Neighbourhood Voices

Putting words into action. Residents at the south west neighbourhood voices event. 

Words into actions

Hundreds of people have raised their voices to say what’s good and bad about where they live.

Following on from the 100 Voices project, which looked at community cohesion in the borough, the Council organised seven neighbourhood voices forums for people to have their say.

Residents from the borough’s five neighbourhood areas,

• southeast Blackburn
• south west Blackburn
• north east Blackburn
• northwest Blackburn
• Darwen

and its rural areas and traders from both Blackburn and Darwen’s town centres were involved. The aim was to get people talking about concerns in their neighbourhoods, suggest local actions which could improve matters and recognise what’s good aboutwhere they live.

Residents at the forums were asked to look at one of five themes and think of actions which would help achieve improvements in that area. The themes were clean and green, economy and education, safety and cohesion, health and youth issues. At one event transport and traffic was added as a numberof local people felt that this was their number one priority. They were then asked to say what they would like to see done to improve things

Hundreds of ideas were gathered and will help formulate borough–wide plans as well as the five neighbourhood area plans.

The event was on March 5 2008. Read the full report.