Yeovil

What you've told us

The Community Investment review completed in the Westfield Area of Yeovil in partnership with St Peters Community Centre highlighted that 95% of respondents felt our priorities for the area were reflective of the community needs. Furthermore, most respondents from both Abri and the wider community felt that progress had been made against all priorities, particularly Youth Provision and food resilience, with a further 80% of all respondents feeling that there was now much more opportunity to meet others within their community.

The survey underlined key themes for future focus that were similar to unmet priorities for the Westfield area, these were:

• Adult and community learning courses from key skills to more bespoke creative opportunities.
• Digital access and support to be delivered within the centre.
• Community safety; there was some positive feedback around improvements, particularly regarding youth anti-social behaviour (ASB), but many still highlighted they feel a greater presence of local police would improve the sense of community.

We’re working towards some of these themes through discussions with Somerset Skills & Learning around key skills courses within the community, and working in partnership with St Peters Community Centre and Donate IT around providing digital access and support sessions over the coming months, including a tech amnesty day to donate your old IT equipment safely and to those who need it most.

The feedback overall was positive and demonstrated the change in perspective within the Westfield community, and the progress made within key areas of support such as food resilience and opportunities for young people. It has also reaffirmed our next steps of delivery in this area regarding digital access and adult educational opportunities.

We’ll continue to work with St Peters Community Centre and key stakeholders in the area to identify opportunities to bring the community together and support the long-term sustainability of the vital projects helping to improve the wellbeing of this community.

Your priorities

Currently we’re working in Westfield but looking forward we will be shifting our focus to the Birchfield area, therefore the priorities identified are split to reflect what is important in each community.

Westfield Priorities: 

• Develop Youth Provision in the Westfield area of Yeovil.
• Improve access to physical exercise within the community, including education around suitable exercise for those with long term health conditions.
• Work collaboratively with our communities, statutory agencies, community organisations and charities to improve community safety and reporting around ASB.

The developing priorities for the Birchfield area: 

• Develop customer and community insight in the Birchfield area.
• Deliver a range of introductory activities within the area in partnership with other organisations to build community engagement.
• Work with Birchfield Community Centre and other partner organisations to support the development of this key community resource.
• Work with colleagues and customers to improve community appearance and cohesion to create a stronger sense of community.
• Increase positive use of green spaces in the area to help reduce ASB, working collaboratively with our communities, statutory agencies, and partner organisations to improve community safety and reporting around ASB.

Community Learning at St Peters

We’re currently working with St Peters Community Centre and Somerset Skills & Learning to develop St Peters into an adult learning hub. Once we have a finalised course list from SS&L we will be reaching out to the community to get a refined list of the courses they would like to see delivered over the coming months.