This page is currently being updated. If you have any further queries please contact webmaster@havant.gov.uk
Reaching the community - Schools
Consulting with the Residents, Workers and Shoppers of
tomorrow
In preparing the Havant Local Development
Framework, the Borough Council is seeking to consolidate the
communities and create the places that people will want to live in
and visit today and tomorrow.
In its efforts to ensure that plans for the
area’s future can be discussed by as wider cross-section of the
public as possible, the Planning Policy Team has also been
canvassing views from a very important user-group: young people. By
the time many of the ideas and developments for the borough are
brought to fruition today’s schoolchildren will have become the
residents, workers and shoppers of tomorrow.
Staunton Community Sports College
pupils map out the future of their borough
The focus for this initiative took place In
April 2008, when some of the borough’s schools sent a delegation to
the civic offices to tell the Council what ideas they had in
relation to three distinct issues:
1.Open Spaces in our Towns
The majority of ‘open spaces’ are playing
fields. They can also be parks and scrubland. Most are clearly of
benefit to communities, but there may be more of them around the
borough than we need. Some of them, or some parts of them, could
provide land for the new housing that will be required in the
future. When new houses are built, the Council can obtain funding
from builders to upgrade the borough’s ‘open spaces’ by providing
(for example)
- New or improved youth facilities
- Better quality recreation (such as new trees
and landscaping)
2.Getting around the Borough
One of society’s big challenges for a 21st
century characterised by man-made climate warming is to use the
conventional motor car less, and collectively seek to adopt
Earth-friendlier (‘sustainable’) ways of moving between places
(e.g. reliable and accessible public transport, cycling and
walking). Young people were asked to describe typical travel
patterns undertaken by them and their families (school, parental
work, free-time etc). We then asked them how they imagined that
these travel patterns could be made more sustainable.
3.Improving a Place near You
There are areas of the borough that need to be
improved (‘regenerated’). These places are often parts of our town
centres and shopping areas. The 21st century is likely to bring a
different expectation of the types of things we want to do in these
areas. Increasingly these areas need to be seen as places that
provide a variety of shopping, leisure and recreation activities.
The young people provided the Council with input on
- Linking North Street and High Street, central
Emsworth
- Leigh Park Centre
- Market Parade, Havant
|
|
|
|
| |
Delegations at the April 2008 Workshop
Glenwood School, Emsworth
(http://www.glenwood.hants.sch.uk/)
Havant Borough Youth Council
(http://www.havant.gov.uk/havant-9)
Staunton Community Sports College,
Havant (http://www.scsc.hants.sch.uk/)
Warblington School, Havant
(http://www.warblington.hants.sch.uk/)
Other Participating School:
Bidbury Mead School
The Council is
very pleased to be assisting groups of children by bringing an
‘extra dimension’ to their school project work on living in Havant.
The children gave the Council some particularly useful ideas on how
Leigh Park Centre might be improved in the future. The Council
also is using the children’s artwork on the cover of some
of its planning publications.
|
|
| |
|
|
What the Young People Said
Open Spaces
Getting
Around
Improving… Linkages between
the ‘two parts’ of Emsworth
Improving… Leigh Park
Centre
Improving... Market
Parade
What Next?
The involvement of young people is very
important in planning for the Borough’s future and ought to be seen
as an ongoing process, which can be further refined to have broader
community reach. It would be a very positive outcome for young
people if something genuinely tangible could come from their
involvement. Ways of building on the success of this event could
include the following:
- A Workshop to decide the best means of
maintaining momentum. This kind of forum should embrace
representation, at all levels, from both Young People and the
Council
- It is very evident that input from Young
People could be very useful to the successful regeneration of Leigh
Park Centre: Click here to view the Leigh Park Centre Urban
Design Framework
- The Council has also committed through its
Local Development Framework (
LDF
) to the importance of
woodland. The Borough’s current and future image as a quality place
to live and invest in could be aided in this way: click here to
view ‘Increasing and Improving Woodland’ in the LDF Site Allocations plan
(Issues and Options). This idea will benefit from active
involvement of the young in order for successful planting and
subsequent management measures to be put in place