At a public meeting in the Recreation Ground Pavilion on 4 October 2005 it was agreed unanimously that a Parish Plan would be developed for Kirton & Falkenham.

The Parish Plan Steering Group (see below) is made up of a number of volunteers (including 2 Parish Councillors) who meet regularly.

The Plan will contain the consolidated opinions and comments of as many residents, voluntary organisations and businesses as possible. We will gather this information by means of a questionnaire. Areas to be covered include:–

Utility services & housing; Natural environment + built environment; Transport, traffic, parking & safety; Housing; Young people; Information & communications; Local Govt; Church & Chapel; Local services & social services; Leisure & sport; Education, training & Employment.

The Plan is intended to be a positive contribution, recording what we do want (rather than focussing on what we don’t want). The purpose of the Plan is to provide guidance to other interested parties (e.g. Suffolk Coastal District Council) in evaluating proposals and understanding the community’s needs.

We have received a grant from Suffolk ACRE/defra. We're not the first villages to do this (there are about 80 communities already embarked on this in Suffolk,and many more around the country.

Email enquiries (and offers of help!) to parishplan@kirton-suffolk.info or contact any of the SG members.

Three types of Questionnaire have now been produced : Household - for people aged 16 years and over; Youth - for those aged 9 – 16 years; and a Business Questionnaire. These were distributed starting from the weekend of 22 July 2006. The information from theses questionnaires has now been analysed (a mammoth task which has taken longer than we originally anticipated) and a presentation on the proposed action plan was presented to the Parish Council and people of the villages on 21 Jan 2008.

Latest news

All the Youth Questionnaires have been logged and analysed and a summary report is now available here (840kByte pdf file). Other documents and preliminary results will soon be availabe on this website.

We have now logged all the Household Questionnaires - a mammoth task as about 75% of the villagers responded, providing over 25,000 records to analyse. Thank you!.

If you returned the back sheet of the Youth Questionnaire during the summer, we held the Prize Draw at the Bond night Friday 9 March. The winners are Toby Monaghan-Gray, Georgia Rowlkand and Hannah Bossers.

13/06/07 A draft report of the number of questionnaires distributed and returned plus an analysis of the numerical data collected from the Household Questionnaire is now available here. We're still working on the text analysis.

13/10/2007 A Brief Summary report is now available. Copies have been distributed to every household. A colour version is now available here.

21/01/2008 Presentation to and Extraordinary Meeting of the Parish Council. Available here.