The Appleford Community Project

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What is it?

The ACP is a sub group or sub committee of the Parish Council. The PC itself is too small and too busy to pull off large projects like the new playground and the (proposed) new village hall, so village volunteers (6 ideally) make up the bulk of the team or working party. Though there are Councillors on the ACP committee (ideally 2), the PC proper is the sole executive body ie. The ACP cannot make decisions or payments without Parish Council approval, and the ACP must keep minutes and report to the PC at regular intervals.

What is its purpose?

0. To investigate the need and most importantly the desire in the village for certain identified improvements to the village infrastructure and to formulate best value ways of achieving them.
0. To approach the situation holistically and to suggest improvements which are achievable, given that the project will be delivered by volunteers.

How did the ACP get to where it is now?

Three years ago a group of Appleford parents approached the then Parish Council and the Appleford Parish Trust Charity for permission and funds to replace the village playground equipment. It was a "grass roots" community action group and they called their aims "The Appleford Community Project".

There was unfortunately a certain amount of opposition and politicking which delayed and eroded the project to the point where it looked as if nothing at all was going to be achieved. So the views of Appleford residents were sought with a questionnaire about all the village facilities, playground, hall and recreation field.

The questionnaire revealed a latent dissatisfaction among villagers and a clear desire to see the village leisure facilities improved. An official group, taking its name from the earlier project, was formed by the Appleford Parish Council, with a mixed membership of residents and Parish Councillors.

The Parish Council asked the new Appleford Community Project group, now known as the ACP, to investigate how a new village hall would function within the village, but as the playground equipment was in urgent need of replacement and the village was in overwhelming agreement that it should be done quickly, the playground became Stage 1 of the Project and Stage 2 would be a proposed new hall.

As above mentioned, Stage 1 is now complete (though another piece of equipment may be added at some future date). Stage 2 began in 2005 with an entry into WREN's Village Hall Challenge Competition.

WREN stands for Waste Recycling Environmental, which is the body set up to administer the distribution of money gained by the Waste Recycling Group in the form of Landfill Tax credits from the government. Waste Recycling Group is the company that runs the landfill site at Sutton Courtenay among others. The money must be used to benefit the communities and the environment around landfill sites.

The Appleford Community Project and the Parish Council entered an advanced environmental design by village resident Mary Hancock, who is Chair of Sustainable Architecture at Oxford Brookes University.

Appleford was awarded £50,000 as one of eight runners up in this competition, and the design was highly commended for its sustainability and low impact on the environment.

However, Stage 1 having been so time-consuming and problematic, the ACP was down to two members going through to Stage 2, and the very existence of the ACP group looked in jeopardy. Then the Parish Council was advised that the £50,000 prize money could not be used for anything else BUT the sustainable building design which had been entered in the competition.

Furthermore, the village would forfeit the £50,000 prize money if it did not begin building the new hall within a year. If the village wanted to do a refurbishment instead, the ACP was advised by the WREN Southern Area co-ordinator, it would have to return the prize and apply to WREN again under a different scheme, but he said that WREN would not look favourably on this.

The PC could clearly see that a new build would be impossible to get under way by the end of the year, so it was decided, with considerable regret among the majority of the councillors, that the Parish Council would try to persuade WREN to allow the village to spend the money on a refurbishment of the old hall. The volunteers to carry out such a project were scarce, however, and morale in the remains of the ACP was not high.

Some village residents were pleased with the refurb decision, but a significant number of others protested that it would be a significant waste of money to do up the old hall and that the PC should not give up, but try once more to get a team together to deliver the new hall that 70% of the village, a year previously, had indicated it would like to see built, or at least investigated as to its feasibility.

On June 5th 2005, at a general village meeting to discuss the options open to the parish Council once and for all, of 25 villagers present, 8 voted to "refurb the current hall only" and 8 voted to "build a new hall only". Gordon Manning then suggested a compromise - a modest refurb/maintenance operation for the current hall to keep it going while a new building was 'investigated'.

This motion was well received and it was passed with 16 votes. Furthermore, 9 volunteers came forward at the meeting to form the new ACP, to carry out a feasibility study, prepare a plan and apply properly to the Village Trust for the release of Trust Capital.

Now, more than a year later, the ACP is still waiting to hear whether the village will let the project go ahead by allowing the £100,000 of Village Trust capital to go towards the cost of building a new hall. The project is dependent on the village ratifying the Trust decision and the final verdict will be delivered by the village on October 11th 2006.

As with the playground, the delays faced in getting Stage 2 this far have exacted a toll - on the project's funding prospects and on the ACP team, we have lost good members who felt they could not commit any more of their time to fighting for it. WREN has been extraordinary in it's patience and generosity in that it is allowing us more time to get the project approved and under way. But it MUST begin by April 2007, they say, or they will take back their funding. After that, I suspect, Appleford will be lucky to get anything much from WREN for a long time.

So please turn out to vote on Wednesday 11th. A good turn out will really make the decision final, whichever way it goes.

Cllr Susan Forward

Chair of the Appleford Community Project