Research
Before embarking on this project, we attended a parish planning workshop to get a better understanding of what was involved.
Twyford's Parish Plan was launched at the Scout Donkey Derby on 1st June 2008. Residents used post-it notes to comment on their likes and dislikes of living in Twyford. This highlighted common areas of concern but also a strong sense of community.
Forming a Parish Plan requires a huge amount of work. The first part of the parish plan process is to collect and document a whole range of statistics to provide a factual account of Twyford as it stands at that point in time. In other words it records the starting point. Not only does this allow for a thorough understanding of what makes up Twyford prior to starting the plan process, it will also provide a useful reference point when looking back in ten years time to measure any changes.
We have been using the Community Council for Berkshire's 'Market Town Worksheets' as a tool to help us through the parish plan process. The term used in these worksheets for this factual account of Twyford is a 'Snapshot'.
Consultation
Alongside the questionnaires that were sent out to every household in the parish, and a separate Young Persons Questionnaire (completed by pupils at The Piggott School), we also set up focus group meetings with different sections of the community to ensure we had good representation from across Twyford. The minutes of these meetings can be downloaded below: