“My Cheddar” community group

My Cheddar is a volunteer community group supporting the Parish Council, running since 2011 and focusing on making Cheddar a better place to live, work, and shop. It’s an exercise in community led planning and local action that anyone can join in with. It comprises people with a wide variety of skills and experience and includes people who have only lived in Cheddar a few months, right through to those who were born and brought up here over 60 years ago and have seen many changes. We are not separate from the community, we are the community, and our members are simply local residents who have chosen to get involved in doing their bit to improve the area.
If you care at all about improving Cheddar and getting various community groups to work together towards a common goal, please sign up. Time commitment is as much as you can spare, and even if you can’t help with the more physical aspects such as planting, litterpicking and so on, just being part of the our network will help to keep you in the loop, enable you to share your views, and you never know when you might be the critical connection when we are looking for someone with specific skills or expertise. Who might you know who can help out? Could we reach a membership of 500 (which would be approaching 10% of the village population)?

 

One of the group’s roles is to help in the development of Cheddar’s Neighbourhood Plan. Whilst it’s impossible to stop all development, residents can have a say about the type of development they would like, and try and make sure it goes in the right places. Whilst as individuals we may have our own views on development proposals, My Cheddar is not particularly a pro- or anti-development pressure group, but focused on looking at a wider range of quick wins and longer term plans that local residents and businesses could support.There are also a number of small task groups looking at projects to improve the way the community functions, such as local shopping and markets, environmental considerations, sports facilities, transport, and developing a community hub. These can help to reduce the need for external investment in the community and make it more resilient and self-sufficient. A strong community network is also perceived to improve property values.
 


My Cheddar shopfront artwork project with Fairlands School

There are also plenty of opportunities for local businesses to get involved and help out with providing staff, equipment or services, and there is a partners page which lists organisations who have contributed to My Cheddar projects. The group is separate from business networks, local pressure groups, churches, clubs, charities, councils and so on, although the facilities and expertise of these kinds of local organisations may well be suited to taking forward particular projects. So you may also find people from Cheddar Traders, Lions, Scouts and Guides, Community Church, Parish Council, local business owners, and Cheddar Baptists (to name a few) working alongside one another on individual projects.

To find out more, hop over to the My Cheddar web site.