In general my impression of the meeting was that it was really just a data gathering exercise - no decisions were made, just views collected, and as such it needed to have a good proportion and cross section of the population represented to be of any value.
My criticism, which I consider to be fairly minor, would be on representation - same old faces - many that don't actually live in the town anyway. As Jeanette said no young people - the very future of our community were not represented. I would recon that the youngest person there was over 35 and of the 80 invited I’d say about 50 attended. On the up side Yellow Book did a good job in a laid back and uncomplicated manner of collection info. There was no tub thumping or bitching and a refreshing moment when a council official pointed out that some of the problems identified were the councils fault, which they needed to address.
The test will be when the Yellow Book report back - their remit is to carry out a review of the economic and social condition of the area and to develop a realistic regeneration strategy which will include an action plan and recommendations on the town centre, waterfront, housing stock and underused land by June.
The four groups, which Jeanette mentioned, discussed –
A. Reasons why young people leave and do not come back
B. Tourism not attracting visitors
C. The image and reputation of the town
D. The obstacles for investment in the town
I think the feedback from the groups to Yellow Book was fairly comprehensive, I’ve got copious notes on what that feedback was which I can post if anyone wants, but I think what would be useful to yellow book would be the poll questions which I will stick up in a separate thread.