Community Safety Monthly Bulletin:

Making Camelon and Tamfourhill a safer, happier, and more attractive place to live.

Due to an ever-increasing workload and a finite amount of available time I have decided to reduce my weekly community safety blog to a regular monthly update, and this will be published on the first Monday of the month. I will ensure that the focus remains local but when appropriate I will make reference to any significant national issues or initiatives which might also have relevance to the local area.  To kick of this update, I am going to highlight 2 areas of development which  will be funded through the Community Renewal fund:

• The Tidy Clean and Green Community Group will be further enhancing and supporting the work that has been initiated around the Juniors Car Park , Brown Street Park, and the surrounding neighbourhood of Carmuirs. The work to date has identified the local desire for a establishing a safe play space, improved security , a community mural, various environmental improvements, and community  growing activity, but has also identified the lack of confidence  within the area to carry these priorities forward. The Tidy, Clean and Green Group are  therefore in the process of  commissioning a consultant to work directly with the community in order to further develop  the potential for these community spaces and prepare a detailed and  costed plan for their development. The consultant will support training opportunities for local people around these themes, and support and encourage local residents into volunteering activity.  This will include keeping the areas tidy through regular litter picks and other environmental activities and will also significantly  move forward the communities priorities in term of play facilities , creativity, and the community growing projects.

• Easter Carmuirs Park will be moving into another phase of community involvement with the intention of further developing the facilities within the park. The Green Action Trust will be appointing a consultant to work with the Our Place Project and other stakeholders. The proposed  community engagement process  will operate form April through to the end of June and I will be working hard to ensure that all local interests, groups, and park users  are involved with this process. I know there has been some frustration locally that the next phase of the master plan for the park has not progressed, and in that respect,  I would want to stress that there are no resources available at his stage to carry out further capital work in the park. This  period of new consultancy work should however reinvolve the community in a meaningful and hands on  activity-based way which will provide  the community with increased ownership of the development process. The purpose of the consultants  work will be focused upon  supporting  local  people and groups to produce agreed designs and detailed  plans  for  the park. The local community  will then be in a better position to secure the required resources for  building new facilities and creating new opportunities within Easter Carmuirs  Park.

• The Our Place Project has been fortunate to have Kerry Reid a Community Education student form the University of the West of Scotland on placement for the next few months. Kerry is organising a Spring Clean Scotland event  which is taking place from   Tamfourhill Community Hub which is scheduled for Sunday 3^rd April form 11am -12 noon. This event is linked to Keep Scotland Beautiful s  national clear up initiative and it will involve a litter pick and some other activities which will help raise awareness of the climate emergency. Kerry will  also be  providing some hands-on fun family activities that will encourage local biodiversity. I announced the good news in last week’s blog that Keep Scotland Beautiful and Scottish Canals will be facilitating and supporting the process of  agreeing a community climate action plan for Camelon and Tamfourhill. This event will provide an introduction to the topic of climate  change and hopefully will encourage local People to get involved with the production of that local climate action plan. There will be lots of  publicity about this event in the coming weeks, all activities including the food and refreshments will be free of charge. The Tamfourhill Community fun day is also taking place later that day, so why not come along and get involved with the community clear up and the climate change activities in the morning and  and then pop along to the community fun day which starts in the afternoon.