Meet and Greet Sessions

Community Centre

The Parish Council holds the Community Centre in trust for the people of the village. We are constantly improving the facilities on offer and a recent successful bid to the National Lottery has allowed us to purchase a 72" interactive white board, several laptops and two printers for the Community Centre. In addition, we have been gifted a brand new (still in its wrapping) integrated cooker, hob and extractor hood from the Cumbria Community Foundation. This will enable us to offer much improved facilities with only a very small area of the hall being lost to the necessary kitchen expansion to accommodate the cooker.

The following ideas were put forward at the Meet and Greet sessions, with the number of votes cast noted beside each one:

Film Nights - 19

Halloween Party for kids - 26

Christmas Event Revamp - 10

Christmas Craft Fayre - 16

Carols by Candlelight - 18

Hobby events/talks - 11

Seated Keep Fit - 15

Quiz Nights - 16

Soup & Sandwich Lunches - 15

Evening Classes using IT - 7

Ideas added later included letting the centre out for conferences, and Bingo nights

Welfare Field

Readers will be aware that the Play Area on the Welfare Field has recently undergone a refurbishment costing £73,000, all raised from grants and donations. The Parish Council has no plans to add anything else to this area for the time being and, in fact, it would be very difficult to make a case for spending more money on the Play Area so soon after such a major spend on new play equipment.

As part of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations, Her Majesty asked that everyone should plant a tree. The Parish Council applied to the Woodland Trust last year and were sent 30 saplings to bring on for planting. They are now of a size to plant in their permanent positions and this will be done once the school term starts in September as children from the school will be involved in the planting.

We asked whether people agreed with our plans to position the trees where the School currently holds its Forest School for the little ones, or to put forward another site for the trees.

The following ideas were discussed at the Meet and Greet sessions, and votes cast are shown.

Saplings planted in place described - 21 votes

….or somewhere else - 0 votes

Basketball area revamp - 8 votes

Mini Festival 2023 - 25 votes

Outdoor Cinema - 27 votes

Tennis Court Area

The Tennis Court Area was gifted to the people of Broughton Moor when the Coal Board ended its mining in the area in the 1990s. The Parish Council holds this area in trust for the village.

Nothing was done with the piece of land for many years but more recently grants were obtained to place picnic benches and tables for people to use.

There has been some vandalism on site, and some inappropriate usage of the land, but the installation of strong gates at the entrance has cut down on much of this. Dog walkers still allow their dogs to foul the area and we would hope that this would be deterred by better use of the land.

Formation of a Woodland Trail - 36 votes

Squirrel Table/Bird Boxes - 18 votes

Community Garden with wheelchair accessible raised beds - 45 votes

Halloween walks etc (in future years) - 33 votes

Ideas added later included car boot/weekly market

St Columbas' Church Building

A public meeting was held in February 2022 when the people of the village voted to support the Parish Council in its bid to take over the Church Building. As things stand, the Diocese of Carlisle is minded to gift the building to the Parish Council to hold in trust for the village. The Parish Council was asked to submit lots of documentation in support of the bid, which was done, and the matter now has to go through several church committees before a decision is made.

Once secured, the building will need extensive repair and renovation before it is in a useable condition. Grants will be applied for to do this.

With all of this in mind, and looking to the longer term future, discussions were held about future uses of the building. (It should be noted that it is ONLY the church building that is under discussion - the churchyard remains the responsibility of the Diocese of Carlisle and any concerns about its condition should be directed to them).

Ideas discussed and votes cast were as follows:

Digital Heritage Display - 18 votes

Champing (camping in a church building) - 17 votes

Village Shop - 59 Votes

Cafe - 40 votes

School use for Harvest etc. - 25 votes

Library - 20 votes

Building a greater sense of Community

In our final section, we threw around ideas that would help to improve on the existing sense of community in the village and enable everyone to take a greater pride in belonging to Broughton Moor.

These were the ideas and the votes cast:

Scarecrow Competition 2023 - 23 votes

Friends of Broughton Moor Group to support Parish Council with Activities - 22 votes

Garden Festival - 7 votes

Britain in Bloom - 4 votes

Now the Parish Council has the task of setting priorities for the next few years based on these ideas. This does not mean that existing projects will be shelved but that new ideas are coming to fruition all the time.

Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who took the time to attend one of our Meet and Greet sessions and help us with this work. We are extremely grateful.