Kirdford Community Led Plan

Kirdford is a tranquil and isolated rural parish in West Sussex, lacking the facilities to ensure their community remains sustainable in the long term. When the local school closed 8 years ago the community organisation lost momentum, but over the last couple of years a revived community spirit and self-belief has developed. The Community recently completed their first project, a new community owned shop with café and meeting room facilities, which has won the “Best Corner Shop” award in a national annual celebration of Britain’s best small shops. 

In the face of rising land values and the extension of the South Downs National Park bordering their parish the community recognised the need for a plan to achieve a sustainable future for the village and surrounds.They decided to develop a Community Led Plan (CLP), which could address pertinent issues, such as identifying areas that any future development could take place in, as well as thinking more structurally about services provision, such as public transport, shops, schools, etc.

The group approached The Glass-House for support with getting their CLP started through our Project Support programme. Together we planned a programme of events that included a walk-about and two workshops, to be delivered with our Enabler, Liz Kessler. The walk-about was designed to enable residents to look at their village with fresh eyes and to build consensus around what is important for the village to retain, build on, and improve, and to use this insight to think about the future shape of the village. The workshops shared best practice and created an opportunity for residents to come together and share their concerns and hopes for Kirdford, whilst building a bank of information that informs and develops their future actions as a village. 

The group had done a lot of work prior to our support. They distributed leaflets to all homes, held a public meeting, and established a database of interested residents that they use to send regular updates on their work. We are establishing a volunteer database, growing weekly, and will have volunteer co-ordinator in place to manage their involvement as appropriate. 

Residents were keen to take part in the events held by The Glass-House, and several who had indicated that they would only take part in the first half of the walk-about decided to stay and contributed their valuable knowledge throughout the day. The group was very keen for the development of their CLP to be an open and inclusive process and residents worked alongside stakeholders at the workshops, including officers from Chichester District Council and members of the Parish Council. 

The group was working on developing a website to communicate information to residents, making documents available to residents who can then advise on edits, corrections and further contributions as the plan is developed.

The group felt that the primary benefit The Glass-House contributed was providing access to designers with “the ability to listen and understand the influence of the locality on the process”. They expressed that people are generally afraid of the development process and have little grasp of managing the planning process and that The Glass-House empowered them by sharing knowledge in a structured, understanding, and encouraging way. 

The workshops proved a confidence builder in enabling the steering group to understand the design process and to undertake their leadership role more effectively, as well as feel confident that they can draw together all the information into a CLP. The visual presentations and material used in the workshops related to local characteristics, which made the information accessible and interesting to the participants.

“We believe that we’ve been fortunate to have Glasshouse involved and are grateful for their support. We expect the demand on them will grow from rural communities in the future especially as we are recommending them regularly to other communities. We hope District Councils will support them in the future as their expertise and experience in this area is so good, certainly our district officers who attended some of the events were most impressed. Glass-House input was so beneficial, mainly because of their emphasis on design.”

"Making it all an enjoyable exercise when many people were anxious."

“I was totally opposed to this exercise but now can see the benefit.”

“It’s such a help to have them involved, I’d never really understood what was involved and they made it seem so simple.”

“Simply, that the Glass-House representatives were wonderful, their nature and approach perfect for residents to relate to.”

Jan 2011

“Following the Glass-House sponsored events we completed our first draft of a Village Design Statement (VDS), currently being reviewed by the Parish, District Council and community. We hope the District Planning department will adopt the VDS in Jan/Feb 2011. We are now drafting ‘A framework for the future’ which will set out potential development site allocations identified to provide for future housing, offices/starter units, arts & crafts centre, community facilities, etc. The final part of the initial work will be preparing an action plan and finalising the draft of the CLP document, however, some adaptation may be required following the Localism Bill publication as we hope to be one of the first communities to have a Neighbourhood Plan, our District Council are looking to use our document as a benchmark for other Parishes.”

July 2011

"The VDS is imminently going to District Cabinet, and there is a recommendation for it to be adopted. In fact the District Council is looking to use Kirdford CLP as an exemplar document for future CLPs in the District. The action plan has been prepared and they are working with local parish clerk to pass it through the Parish Council within the next 2 months. 

The group has developed links with three neighbouring parishes and has formed a cluster. The cluster is aiming to collaborate on a strategic level about issues such as transport and housing, and at least one of the other parishes is looking to develop their own parish plan.

Copy from the CLP was used for a submission to a council planning consultation on removal of a workshop of local heritage value; permission was refused the applicant and the community is now exploring ways of developing a crafts workshop to create local jobs in and around the site."

September 2011

"The Village Design Statement has been adopted by Chichester District Council and commended in Cabinet. The Cluster is also addressing the bus subsidy issue successfully, and we feel that clustering is essential to collaborating on a strategic level about issues such as transport and housing."

Neighbourhoods

Village

Rural

Community Led Plan

Urban Design

Inception meeting

Walk-about day

Mapping and analysing

Developing themes

The group's deep-seated commitment to involving residents and stakeholders ensured that the Project Support built on existing relations and encouraged the involvement of new people and organisations. The workshops helped residents to understand the issues faced by the village and provided opportunities for taking everyone’s opinion into account in the development and compilation of the Community Led Plan.

The group expressed that the quality of output from residents was improved and that the course of events developed and strengthened the communal vision for the village, expressing it through words and visual material that the group did not feel confident to produce without support.

Liz Kessler