Encouraging people to build their own homes, reducing litter or a village or parish of culture competition might all be things that come to Wychavon.

Councillors who run Wychavon District Council will be choosing their priorities from improving the area over the next few years.

At the authority’s executive board meeting at Pershore next week, members of the board, which acts a cabinet for the Conservative-led council will be presented with new ‘promises’ for the next year after an exercise where members of the public told the council what they’d like to see next year.

Once the promises have been decided on, they will be “refined into a final set of deliverable promises.”

With 12 of the previous 24 promises to be to be completed by the end of March 12 new tasks will be chosen to run until 2019 or 2020.

They are divided into three broad groupings: People, Place, and Prosperity.

Under People, possible new promises include:

- Work with Wychavon Leisure to increase its role in health - promote the five ways to wellbeing as a

matter of course, outreach for exercise/at local venues e.g. village halls, plus reduced price

membership, prescribed exercise in community groups

- Evesham and Droitwich leisure centre investment and upgrade Pershore leisure centre

- A promise about working with partners to support people affected by the roll out of Universal Credit

full service from November 2018 in the form of help and advice to claimants.

- Develop and implement a homeless prevention plan including earlier intervention for those threatened with homelessness, more prevention tools and a personal engagement plan for customers setting out how we will work together to solve their housing difficulties

Under Place, possibilities include

- Investigate funding for and feasibility of putting more green infrastructure in place – electric car charging points, cycle routes, racks, etc.

- Run a three year campaign to reduce litter involving a package of measures including education, litter picks and enforcement action by 31 March 2021.

[This requires additional funding to deliver -£20,000 per year for three years]

- Promote and support opportunities for custom and self-build housing.

- Deliver our first homes through the new housing company – two-year promise.

- Progress a review of the South Worcestershire Development Plan in accordance with the milestones

set out in the approved Local Development Scheme

The Prosperity section could see promises about:

- Produce a visitor action plan setting out what we will do to increase visitor numbers and overnight

stays, market the district more effectively and exploit further opportunities to champion things that

make Wychavon special (e.g. salt, local food, lido) and provision for coaches.

- Increase the number of new apprenticeships from 20 to 30 a year.

- Increase awareness and take up of apprenticeships, especially degree level apprenticeships.

- Run a two-year programme of workshops for town / parish councils and community groups

on a range of topics such as funding, running a successful village hall, setting up a community shop, volunteering, developing local transport schemes that bring together successful examples and share best practice to enable other communities to implement their own solutions to local needs.

- Launch a Wychavon village (or parish) of culture competition – we select a village each year

and give a small amount of funding.

- Offer more assistance and help to parish and town councils to develop and implement key projects.

The Executive Board will discuss the draft promises at its meeting on Wednesday, and the 12 it selects will be taken forward.