Go out to 'meet your people'
Yet these meetings – combined – attracted only two dozen residents: those who tend to come along to such meetings regardless of where they are or how they are marketed. This prompted the Partnership to consider, “How do we engage with a community that won’t come out to talk to us?” The answer was simple: If our community won’t come to us, we will go to them. And so began the SHP’s commitment to ‘Meet the People’ events out and about in the borough. The Partnership started by holding an all-day event on a busy Saturday in the local shopping centre, Priory Meadow. The event was publicised in the same way as the earlier public meetings, and from 8.30am until 5.30pm, representatives of the police, local authority, fire service, primary care trust, police authority and county council manned stalls and talked to residents.
