The Bude area’s most recent Community Network Panel meeting was held in a different location than the Ivor Potter Hall in the Parkhouse Centre. This particular meeting was held in the Crackington Institute, in Higher Crackington on Monday, October 7 as the usual venue had already been hired.

However, the change in location was warmly welcomed by the attending members of parish councils from across the network area.

Chair of the meeting Cornwall councillor, Nicky Chopak, representative of Poundstock parish council initially spoke about changing the name of the panel, to Bude Area Network Panel. She explained: “I’ve always been concerned its a Bude focused meeting. We realised that we’ve got to make it more interesting and appeal to everyone.

“Something we can do is not necessarily hold the meetings in Bude.

“It’s really good coming here this evening, and we might be going to Kilkhampton for the next one.”

Cllr Chopak suggested that the panel should visit each parish across the network area, as opposed to staying in Bude. This suggestion was met with a resounding ‘yes’ from the members in attendance.

Following this, discussions began as to what would be talked about during the upcoming meetings.

A ‘CNP Forward Plan Workshop’ was held on October 2 and considered the priorities of the panel through to summer 2020; the capacity of the CNP and its workshops; the terms of reference; the CNP Engagement Plan and the dates and venues of future meetings.

It was explained that the Forward Plan Workshop had put forward four priority headings for future meetings: health and care; wellbeing; environment; and transport.

Cllr Chopak explained the reasons for choosing these subjects. She said: “The idea would be to have one of these subjects as the main focus of the meeting, to try and encourage people to come along.”

One of the parish representatives suggested to have speakers of best practice, as opposed to policy speakers from Cornwall Council.

In terms of transport, they said: “Transport underpins everything in rural parishes, rural poverty, isolation and lack of service.

“To get a Cornwall transport policy, actually a town, parish or village who have done a great job to provide ideas to campaign around, or put in place.

“Rural transport initiatives are interesting, therefore we should get practice speakers rather than policy speakers.”

Zoe Bernard-John, community link officer for Cornwall Council, suggested for people to bring forward case studies of best practice, which could combine well with policy holders.

She said: “As Nicky explained, we might need to spread outside the network for examples of good practice.”

Cllr John Hobbs, representing Morwenstow Parish Council mentioned adopting a system from a neighbouring council could be benificial. He said: “Holsworthy have a fantastic transport system, we’re right on the border of Torridge why don’t we use them?”

The majority in attendance agreed with Cllr Hobbs.

Cllr Chopak continued to say how these specific meetings could be much more beneficial, to reach measurable outcomes. She added: “By having targeted workshops we can get quite a lot done in those, if it’s a recognised forum, the message will go out with action notes and will send a message to whatever we are talking about.”

Also on the network panel is Cornwall Councillor for Bude, Peter La Broy. He spoke about positives that would come from getting together. He said: “We as a group of people can get together and look at the transport problems.

“Rather than the policy holder telling them what they do. We can bring them up here and tell them what we want, with what we know.”

It was suggested that the next quarterly meeting in December would mainly focus on health and care.

Cllr La Broy explained that the workshops were umbrella headings for the large subjects. He said: “What I felt, after becoming a unitary authority — that was the point where the Community Network Panel came into being — was to get feedback from rural parishes up to Cornwall Council.

“In my mind, this group is all about having an impact in Cornwall Council.

“We’ve had a lot of words like working together and collaboration recently, this is where it happens and we think those four areas are best suited and that’s why they were chosen.”

He went on to say that the order had also been given some ‘considerable’ thought.

As well as changing the location of the meetings, the start time was discussed, as Cllr Chopak raised the point of getting there earlier to be able to network before meetings. She said: “We’ve been thinking of starting the meetings earlier, to network early rather than having to stay late in the evening to talk.”

After a short round of voting, it was decided that the next meeting would start quarter an hour earlier to allow some time to network.

Before leaving, the attending members were informed of a network Facebook page set up by Zoe, with a purpose of encouraging parishes and the public to join and share pictures or stories from their area, in order to create a community page. To find the page visit www.facebook.com/Bude-Community-Network-334327104107972/