ruralnet|uk, in association with a number of local public and private agencies has launched an initiative for the residents of Central rural Warwickshire. The goal is draw upon £1.5m funding from a European sponsored initiative known as the LEADER project. The service enables anyone to submit their ideas and help shape the application. Ideas submitted so far include a community orchard project, a rural paparazzi competition and community bike sharing initiatives amongst others.

CENTRAL WARWICKSHIRE VILLAGES LEADER PROJECT

In Central Warwickshire have just launched a service which we hope will enable communities to participate
with the development of their LEADER programme better than ever before.

http://www.warwickshireleader.net is a web-based tool open to everyone and designed to provide an online channel for the engagement of the community in the collaborative development of the LDS (Local Delivery Strategy). All visitors can read the content and comment anonymously. Visitors can also register and have their comments attributed or initiate their own ideas.

At its core the site is designed to move us from the approved `Expression of Interest’ to the LDS which will trigger the relaese of the funding in an open and transparent way.

The site will run in parallel with more traditional forms of engagement, village meetings, village visits etc and these will be reported on the site too for those unable to attend. It supports all media: text, video, audio and all of these will be used to capture the content of face to face activities.

As new ideas are submitted they are tagged with labels such as the Ward they would apply to, how much funding maybe required, whether its a community / voluntary type project etc and this builds a picture directly from the participants which will feed directly into the LDS and business case. We also intend to post the LDS monthly on the site for visitors to check on the progress of the application.