The latest Rural Futures meeting took place on 30 July. Despite a number of apologies, the meeting was well attended by 21 residents including a number of people who came to a Rural futures meeting for the first time. For info this mailing list now includes 54 private addresses in addition the Community Council.

1. Updates:

Pontrilas area station proposal update

A reminder that there is an informal meeting about this on 5 Aug 7pm @ Town Hall led by Clive Stainton who is kindly coming in a voluntary capacity

Community transport

Dore provided a lengthy reply about community transport provision. It already actively serves people in Grosmont.  I have put together a summary of community transport options with contact details and Jean Prosser has kindly offered to run this in Church link for next few months to raise awareness

Play Area: No progress, awaiting response from CADW Will Davies guidance

Church link magazine: Following previous discussions about the future of Church Link magazine and the potential to continue it as a community magazine, Rev Gaynor Burrett provided an update. It will continue as Church Link and Gilliy Burgess has offered to take over as editor when Jean Prosser and her team step down at the end of the year. The idea is to put it on a new church website (with links from the Grosmont website) & supporting hard copies.      Gaynor would welcome help from anyone with ICT/ website development expertise.

1. Community buildings and spaces (see attached)

The majority of the meeting focussed on community buildings/ spaces. This included a number of whole and small group activities and discussions. The amount of ground covered and content generated by the group activities is too great to present in the body of this email so please find  “Community buildings and spaces workshop” report attached with group activity findings in the appendices.  I have also attached the appendices separately for convenience. Many thanks to everyone for their hard work and active participation in this session.  I would also welcome additions from anyone who wasn’t able to attend and has views or ideas that have not been included. I hope this piece of work can help guide any next steps around this important area.

1. Next meeting

We did not have time to discuss the draft objectives or how to reach the wider community but these will be topics for the next meeting when we will also discuss community decision making and the potential for forming a community forum/ action group/ committee to drive the work forward and what this should look like. The next meeting will take place mid-September, I will confirm the date in the near future.

Thank you again for your ongoing interest and support,

With best wishes

Grosmont Community buildings and spaces workshop
Appendix 1 Current activities events and services in Grosmont and where they take place
Appendix 2 Activities & services people would like to see in Grosmont
Appendix 3 Pros and cons of key community buildings in Grosmont