As so much of my day is spent in meetings in Stafford I try to get out to different parts of the county for a full day at least once a month. I usually take the opportunity to meet local members and visit county council staff and local community projects. Last Thursday I had an interesting day in Newcastle.
I spent some time at Loggerheads Library and was really impressed by the enthusiasm of the staff there. Loggerheads is one of our smaller libraries, and is open for a total of 15 hours a week, but still manages to be a great community resource. An example of this is the Loggerheads One Stop Shop which is based at the library and run by volunteers. The group acts as a hub for the local community and among their work, they produce local news bulletins that go out to over 2,500 local households.
In the afternoon I visited Chesterton Vision which is a £4.8m MyPlace Lottery funded Youth Centre expected to be completed January 2012. I was particularly impressed by the wide involvement of the community in the project. There is a young people’s advisory group who have been involved in all the major decisions for the project. We are also planning to bury a time capsule in the foundations where all generations of the community are involved in the contents. I’m very keen that we get the community more involved in running the centre once it is open.
I finished off my day by visiting Chesterton One Stop Shop which is also community run. This shop is also run by local volunteers and is in one of the most deprived parts of the county.
My overall impression of the day was of many local people, working closely with the county council to deliver local services for communities.