DNA Healthcheck Background 1.1 The Market Towns Initiative was a national programme initiated by the Countryside Agency between 2001 and 2004, now taken over by regional authorities in England. The Programme focused on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of Market Towns and their surrounding hinterland. Central to the programme is the healthcheck process. The term healthcheck coined by the Agency is a useful way to describe and define how people feel about their community, and how it might be improved. The process involves: Gathering the facts relating to the community Producing a snapshot of the community Public consultation & data collection Creating a vision Prioritising issues & identifying actions Creating the draft action plan Finalising the plan and its launch Implementation Keeping the community aware 1.2 Healthchecks are community led programmes to review, prioritise and hopefully implement the needs of communities in and around market towns. They are a government sponsored initiative, which in Surrey is led by Surrey Community Action. They provide assistance to those leading local projects as a required condition for some external funding, notably from the South-East England Development Agency (SEEDA), which currently operates a grant scheme for the regeneration of market towns in the South East. The Healthcheck is recognised as a requirement to qualify for funding under the SEEDA Small Towns Regeneration funding programme. This is a 7 year programme operated by SEEDA with funding allocated to Surrey for Healthcheck towns over this period. The healthchecks work hard to remain sufficiently autonomous and apolitical, so that people, who might not normally communicate in local government consultations, such as youth (18-24yr olds) and young families, will feel able to join in and express their opinions in this locally driven initiative. 1.3 The output of the process will be an evidence-based analysis of the key aspects of Dorking and the relationship with its hinterland, leading to an action plan for the towns revitalisation. This will build a strengthened and shared vision of how the town can develop in the medium term to the benefit of all its community stakeholders. Nationally over 300 healthchecks have been completed. In the South East 39 have been completed. In Surrey four towns have completed healthchecks, Haslemere, Cranleigh and Farnham, all in Waverley, and Leatherhead who launched their final report in January 2006. Recently councillors in both Caterham and Godalming decided to encourage, and financially support, healthchecks in their respective towns. 1.4 This process has just begun in Dorking, where a steering committee has been formed and initial links made with local organisations and stakeholders. There is an achievable project plan in place and the appropriate resources have been identified to deliver it. 1.5 The review process summarised above will be undertaken following the guidelines produced by the Countryside Agency. This is a well tried and tested process developed and refined from the experience of more than 300 healthchecks undertaken to date. The healthcheck is undertaken from the four broad perspectives of economy, environment, transport and social and community. Individual workgroups are formed to focus on each area. Detailed standardised data capture worksheets data sheets originally produced by the Countryside Agency, and part of the Market Towns Healthcheck Toolkit, are utilised to capture all relevant data. This may originate from existing published sources, surveys or other local consultation exercises. Data capture in a consistent format will allow structured and methodologically sound analysis to provide a firm factual baseline against which to identify and evaluate potential improvement projects. The work is managed and undertaken by volunteers supported by one part-time paid project co-ordinator. |