Here is the latest update concerning the ‘Lancing: Now and the into the Future’ participation process that a lot of community minded people, district and parish councillors so generously gave their time to last year.
The Council update
The officers from Parish and District have refined the set of community aspirations that were generated during the Big Conversation event on December 8th.
At the event, the people worked together in groups to generate eight aspirations informed by the community stories that emerged from the community conversations and survey responses.
During the evening, some ‘aspirations’ were more formed than others. Officers met last week (8th-13 January) to identify overlaps and refine from eight to five.
How did we arrive at these aspirations?
These aspirations are the product of ‘Lancing: Now and into the Future’, a participation process which involved more than 300 local people and ran from October to December 2022.
As part of this process we took data on Lancing’s people, economy and environment into community conversations with different groups including young people, parents and carers, volunteers, older residents, the business community, health and community professionals, local politicians and council officers. We also shared the data through a public survey in digital and paper formats.
We invited all participants to share their experiences of Lancing now and what they thought was important for the future.
On 8th December 2022, we held a ‘big conversation’ event which was attended by 47 local people from the different community conversations and survey participants. We played back our findings from the conversations and survey responses in the form of eight community stories and asked participants to work together to write community aspirations informed by the stories.
At the event, participants generated eight aspirations. Some were more formed than others.
In early January 2023 a team of council officers from Lancing Parish Council and Adur District Council with support from Ideas Alliance identified the overlaps in aspirations and refined the eight aspirations down to five.
We want to acknowledge that the participation process did highlight how local people are very aware of the relationship between health outcomes and other factors. Including access to community, green spaces and affordable, healthy lifestyles.
For this reason, we have not included a standalone health-related aspiration but we hope you will see how health is embedded across all five aspirations.
The Ask
We invited all participants to share their experiences of Lancing now and what they thought was important for the future.
The council understands how important community validation is for these aspirations to have meaning and weight with the people of Lancing.
To these ends, the council team needs your comments and feedback by Monday 30th January.
You can email thoughts, comments and feedback to: LancingFuture@adur-worthing.gov.uk
Hard copies and a box for paper feedback will also be available at the Parish Hall reception and at Lancing Library.
The council team will take on board your feedback with reference to the research outputs from the ‘Lancing: Now and into the future’ process, and will finalise the aspirations for wider public circulation from February.
It is hoped that in their final form, Lancing’s aspirations will belong to the people of Lancing. The aspirations are ‘live’ and the research that underpins them can be used by local community groups and associations to inform their work.
The Hope
It is hoped that in their final form, Lancing’s aspirations will belong to the people of Lancing. The aspirations are ‘live’ and the research that underpins them can be used by local community groups and associations to inform their work.
The councils (Lancing Parish, Adur District and West Sussex) will be using them to inform how we work with Lancing’s communities and what projects will be brought forward.
Many thanks in advance for your ongoing participation, we look forward to your feedback.
16 January 2023
Latest Update
The feedback we have had has been positive and has highlighted the appetite that local people have to see action on the back of the participation process last year.
So what next?
The officer team from Adur, Parish and West Sussex has been working on the delivery programme to follow last year’s participation process.
In early March, we will be convening action groups with a focus on gathering more insight to inform a strong Levelling Up Bid for Lancing (mid-summer deadline).
If you did not self-nominate to join an action group on 8th December but would like to join one please do get in touch by emailing me directly asap.
The areas of interest most relevant to the Levelling Up agenda include Community / Business Hub and Pedestrianisation.
Looking forward to working on the next stage together. And if you have any questions please do get in touch.
Ruth Pineda
Communities Participation Lead, Wellbeing
Adur & Worthing Councils
Portland House, 44 Richmond Road, Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 1HS
8 February 2023
