Aston Cantlow Parish – The Big Society at Work

The Chairman of Stratford-on-Avon District Council, Councillor Sir William Lawrence will perform his last formal engagement at 7pm on Tuesday 17 May suitably in his own ward of Aston Cantlow to launch the new Community Website.

The new Community Website www.astoncantlow.com has been developed in record time to provide residents and visitors alike with all the information they could possibly need, where to buy their fruit and vegetables or the times of the buses; they can access one of the most ambitious websites developed by a parish.

In early 2010 Aston Cantlow Parish Council (ACPC) received a grant from the Big Lottery Fund to develop a website with expertise for website design and hosting provided by Stratford-on-Avon District Council.  Unfortunately, for a variety of unforeseen reasons including several changes in membership of the council during 2010, the project made very slow progress and was in danger of running out of time with the original deadline for spending the Lottery Grant being 17^th February 2011. 

When a new Chairman, Malcolm Simmons, took over at the Parish Council in mid-January 2011, he managed to obtain a three-month time extension until 17^th May - which coincides with the Annual Parish Meeting and AGM.

In order to transform a project that was in danger of becoming a rather boring Parish Council, information only website into a “Community Website" with interactive capabilities, delegates from all the parish's clubs and voluntary organisations met in March at the Village Hall and the website project transformed.  Supported by a local resident, retired IT consultant David Hannaford working alongside the Parish Council Chairman who acted as overall Project Manager they quickly worked out with the District Council staff how the ambitions of the Forum members for the website could be met.

With Aston Cantlow Parish Council working together with Stratford-on-Avon District Council the new website is breaking new ground by having a website with multiple editors and interactive capability – the first parish led website project to do so in the District's experience of working with 20 parish councils.

An integral part of this project is the provision of a “Community Computer" so that access to the new parish website and the world of information technology in general can be made available to all those in the community.  The logical place for the computer to be sited is within Aston Cantlow (Working Men's) Club and it is envisaged that under an agreement being negotiated between ACPC and the Club it will be available there for all to use free of charge. 

A “Silver Surfers' Club" or other such activities, manned by volunteers, are also being planned and ACPC is hoping that it might become a vehicle for an inter-generational reminiscence project.

Cllr Sir William Lawrence said: “This has been a magnificent example of what can be achieved in a tiny community by collaboration between the lower two tiers of local government and local organisations and clubs. The Big Society has been at work in rural communities for years and this is an example of it in action."

Jason Lorenz, Stratford District Council's Business Development Manager says: “Aston Cantlow Parish Council has been quite ground breaking by involving other parish organisations from a very early stage in the website's development, rather than treating it as being just a parish council project.  They can therefore truly call it a community project and the outcome of close collaboration between a consortium of bodies, one of which is the District Council.  It has been a very interesting and challenging one for us to work on. We would welcome contact from other Parishes wishing to undertake a similar project." 

Malcolm Simmons, Chairman of Aston Cantlow Parish Council commentated: “The District Council has been a key partner in helping us with our Community Website & Computer Project. District staff provided invaluable advice and guidance when an application to the Big Lottery Fund for an Awards for All Grant was made last year.  Without the grant a small parish council such as ours would not have been able to afford to embark on the project.  We are looking forward to publicly launching the website on 17^th May.  It's been developed by members of the district council's IT staff working alongside a local volunteer David Hannaford who has acted as the parish's Lead IT Consultant.  The Parish Council has been leading a consortium of parish based organisations who came on board with us to make the website project a truly community based one."

• Aston Cantlow is one of the smallest parishes in Stratford-on-Avon District with only approximately 500 residents.
• The District Council has now been required to completely redesign the standard parish website offering and switching to an “Open Source" Content Management System (CMS) called WordPress which is hosted on an external server remote from the District Council's bespoke CMS that is run on its own servers at its HQ in Stratford-upon-Avon. 
• The Forum delegates will now meet every six months and will act as a sounding board for the parish council and, it is hoped, enable parish events to be co-ordinated and planned so that they appeal to a wider cross-section of the community and to all ages.  In a parish experiencing many of the symptoms of rural deprivation, the Forum will be working closely with the council as it evaluates the impact of severe financial cutbacks at the County and District Councils and monitors the overhaul of the District Local Plan into the new Local Development Framework.  Successive planning policies of restraint have, it can be argued, resulted in the parish losing many facilities over the year including its school and shop.