Strichen Community Action Plan

Introduction

The community’s interest in developing an action plan was initially sparked by a local survey carried out by the Covid Resilience group. It identified various areas that the community might want to develop including growing spaces.

To do this several engagement methods were used including:

• An online survey that was hosted on Engage Aberdeenshire in June 2022. Paper copies were also made available in local facilities - 82 responses received
• The survey was promoted at the Queens Jubilee event on 4th June to encourage people to respond
• Young people and mums attending the community café took part in a “sticky dot” exercise to identify their priorities for action
• A Community Engagement Event was held at Ritchie Hall on 1st of October 2022
• A survey based on all the ideas identified in the Engage Aberdeenshire survey was distributed at the Christmas Tree Switch on

We asked

The residents of Strichen to provide their thoughts on things like facilities and amenities, play and recreation, public transport, streets and spaces, housing, social contact, and other aspects of living in Strichen which are relevant to them. The survey was based on the Place Standard Tool that asks 14 questions about the quality of the physical and social elements of a place. Those taking part were asked to rate their place on a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 is a lot of room for improvement and 7 no room for improvement.

You said

The diagram below graphically illustrates where Strichen scored well (towards the edge of the circle) and where there is room for improvement (nearer to the centre). This was based on the 82 responses to the survey.

Summary of findings

The Survey results, indicate that Strichen has many areas and assets that the local community rate highly including moving around, public transport, natural spaces, facilities and amenities, housing and economy, social interaction, identity and belonging and feeling safe. The services and places that got a particular mention as being assets to the village were the Community Park, Library, Town House, and the Sharing Larder. Whilst the intention of the engagement exercises was to support the creation of a Community Action Plan for Strichen, this will not be developed at this time.

We will

There were two major areas that scored poorly: traffic and parking along with play and recreation. The concerns around traffic and parking are being reviewed by Aberdeenshire Council and Strichen Community Council are gathering comments to feed into a review of the current traffic management system within Strichen.

While there is lots of great work going on outdoors the need to provide improved play facilities for children is an area for improvement that the community can if they wish to, tackle on their own or with support with Community Planning Partners.

The Engage Survey also highlighted issues some of which were already being addressed. While social media is used effectively to share information, the village also has a comprehensive community newsletter that keeps the local community up to date with what’s going on called “Strichen Spikin”. Strichen Spikin includes information and updates from community groups, the church, library, and the local school.