Click on the underlined items below for the link to the item
Working in partnership with local people is our most important task.
SAP does not seek to compete with or duplicate the work of any other organisation. We are here to promote greater co-operation and understanding between the very wide range of statutory and voluntary organisations and community groups which are already operating in Sherborne and the surrounding area, as well as to promote or assist in joint actions as outlined in the revised version of the Sherborne Area Action Plan 2006-9. This will be replaced by a new 2010-2013 in June 2010, following consultation with all the Forums as well as our local parishes. See the Sherborne Area Action Plan 2010-2013 section of this website for more details.
Local Forums that are already established but are independent of the Sherborne Area Partnership and welcome our participation include the Chamber of Trade & Commerce, the Transport Action Group (TAG) and Sherborne Churches Together. We also have close links with the SHARP Learning Project based at The Gryphon School whose manager, Lizzie Kingsbury, also facilitates the Sherborne Area Children, Young People & Familes Partnership (see below).
All the Forums in the following list are managed by SAP. They are open to anyone who would like to attend.
Sherborne Area Tourism Forum brings together a wide range of people and organisations from Sherborne, the surrounding area and further afield who want to increase the potential of Sherborne as a tourist destination. New members are always welcome, so contact us on 01935 816961 for more information. It is a fund-holding body and agreed a Constitution that was submitted for ratification at its first AGM which took place in mid March 2007 when the first officers and other members of the Executive Committee were elected. Our last meeting was on Thursday 28th January 2010. Our next meeting will be at 2.30pm on Thursday 18th March in the Council Chamber, The Manor House, Newland.
Sherborne Area Equality Forum is for local people who have experienced exclusion as a result of their disability, gender, faith or ethnic origin as well as for representatives from the statutory and voluntary organisations that work with and for them. The Forum is concerned about public attitudes to people with disabilities and hopes to play an active part in the PACT initiative being lead by Dorset Police. At SAP's AGM on 25th September 2008, Lizzie Kingsbury (SHARP Learning Manager at The Gryphon School), presented "Know the pavements" an Access Survey to the centre of Sherborne on which she had been working for the previous few months. Our last meeting was on Monday 23rd November. We meet again at 10.00am on Monday 22nd March in the Community Room at Richmond Green Sheltered Housing Scheme. Our last major event was on Friday 5th February 2010 at Sherborne School for Girls when 4 invited speakers, all of whom have a disability, talked informally about their experiences with up to 100 6th Form pupils from Sherborne School for Girls, Sherborne School, the Gryphon and Leweston. We are alsp planning a joint Electric Scooter & Buggy Safety Event with PACT and the Gryphon School.
The Sherborne Children,Young People & Families Partnership is managed by Lizzie Kingsbury, SHARP Learning Manager based at The Gryphon School, so contact her on 01935 810152 for more information. It last met on Wednesday 11th November 2009 in the Gryphon Conference Centre. The next meeting will be at 11.30am on Thursday 25th March.
Sherborne Area Housing Forum was launched in October 2006. We were actively involved in the consultation being undertaken by WDDC on the Barton Farm development in Sherborne (see http://www.dorsetforyou.com/bartonfarm). We are also monitoring the progress of Buckland Newton Community Land Trust who plan to build affordable housing for local people on an exception site in the village that we hope will lead to similar planning applications for exceptional sites in villages elsewhere in West Dorset, including the Sherborne Area. Our last big event event was the Identifying New Sites for Affordable Housing in Sherborne Consultation which took place on Wednesday 21st October. It was attended by well over 100 local people who came along to express an opinion about which of the 20 potential sites we had identified should or should not be built on. The 3 photos show the consultation under way as well as the size of the aerial photo of the town that we were using. Our next meeting, at which Tim Davis (WDDC's Housing Strategy Lead Officer) will be speaking to us about the Single Conversation process, will be in the Council Chamber at 10.00am on Thursday 18th March. For information about affordable home ownership in Dorset, see www.search4myplace.co.uk
We worked with Dorset Police's Sherborne Town & Rural Safer Neighbourhood Teams to launch PACT during 2008. Our first joint venture was a Road & Community Safety Workshop at the New Village Hall in Leigh on the morning of 21st February 2009 which everyone living in the Sherborne Area was invited to attend. Participants included the Sherborne Town & Sherborne Rural Safer Neighbourhood Teams, Dorset Fire Service, SW Ambulance Trust, DCC Network Traffic Management and the Red Cross. The last PACT meeting on Monday 1st March at the Gryphon Conference Centre brought together representatives from Sherborne and the surrounding villages to discuss issues of concern to both. Partner organisations (including SAP) will be working together to address them before reporting back to the next PACT meeting at 7.30pm on Monday 1st March.
Sherborne was awarded a Silver Gilt Trophy as well as the prize for the best Market Town in the South West in the SW in Bloom Competition 2006, following our initial effort in 2005. We worked with a range of local organisations and individuals to do even better in 2007, so were absolutely delighted to be awarded the Gold Trophy for our class, as well as two others. Sherborne won 3 more trophies in 2008, this time in competition with larger towns such as Wells (the overall winner), including one for the involvement of local schools (The Gryphon School) and one for successfully engaging with the local community. See the Sherborne in Bloom section of this website for more information, including about how to get involved. Judging for this year took place on Wednesday 15th July and the results of the whole South West in Bloom Competition were announced in Yeovil on Thursday 17th September. Sherborne was delighted to win Gold again in a year in which only a few towns (and no others in our category) were similarly successful.
Sherborne Area Environment Forum works with a wide range of local groups with a diverse range of interests, so the challenge is to make them even more effective in achieving change as well as in educating the general public on the crucial issues at stake. Click on Sherborne Sunrise Environmental Conference to read the full report on this event that took place on Thursday 26th February 2009 at the Gryphon Conference Centre. A number of projects are being promoted in association with Transition Town Sherborne and others. The last meeting was on 25th February. Their next major event is the Do-able Renewable Energy Fair at the Digby Hall on Saturday 10th Aoril - see http://www.dorenew.org/. The next meeting is at 2.30pm on Thursday 22nd April in the Council Chamber.
Sherborne Area Health Forum met for the first time on 15th May 2008. It is chaired by Barry Williams (POPP Community Leader for the Sherborne Area and an ex-NHS Senior Manager). The Dorset LINk county-wide health and social care consultation process started operation on 1st April 2008, managed by Help & Care, so the Health Forum should be able to provide an opportunity to participate in it for people living in this area. See www.makesachange.org.uk and http://www.helpandcare.org.uk/join-us/local-involvement-networks-li.aspx for more information about Dorset LINk. We last met on Thursday 4th March and will be meeting again in May at Richmond Green Sheltered Housing Scheme Community Room - date and time to be agreed with our guest speaker Anita Busby, POPP's Community Transport Organiser.
You can also contact us on 01935 816961 for further information about any of these activities.