B. Key Issues

13. This is a summary of key issues arising from the Parish Plan questionnaire surveys. A ‘key issue’ is taken as something which a substantial majority of people supported or rejected strongly. The questionnaire was long and probing so it is no surprise that it has thrown up a lot of issues. To make it easier to see where the evidence comes from, we provide cross-references to the question numbers used in the questionnaire (eg B.1 for the adult questionnaire, Y.1 for the youth questionnaire).

14. All percentages quoted for the adults are calculated against the base of 1190 – even though not everyone answered all the questions and the numbers answering (shown as “N=…”) do not always cross-tally. We use the total answering – 1190 - because the strength of feeling about an issue can be deduced from the number endorsing a particular point of view or idea and the absolute numbers of people replying to each question. Where a large number of people chose to answer a question and a large number agreed or disagreed with a particular statement, then that issue has been taken to be particularly important. That said, replies to the open-ended questions throw up some suggestions or issues which we never anticipated when we formulated the questionnaire! Some of these are highlighted in this summary as deserving of attention even though the numbers involved are low. This is a matter of judgement. It is for the Action Groups, which follow up these recommendations, to look at the full details for themselves and decide what, if anything, should be done.

15. The issues are discussed under four, somewhat overlapping, headings: heritage, infrastructure, community, and local government. We have brought together replies from the young people in a fifth section.

For information, the data from the questionnaires has been converted to Word files and is available to those requiring it (eg the Service Providers and Action Groups). However, since it adds up to about 70 pages of dense text, we are not going to run off copies if we can avoid it. The “Key Issues” section of this Report is a condensation of the data files and the “Action Plans” are derived from the Key Issues. Hence, all items in the Action Plans can be traced back to the data files.