It was twenty years ago this month…
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FOUNDATION
It was in April 2005 when the Sid Valley first learnt of a proposal which led to the creation of the Vision Group for Sidmouth.
It was at the Sidmouth Town Assembly of 2005 when the then chair of the Sid Vale Association, Rev Handel Bennett, made an impassioned declaration: that we very much needed a ‘vision for Sidmouth’.
Although this initiative was coming from the SVA, an organisation primarily concerned with the preservation of the Sid Valley’s heritage, he was keen that the town and surroundings should not simply be ‘preserved in aspic’ – and that we should be looking ahead in a determined and concerted way to ensure the health and vibrancy of Sidmouth.
And so, several of those present and others signed up to get things going – and later that month, in April 2005, the Vision Group for Sidmouth was formerly founded at its first meeting at Woolcombe House, with Town Councillors taking the chair and deputy chair positions for its initial sessions.
Here’s a photo from one of those sessions from twenty years ago:
PLANNING
One of the major focus points of the VGS from the start has been ‘planning’ – which hardly stirs the cockles of most citizens’ hearts, but getting plans right for the Sid Valley has been key for creating a vision for Sidmouth.
The first task of the VGS steering group at its founding was to do some research as to what the wider public and businesses and other ‘stakeholders’ understood as a ‘vision for Sidmouth’ – and it embarked on the largest piece of public consultation the Valley had ever seen, looking at issues such as transport, the environment, Port Royal and other areas of potential development.
All of this was collated over the following months – and was finally written up by Prof Brian Golding, producing the Vision Report 2006 which still provides both a touchstone for what the Valley wants and a resource for how things have or have not changed.
Over the following couple of years there were further discussions with the Town Council to see if this Report could be moulded into an actual Town Plan – but there were as yet no formal statutory mechanisms or frameworks to make this happen.
A decade later in 2018, however, and with a change in the law under the rubric of ‘localism’, the Town Council was able to launch the Neighbourhood Plan process – and the VGS provided three members to join its steering group, which in turn produced further formidable research and results, culminating in the final Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan.
When it comes to specific areas of planning, the VGS has been heavily involved from the start – from regular submissions in consultations over the ongoing East Devon Local Plan, to commenting on development projects in the Sid Valley.
Since its inception, the VGS has sent a representative to join the advisory group of the longstanding Beach Management Plan process – and the VGS website has a huge archive of material tracing the slow but steady progress to the final plan.
The area that particularly interested the VGS from the start has been Port Royal – and the group has been keen to ensure there is transparency and public involvement in any decisions made about developing this ‘jewel in the crown’ of Sidmouth’s waterfront.
And another key site which has been of central concern to the VGS has been the former Knowle hotel and headquarters of the district council, whose relocation project caused so much grief and raised so many questions – resulting in council officers being publicly reprimanded by a tribunal.
This affair, together with the struggle over plans to create an employment site (aka an industrial estate) on the border of Sidford, led to the VGS joining up with other players, including the SVA and Chamber of Commerce, to create the Save Our Sidmouth umbrella group to really push the public’s concerns about developments which very few wanted.
So, the VGS has been involved with several controversial planning proposals over the years – but has not always endeared itself to the wider public, for example in supporting the Town Council and Chamber in pointing out that proposals for an ice cream van on the Ham would be ‘against regulations’, no matter how popular such a step might be.
And this is the point: the VGS is not about ‘taking a stand’ on any issue, whether on planning or otherwise. It really is about researching issues of public concern and providing the information – and whilst such ‘digging’ might be uncomfortable for some other parties, it does perform some sort of investigative journalism role in asking questions and trying to get the answers out there.
SUSTAINABLE SIDMOUTH
Twenty years ago, the very first aim of the founding document of the VGS was “to mobilise the community to express its concerns and aspirations for the future of Sidmouth”.
This look to the future is indeed key to what the VGS is all about. And in 2008, the group joined the Transition Town movement – and took on the rubric of ‘Sustainable Sidmouth’. Indeed, since then, its strapline has been “working towards a sustainable Sidmouth”.
The first project the VGS undertook with sustainability in mind was to set up the Community or Farmers’ Market – which successfully ran for ten years from the former St John’s Ambulance hall and then Kennaway House – together with the very popular Food Fair every summer.
More recently, the VGS has set up its biannual Sustainable Sidmouth Champions Awards, which are “all about recognising the amazing people, organisations and businesses who are making a real difference to the Sid Valley; especially, they are about acknowledging those who have acted to promote and improve the sustainability and resilience of the community”.
The Champions Awards in 2021 were essentially a celebration of community efforts during the pandemic; those from 2023 focussed on groups, businesses and individuals helping to ‘save the planet and save some money’; and the Awards for this year… To be announced later…
Finally, the term ‘sustainability’ is a slippery beast and perhaps the only way to ‘explain’ it is to do things which demonstrate ‘sustainability’ or to work with others who are clearly demonstrating it – which is why concrete projects and positive collaboration yielding real results are so important.
PROJECTS
There are several former projects which the VGS has launched over the last twenty years, including the Farmers’ Market, another being the local energy group SidSoft which was getting very serious about helping residents with the so-called feed-in tariff system until it was done away with by central government.
A very successful venture and one that has grown into a nationally-recognised effort is the Sidmouth Science Festival – and as the blurb on their website notes, it “was started by a small team from the Vision Group for Sidmouth part of the Transition Town initiative” – who wanted to take the VGS remit of informed debate forward into the world of STEM subjects.
Currently, the VGS has three active ‘daughter groups’ – the Friends of Glen Goyle, the Sidmouth Cycling Campaign and the Cherishing Sidmouth Cemeteries project. And the creation and ethos of each of these is key to understanding how the VGS works.
Firstly, it is about collaboration. The FOGG and CSC projects were founded through discussions with members of the Sid Vale Association’s history group and the Sid Valley Biodiversity Group’s steering group about the issues and interests involved in these two key sites – and so these new groups were launched with solid background knowledge to be able to take them forward.
Secondly, it has been about independence and initiative. The cycling group’s steering group is very active working behind the scenes talking to key players, putting in its own comments on planning processes and creating well-researched proposals of its own. And the other groups are driven by extremely competent teams ready to do both the literal work on the ground and liaising with councillors and officers to get things done.
RESOURCES
To enable these various initiatives and projects to happen requires a fair few resources (of which there are never enough!) – and these include the abilities of its active members, the support of the wider community and funding from the farmers’ market and the councils, as well as the build-up of experience and information over the years.
As well as offering a home for new groups, the VGS also provides support for projects which are not part of the actual VGS. It has put together websites for totally independent groups such as the Sidmouth Fair Trade initiative, the Sidmouth Twinning Circle and the Climate Awareness Partnership Sidmouth – and as an active partner, the VGS even provides the web content for the CAPS project.
Resources also includes information – and the VGS has years of archived material and pages on key current issues on its main website, providing a handy reference point on many areas of public interest. One other website created and maintained by the VGS is that devoted to the River Sid – started up when the VGS was part of the initial steering group looking at the possibility of a salmon pass at School Weir, but now providing information on the river’s history, ecology and goings on.
This and other websites which form part of the VGS stable also provide regular daily news items which are shared on its social media platforms – from what’s happening at Glen Goyle or the Cemetery, to stories on the county’s rivers and stories on the latest local political issues, to who might be considered a local champion and what might be bothering walkers, cyclists and other road users.
Fundamentally, though, the VGS is about trying to put together good quality information – and is more than ready to take on research relevant to the key issues the Sid Valley is facing. Over the years it has indeed dug deep, whether going the whole hog and putting in Freedom of Information requests or simply endeavouring to answer queries from members of the public and members of the councils.
A final point on resources: The VGS always welcomes more active members – and so anyone with the drive and enthusiasm to engage on the key issues of the Sid Valley would certainly find a role within the whole set of things that is the VGS, whether it is setting up a new project, suggesting and taking on some issue for public debate, or contributing to its current initiatives and websites. Contact the VGS if interested!
PLATFORM FOR DEBATE
Besides ‘the future’ and ‘planning’ forming its key foundational aims, the third objective of the VGS is “to provide a focus for local people and organisations to take up particular issues and pursue them to implementation” – and for years, it has been providing a platform for informed public debate, whether in open meetings or through providing those online resources.
Since its inception, the VGS has held hustings events – both for general elections and for local ones too, the last session being for the 2024 general election, held in collaboration with the All Saints’ Church. The VGS will also be putting on hustings for the upcoming elections to County Hall.
The key is ‘informed debate’ – and so the VGS, as its ‘about pages’ online say, can be seen as: “a research group; a focus for consultation; a forum for open discussion of issues, problems and competing solutions; a pooling of local talents for local problem-solving; and a think tank and ginger group”.
Through its zoom meetings and commenting on social media, as well as regular pieces in the Herald, the VGS tries to keep up with the current debates in their current formats for sharing, contributing and liaising across the local networks.
VISION
The mission statement of the original Vision Report 2006 looks to “cherishing our heritage, to improving our amenities and facilities appropriate for residents and visitors in the 21st Century, to encouraging a vibrant economy, and to commending our vision to local planning initiatives”.
Trying to create a complete ‘vision’ for Sidmouth is perhaps unrealistic – and perhaps not necessary, as everyone who lives in and who visits the Sid Valley wants a place where the heritage is cherished, where the facilities are appropriate and where the economy is vibrant.
What makes a ‘vision’ common to most is through collaboration, which has been there from the very foundation of the VGS, from the composition of its initial steering group, through to the mix of projects and initiatives the VGS has set up, to the work it carries out with a myriad of other groups in the Valley.
But as well as these practical and effective collaborations on perpetually building that ‘vision’, it is perhaps necessary to try and get truly ‘visionary’. And that’s where the Sidmouth Solar Punk project comes in: it has a website which is updated weekly and whose blog pieces are regularly shared on social media – and is very much about looking to a doable future which is hopeful and pragmatic. That is the ethos of the solarpunk movement – and that is certainly one way to try to encourage a sense of ‘vision’.
INDEPENDENT VOICE
To conclude this foray into what the VGS is all about, it has been suggested quite often over the past two decades that if the VGS didn’t exist, then someone would have to invent it – as it does provide quite a valuable function if not a unique one.
Founded by both the SVA and the Town Council, the VGS quickly established itself as a completely independent body, even though it continues to work with its erstwhile ‘parents’ in a sense of common purpose.
Over the years, the VGS chairs have been of very different personal political hues, but as with the Town Council, they and the steering group members have been able to leave their politics to one side, as we focus on the practicalities of seeing what we can do for Sidmouth.
Finally, though, of course the VGS is very ‘political’, in that trying to agree to a common ‘vision’ and trying to get things done and trying to work together will always be full of debate and adding layers of perspective – but hopefully this is all done in a spirit of public service.
Here’s a look at the VGS at its first ten years in the Herald of 2015: Milestone for vision group | Sidmouth Herald
And here’s to the next twenty years of the Vision Group for Sidmouth!
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