Sellek – Treasurer - SAVE |
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Colin Stubbs – Project Manager (April 04 – January 05)
Paul Hudson – Project Manager |
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Steve Graham - Parish Council |
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Peter Jesper - Parish Council |
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Alison Keefe (Part Time) - Parish Council Fran Smith - Parish Council
Julie Ingman |
The Steering Committee has met every month
for the last year, usually on a Thursday, at 8.00pm, in the White Hart. However, during busy periods the Committee
would meet weekly.
Minutes of Meeting were also taken, written, published and kept by the Secretary (see Part 2) A constitution was drawn up (see Part 2) together with a Project Plan (see Part 2).
Generating the Plan.
The objective of the Village Plan is to
reflect the views and aspirations of the residents. This relied on a
significant programme of communication with everybody and this took several
forms as described below.
Village Drop in Day
Villagers
were invited to a Drop in Day in July 2004. The purpose of this was to make
them aware of the nature of a Village Plan and also for the Steering Committee
to formulate the structure of the plan around the many comments and suggestions
from those who attended. Most of the ideas were written on ‘post it’ notes and
subsequently sorted and grouped to indicate the manner in which the Plan should
be developed.
It was decided that the plan should be split into sections or groups (Recreation, Law & Order etc). See Part 2 for feedback on Drop in Day.
Pilot questionnaire.
Having
analysed the results of the drop in day, we felt that we needed to consult the
village further and decided to generate a questionnaire, using the themes that
had arisen at the drop in day as the basis.
We
decided that it would also be beneficial for us to pilot the questionnaire on a
small group of homes first. 77 people (across all age groups) volunteered to
take part in the pilot. This represented 5% of the total number of people
living in the village.
In
addition to completing a questionnaire the volunteers also commented on the
content, style and ease of completing the questionnaire and suggested
improvements. The feedback was instrumental in shaping the questionnaire that
eventually went to each and every household in the village. Generally our
volunteers were impressed and 50 (61%) went on to complete the revised
questionnaire.
From
the comments on the Pilot questionnaire, we revamped many aspects to produce the final version (see Part 2)
Improvements were made to how the questions were asked. Whilst we wanted to make it simple to fill in, being conscious of not simply making it a ‘tick box’ document, but that each section should have areas of free text to allow people to openly express their views on the issues raised. We were aware that this would create a more significant workload for analysis, but we had the opportunity to carry out this exercise with some funding behind it and we were determined that we should maximise the worth and impact.
Questionnaire – Co-ordination
Having printed the questionnaire,
we needed help to distribute and collect the questionnaires. At the upcoming Community Group Meeting, the
representatives of our various village groups were asked to seek volunteers
from their respective members.
The response was overwhelming, during January and
February 2005, 61 volunteers took to the streets, distributing 1,634
questionnaires to 842 homes in the village.
All the volunteers were given an area of the
village of between 10-12 homes.
In most cases this was the Street, Road, Lane,
Close et al on which the volunteer actually lived. We wanted to make the task as easy as
possible not only for our volunteers, but for the neighbours that they would be
distributing to and collecting from.
This was also quite a co-ordination feat for Kim
Jones and Julie Ingman who worked tirelessly to prepare the “Guidelines for
Volunteers” and individual “Distribution Lists”. What was envisioned as a couple of hours work
on a Sunday afternoon, actually took a whole weekend. (See Part 2 – Guidelines)
The support of our volunteers was invaluable. The result was incredible. In all 1,148 questionnaires were
completed. This is 70% of the original
distribution. We were extremely pleased
with this result.
|
Number of Volunteers |
61 |
|
Number of Homes |
842 |
|
Number of Questionnaires (1 per person) |
1,634 |
|
Number of Questionnaires Completed |
1,148 |
|
Percentage |
70% |
The purpose of having another open day is
to allow everybody to comment on the plan and raise issues before it is finally
published. This is a formal condition of the funding.
Following the overwhelming response to the
questionnaire came the hard part of inputting all the data and analysing it.
What a monster this turned out to be! Our timing plan went somewhat out of the
window.
Everybody chipped in, but many hours were
spent in this long process and the computers worked overtime.
Data entry also meant analysing all the
free text answers and categorising them into sections so that the results could
be shown in graph form. It was not all dour though as there were many witty
answers and curious ones from a requirement for indoor angling to liking Aston
“… because my house is there… )!
The date for the presentation of the draft
is June 26th 2005.
This will be prepared after the response to the draft and submitted to the village groups involved as well as the local government and support organisations
The Steering Committee was able to
communicate progress of the Village Plan to the village via various means:-
Village web-site
www.aston-on-trent.co.uk (Editor is Chris Sellek)
ACORN (Aston on Trent Quarterly Newsletter)
(See Part 2)
Village Voice (Local Newspaper)
Parish Council Meetings (Monthly update by
Parish Council members who also sit on the Steering Committee)
Communications Meeting (Quarterly update by
Secretary who represents the Steering Committee)
Well Dressing (Yearly village event at
which the Committee has a stall)
Returns
= 1,148
Returns
= 1,148 
The
Post Office, which also serves as the village Newsagent, is used by the same
amount of people, but more visits are made to the newsagent section. There are
less people using the Post Office for general shopping and about a quarter of
those who responded to the question have papers delivered
Returns
= 1,148 Answers = 1,105
There
is no general provisions/off license in the immediate area other than Aston
Village Shop.
Answers = 1113
The
Hairdressing & Beauty Salon is used by about 20% of those who responded to
the questionnaire, with visits about once a month.
Returns = 1,148 Answers = 1,108
Returns
= 1,148 Answers = 547
Returns
= 1,148 Answers = 813
Returns
= 1,148 Answers = 139
