Foreword

Welcome to our first 'Community Strategy' for Shrewsbury and Atcham. I assure you that this is not just another pile of print designed to impress and gather dust!

The Community Strategy is an important collection of ideas and actions that relate to key issues and services which affect all our lives. It looks at the coming year but also well beyond that to the rest of the decade.

The strategy is divided into four themes - economy, environment, community and lifelong learning. This makes the information manageable but at the same time creates some artificial separations. We have tried to cover these by looking at some of the 'crosscutting issues' - transport needs seem to crop up everywhere - and also by referring people from one part of the strategy to another where there are obvious links.

The last twelve months have been spent gathering views and sorting them into a format that can be read and understood. Ideas and proposals have come from a much wider range of people than have ever been drawn on before. Consultation and participation have been keynotes for the production of the Strategy but both need to be even more extensive and inclusive in the future.

What you have in front of you is essentially a 'work in progress'. There is a Community Strategy Group and four theme sub-groups. The Community Strategy Group's membership will shortly include more people whose lives are affected by services as opposed to those people responsible for providing them. This Group will check that the 'actions' listed are happening and are having the desired effect. The Group will also be responsible for ensuring that more people are involved in bringing together new ideas and initiatives for future versions of the strategy. A great deal of thought has gone into finding approaches to participation that are appropriate both to the subject and the audience. There has also been an important acknowledgement that finding out what people think can take time and money.

In time the Shrewsbury and Atcham Community Strategy will reflect a number of local aspirations as people come together to produce parish or urban locality plans. From another perspective our Community Strategy will contribute to a Shropshire wide 'Integrated Strategy' which in turn will influence regional and national policy and spending.

We are at the very interesting stage of bringing ideas, plans and people together often for the first time. A complete consensus on 'ways forward' would be pleasant but not, on the face of it, very stimulating. There are many debates to come but we do now have a systematic process for making sure that what emerges are not just words. It is possible to have agencies working together to reflect a 'community' agenda rather than their own. It will also be possible, if we get it right, to attract outside resources and to use our own resources better to achieve what communities identify as real solutions to real needs.

So turn the page and share the vision!

Peter Dunhill
Chairman Community Strategy Group