Ilminster Experience has gone from strength to strength, and undaunted by the inclement weather, the town benefitted from a good turnout this year, testament to the small but committed team that work hard all year round to ensure its success.
My own involvement was in helping to organise the community lunch on the Rec., run by Rotary for the second year running. Once again, it was the assistance of a willing band of volunteers in pulling together, along with the generosity of local businesses who donated food, that really helped to make it a memorable event, with the added bonus of money raised for two local causes, Ilminster Christmas Lights and the Memory Café.
This year it was good to see Somerset County Council engaging with the local community when they attended IMEx for first time to run their ‘Listening Learning Changing’ roadshow. The purpose of the exercise was to obtain public opinion into how SCC can best allocate the limited available funds. People were given seven options to choose from, roughly in line with the seven cabinet posts at SCC; help vulnerable and elderly people; attract jobs and apprentices; safer children and better care; better schools producing better results; invest in the economy and infrastructure; protecting our environment; keep council tax low; healthy residents and reduce inequalities.
During the morning session 216 people took part in the exercise, which involved prioritising the top three areas they would most like to see investment in, by the use of gold, silver and bronze tokens.
As expected, given the demographic make-up of the town, helping vulnerable and elderly people came out top, with an overall score of 262, significantly higher than the next most important, attracting jobs and apprentices to Somerset, which gained a score of 205.
Surprisingly, given the amount of time effort and money spent on it, health and reducing inequalities came bottom of the pile, with a score of just 67. Clearly of no great importance to Ilminster residents.
Whilst such exercises are interesting and useful in increasing public awareness of the challenges involved when making budgetary decisions, what has become apparent to me though, is that whilst we all have preferences, largely dependent upon our own lifestyles and social values, everything is inextricably linked.
If we choose not to invest in the economy and the infrastructure we will not be able to attract the inward investment needed that will increase local job prospects. Likewise, if we do not improve school performance then our youngsters will not gain the qualifications necessary to be able to take advantage of those jobs.
High on the list was keeping our children safe and the provision of better care for them, which can have an impact on the level of council tax we pay. A failure to protect children can have enormous implications across the board. In addition to this, protecting our environment did not score well. If we do not take care of our environment the long term impact on many areas of our lives can be devastating; here we just need to think of the floods experienced in recent years.
What this exercise has demonstrated above all else is that some tough decisions need to be made and that whatever criticism is justifiably aimed at Somerset County Council on occasion, they are clearly making the effort to ensure that the public have some understanding of the issues involved and are given the opportunity to have some input.
No comments:
Post a Comment