February 2023

News from Stinsford Parish Council

It’s that time of year when people are keen to hide away in their homes avoiding the cold dark days of winter and, from a parish council position, when fewer planning permissions are submitted, fewer concerns raised about the footpaths network etc. and we can turn our attention to other things. One of the key issues we discussed at our last council meeting was implementing the Stinsford Parish Council Communications Strategy and how to raise issues that matter to you in order to develop solutions and inform action.

The council developed a Communications Strategy last summer and adopted it in the autumn with a view to improving communication channels with residents and businesses in the parish. Effective communication is not just about informing residents what we, as a council, are doing. We want to generate interest and encourage active engagement and involvement with the council.  The Stinsford Parish Council Communications Strategy can be found on the councils web-site (click on the Working Documents tab).    

The proposed communication channels in the Strategy are aspirational and subject to ongoing development. As you would expect the Strategy involves keeping the council's website up to date and we hope you are enjoying these regular articles in the Pilot, but we also want to establish Facebook and Twitter sites. Please look at the Strategy and if you can think of any other approaches that may be helpful please let us know.

The council is nothing if not informed by residents of the issues that they consider important in the parish. Sometimes these, such as problems with the highway network, can become long drawn out concerns as we struggle to establish necessary communications with external bodies but at least with the help of residents we can better understand the issues. While residents are encouraged to attend and bring issues to ‘public participation time’ at every council meeting, we also appreciate that not everyone has the time to attend meetings. We would like to draw attention to other work being taken forward by the council such as tackling climate change, and discuss this with residents.

We recognise that we need to use local media and particularly the Dorset Echo more and continue utilising the Pilot. We have just launched ‘Stinsford Parish Council’ Facebook site. Please join. Hopefully this will be followed soon by a Twitter account.

To get the conversation started and keep it going will require will require a lot of work by the very small number of parish councillors above their other council duties. As with most of the councils work we would be delighted with any offers of assistance. Help would be especially welcome to assist with Facebook and Twitter.

Sarah Pattison, Chair, Stinsford Parish Council