Introduction

In 2003 Bollington developed a Parish Plan under the Government's scheme for returning the development of communities to the people who live in them. This was a once in a generation opportunity to tell the planners and politicians what we, the people of Bollington, wanted the town to become in the next couple of decades.

The Parish Plan was completed in December 2004; it was the first by any community in the Macclesfield borough. In early 2005 the plan was adopted by Bollington Town Council, Macclesfield Borough Council and Cheshire County Council. In the intervening three years work has progressed under the capable guidance of Michael Burdekin to implement as many as possible of the recommendations made by the plan.

We expect to update the plan every three to four years as necessary. We have now embarked on the first review and update which we hope to complete by mid 2008. It has also been decided to call the new plan the Town Plan. Bollington is a town and not a village, and the word parish sometimes causes confusion in that people expect it to refer to the church. Our town plan scopes itself to Bollington the town.

Information on the first plan is available on another page.

Who are 'we'?

I keep saying 'we'; who are 'we'? We are a committee of individuals, all volunteers, who responded to the call to come and support the drafting of a Parish Plan. The call went out in 2003 and about twenty townsfolk attended an introductory meeting. It is important to appreciate that this group were, and continue to be, independent of the town council. However, this did/does not preclude town councillors from being members of the group and, in fact, several councillors have contributed significantly to the exercise. The leader of the Parish Plan group is always someone other than a town councillor. For the first four years the leader has been Professor Michael Burdekin. The review during autumn 2007 was chaired by Cllr Sandra Edwards in her role as councillor responsible on behalf of the Town Council for seeing that the Parish Plan was implemented.

Join the Town Plan group and have your say on the future development of Bollington. Email for details.

The new Town Plan group

The review meetings held during the autumn went through the previous plan and considered the progress made in implementation of the recommendations. The review group also decided that the whole plan should be reviewed and updated to establish a new Town Plan with a new set of recommendations. It is expected that the new plan will cover some of the same ground as previously but also pay more attention to aspects that were not fully considered in the first plan.

The surviving members of the previous group were joined at a meeting on 26 November 2007 by a number of invited individuals who the group considered should be involved with the new plan.

It is important to emphasise that membership of the Town Plan group is open to everyone - anyone can join the group at any time, and indeed will be very welcome indeed. If you have an interest in the future development of any aspect of Bollington this is your big opportunity to get involved and influence the new plan. Please call the Town Clerk on 01625-572985 and ask him to tell you more, or email him.

Next meeting

The group will next meet on Monday 12th May 2008, 7.30pm at the Town Hall. Everyone welcome!

Meeting, 7th April 2008

[Notes to come]

Meeting, 21st February 2008

This well attended meeting reviewed the status of all recommendations from the previous Parish Plan. Those that were uncompleted were considered and retained or rejected for inclusion in the new Town Plan.

There was discussion regarding the retail activity in the town, why shops close, how to attract new shops, what kind of shops are likely to succeed, etc. There appear to be two significant problems, lack of parking and high rents (which lead in turn to high rates).

Meeting, 7th January 2008

John Knight, MBC Corporate Manager Planning and Development, came and talked to our group about economic and planning issues. He was accommpanied by Town Centre Manager, Diane Smith. There was a broad discussion when the town's need for the planners and other MBC officers to take more notice of local opinion and MBC's difficulty in satisfying the specific requirements of all the towns and villages in the borough.