New plan will set out vision for North Tawton

North Tawton Town Council recently approved a new business plan, with the aim of setting out the council's vision for the parish, its purpose, values, objectives and key priorities. 

The plan was produced over a series of meetings where councillors considered all of the council’s objectives under a number of headings. Many of these objectives are being undertaken on an ongoing basis anyway, but the remainder were prioritised by members of the council, and the highest priority matters formed the basis of the plan.

Cllr Jean Trewhitt, chair of the council, said: ‘We want to give our residents a clearer understanding of what the town council does and what it is trying to achieve. The business plan is intended to be a live document under ongoing review and will help us monitor our progress against the priorities within the plan. Having an agreed plan enables the council to operate in a consistent and co-ordinated way — one of our major aims is to be proactive rather than reactive in our decision-making.’

Cllr Steve Whiteley, chair of the North Tawton Town Council finance committee, said: ‘The business plan will be used to inform our budget process, and to help us plan activities for the coming financial year and beyond.  The fact that the plan is a ‘live document’ means we can consider the unexpected — already since the publication of our plan we have found that we have to spend a considerable sum of money on unexpected emergency repairs. Our approach means that we can adjust our planned expenditure accordingly.’

It had always been intended that robust public consultation would take place as residents are likely to have many ideas as to what the Council’s priorities should be.  The restrictions imposed by the Covid pandemic have made this very difficult, but the council will certainly attempt to hold at least one public consultation session during 2022.

In addition to responding to feedback from public meetings, we intend to regularly consult through our website, social media, noticeboard, at our regular meetings, and in our page within the local newsletter (The Roundabout). 

The business plan can be viewed on our website, northtawtontowncouncil.gov.uk, a link is on the home page.