The last meeting of the Melton Town Community Forum will be held at Melton Mowbray Working Men's Club.

Some 55 people attended the meeting and discussed progress on the projects that had arisen through the Forum's participatory budget process. A recommendation was accepted by the Forum to fund the following projects:

Kayaks for young people and walkway. This project is about providing a footpath which will give safe access to the Scout centre. Melton Borough Council have recently given £20,000 towards creating a new Centre which will allow young people opportunities through kayaking and canoeing. £5,000 is allocated to this project.
Melton Learning Hub. MLH is becoming a Company Limited by Guarantee and the allocation of this funding will allow it to create a website and on-line prospectus to promote its service to young people in the Melton area and around. £8,000 is allocated to this project.
Melton Victorian Christmas Fayre. This project is to enable the Fayre to be secured as an event with a sustainable future. £3,000 is allocated to this project.
St John's Ambulance. This project to to buy resuscitation dummies that the St John's Ambulance brigade can use to train first aid skills in schools and local charities. The funding request is lower than originally asked for due to a donation from Melton Lions. £2,380 is allocated to this project.
River regeneration project. The funding will pay for the convertion of a water-based vehicle to dredge the river of a build up of weeds and debris, especially in the area close to the Scouts centre. £1,620 is allocated to this project.

After the discussion on the Forum budget had ended, the meeting went on to discuss a number of issues of importance and concern. Rowena Langtry, from Leicestershire and Rutland NHS, answered a number of questions over concern for the future arrangements of Urgent care locally. Urgent care is medical treatment that you need quickly, but your condition is not serious or life-threatening. It is things like bad falls, tummy pains, a child with a worsening fever or cuts, bruises and sprains that need immediate attention

NHS Leicestershire County and Rutland will be launching a public consultation on urgent care later in the year, after the General Election, asking people their opinions on three options:
• keeping everything as it currently is, including the minor injury units;
• just having three urgent care centres; or
• having three urgent care centres plus Saturday morning access to GP services in all localities
A number of local people expressed concern over the third option and the distance that Melton people would need to travel to access the Urgent care centres. They also had concerns over the future of the Melton hospital.
The Community Forum will provide a link to the public consultation when it is live later in the year. In the mean time, members of the public can access information by using the following websites:
http://www.lcr.nhs.uk/Gettinginvolved-Consultations-2010.cms
http://www.leicestershirelink.org.uk/

To view papers for this meeting please click the link.

The last meeting of the Melton Town Community Forum was held held at the Royal British Legion club, Melton Mowbray.

More than sixty members of the community attended a workshop and shared their ideas about how they think a Forum budget of £20,000 can best be used within the following priorities;

Improving access to services
Supporting and developing young people
Regenerating Melton Mowbray town centre

There were a number of lively and interesting discussions around the various tables and there were 17 intial project ideas.

After the intial vote, all residents used "voting handsets" to choose the final preferences from a short-list of nine. The four most supported preferences were Kayaks for young people and a safe walkway, Melton Learning Hub, Victorian Christmas Fayre and St John's Ambulance CPR dummies.

Most people seemed to have enjoyed a friendly and inter-active Community Forum with one particpant commenting that he "enjoyed meeting other people, and having a laugh, and hearing about good, new ideas".

To view the voting results please click on the blue links below.

If you would like more detailed information on the process, please click here.

For further information please contact Richard Downing on 0116 3055823 (or email richard.downing@leics.gov.uk) or Paul Goodman on 0116 3058015 (or email paul.goodman@leics.gov.uk).