Making our Community Place Plan: 2019-2021

How it got started:

Our previous Strathfillan Community Action Plan expired in 2019, and with many changes locally it was felt that a Community Place Plan was needed. In 2019 a group of local people developed the Place Plan Steering Group, and working with the Community Partnership, began to undertake community consultations for our new Community Place Plan. They held two Open Days, one in Crianlarich and the other in Tyndrum. 

However, in 2020 various events have managed to disrupt and stall the Place Plan work, including the Covid-19 pandemic and the swapping of the Community Partnership as the main body of support for Place Plan development, to the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority. This has meant a significant change in the support offered. 

The National Park was very keen to see the creation of the Strathfillan Community Place Plan and approached the Strathfillan Community Development Trust to help deliver it. The Trust also wanted to make sure the Place Plan was developed, and that it truly reflected the needs and wants of the Strathfillan Community. Therefore, the Trust agreed to form a working group to move things forward.

How we consulted the community:

The Trust worked very closely throughout with the National Park's Planning Team, and we managed to secure funding through the National Park's Capacity Grant Scheme and Stirling Council's Community Pride Fund to pay for Development Officer hours, and publishing and printing. 

We initially worked to collate and analyse the data gathered from the Open Days and High School pupils in 2019.  Using this information we identified a number of focus groups. These comprised:

• Young People

• Tyndrum Businesses

• Crianlarich Businesses

• Tyndrum Residents

• Crianlarich and Inverarnan Residents

Although we would have liked to have held another Open Day the pandemic meant that this is not possible and we held online focus group sessions instead. We held three sessions in early 2021, one for Young People, one for Businesses and one for Residents. During the Business and Resident Sessions we used 'breakout rooms' for individual villages, with an opportunity at the end to discuss Strathfillan wide issues. Once we had spoken to the focus groups we brought together all the data and analysed it to tease out all the issues, priorities and actions. Over the next few months we brought this together and created our new Community Place Plan 2021-2031. This was then sent to the publisher, and finally published and printed in Novemver 2021.