A new report by Coast and Vale Community Action, based on three years of listening to over 1,300 voices across Scarborough, reveals that local communities are frustrated with unresponsive systems but are eager to take back control and drive positive change.
A Yorkshire Coast charitable group says they have spent the last three years listening to people across Scarborough to better understand the needs of the town.
Coast and Vale Community Action, also known as Cavca, engaged with residents and found that they heard one clear message from the public.
The charity asserts that communities in Scarborough are not disengaged, but instead, they are underpowered.
Coast and Vale Community Action say the resulting report shows that local communities genuinely care for their place.
Furthermore, the charity states that residents have plenty of ideas for change, but are increasingly frustrated with systems that simply do not listen to them.
The newly published document brings together over 1,300 voices from the area.
It makes a simple case, arguing that when communities have power, local resilience grows.
Mel Bonney, from Coast and Vale Community Action, said:
"Yes, I have frustrations about what's going on and about what looks like decline in our communities, but actually there's a huge amount of will for people to do good things within their communities, a huge amount of volunteer effort-groups, informal groups, formal groups, voluntary organisations that are doing really positive things. It's just that the systems aren't necessarily as responsive as we need to enable them to make the changes that they'd like to see.
"What we're hoping to do is provide some opportunities for people to come together with people who hold power over housing and public services and actually identify some projects that we can collaboratively work on to see the effect of community power in practice."
The charity is keen to point out that there are already successful instances of residents working together to achieve a common goal.
A meeting has been scheduled for the 2nd of June to identify further projects that the community can work on collaboratively.
Mel added:
"Local people have come together to set up community water testing. That is a prime example of communities taking back control and actually doing something themselves to better understand the situation, provide the evidence that's needed to make the changes that we need to see the improvements in water. The Street, our climbing wall expansion was entirely down to the power of the climbing community coming together, raising awareness, raising funds and making something happen that they wanted to. Got a meeting on the 2nd of June, which is where we're going to identify some of those projects to work on. We understand people's frustrations and we understand that a lot of people don't know how to make the change they need, but if we all come together, we're much more powerful when we're in number."
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