Getting involved

One of the main aims of the Thatcham Vision project, and others like it (see this page for details of similar projects elsewhere in West Berkshire), is to involve people in improving where they live.

There are lots of ways in which people can play a more active part in our community. Our recently published action plan includes over 100 actions and pojects and many of them can be taken forward by people from Thatcham. Some proposed projects have already been implemented and action teams have been set up for others.

We will also be setting up new topic teams to look at aspects of Thatcham which are not covered in the current action plan. These include topics like secondary education and health and wellbing.

In addition to proposing new areas for action, the action plan contains specific proposals for ways in which the community can build on and strengthen existing initiatives - like Neigbourhood Watch and Neigbhourhood Action Groups.

Incidentally, the Neigbourhood Watch site linked to above includes the interesting statistic that 3 million Britains can't tell the difference between their neigbours and an intruder: in other words, they don't recognise their neigbours. Do you?

Strong and prosperous communities

In October the Government published a White Paper which describes its ideas for involving people more in how their communities are run. You can download a summary of the White paper - or the whole thing if you want - from this webpage.

To quote from that page:

'The white paper is on the side of individuals and families who want to make a difference, both to their own lives and to the communities in which they live.

Our vision is of revitalised local authorities, working with their partners, to reshape public services around the citizens and communities that use them.

This means changing the way we work to give citizens and communities a bigger say; to enable local partners to respond more flexibly to local needs; to reduce the amount of top-down control from central government - and to enable citizens and communities to play their part.'

All sounds like good stuff although the devil will, of course, be in the detail. A major theme in our emerging action plan is to do with involving people in 'reshaping public services' and enabing 'citizens and communities to play their part'. See the next post for a thought about that.

For those who haven't seen 'An Inconvenient Truth' ...

... this is worth a look. 

Also, if you have't seen the film the brand new Thatcham Film Club has been asked if it can arrange a showing in the town once its new £10,000 projection system, courtesy of Awards for All, has been installed.
 

Secretary of State Blog

I may have mentioned this before, but David Miliband's blog is well worth a look.  There's a heated debate about global warming starting up following a post of his titled 'Good Science or Flat Earth'.