“The community has been consulted to death”: How Vibrant Warsop convinced their council to work differently

As one of We’re Right Here’s community champions, we spoke to Maddy Pritchard, Director of Vibrant Warsop CIC, about her group’s work and the journey they took to form a close working relationship with their local council.

Despite the huge benefits of partnership working between local organisations and councils can bring, they can be difficult to forge and are currently inaccessible to many groups across the country. Recently, Maddy spoke at the King’s Fund’s Do With campaign webinar on the need for a policy change to enable more groups to form power-sharing agreements with their councils—one of We’re Right Here’s main policy asks. 

Do With is a network of people and organisations calling for a radical shift in the public sector from ‘doing to’ to ‘doing with’. This idea resonates with We’re Right Here and Maddy’s experience of how positive change happens at a local level. Read our interview with Maddy. 

TRANSCRIPT: In 2014, a group of residents came together to form Vibrant Warsop CIC. We knew there was a lot going on in the community, but the groups weren’t working together. We felt that we could be stronger together.

We know in our community, we’re all shining diamonds. We just need to tap into our power. So by coming together, we can do that, because you feel stronger when you are connected. Sometimes it’s hard to take that first step, so we help people to discover themselves and feel differently about life.

Leaving the corporate world to lead community development work

I wasn’t from a community development background. I ended up giving up my full-time job in IT project management to move to a part-time funded role in Vibrant Warsop because I thought if I didn’t do this, I’d regret it. Financially, it was pretty barmy. My husband said you can either carry on working and doing the voluntary stuff, but you’ll probably kill yourself because it’s just too much. Or, you’re going to quit the voluntary stuff and focus on work. My response was: we can’t afford to do it. And he said we’ll manage. And we have. 

I am passionate about this because I live here. And you get back what you put in every single minute of every day. It’s been amazing for me.

Working with the local council: pitfalls and partnerships

Ten years ago, I went to our local parish council meetings. It was so political, and it felt like a very angry environment. I thought I just couldn’t have anything to do with this. I felt at the time, it would be like speaking another language—we weren’t on the same page. So, I thought we can’t fix that environment, but let’s work with other community organisations. 

But, over the years, some of the parish councillors have changed. The local council started to soften and feel more in line with what we’re doing. We’ve come a long way with more parish councillors working with us. Now, we’re working together. We started a partnership with Mansfield District Council through an introduction from a parish councillor. They approached us to talk about health and wellbeing in Warsop. They brought in a consultancy called Strategic Leisure to help talk to the community. They wanted to do a survey. We said, don’t survey because this community has been consulted to death. There had been a number of consultations with the previous mayor. Questions were asked, and nothing was done. The feeling was “this community had been left behind”.

Instead, we said, come and talk to some of the groups that we are working with. We introduced them to lots of our community groups, who chatted very openly about health and wellbeing, and the barriers to them. For instance, Warsop is an ex-mining area, so we have people with long-term multiple health conditions. We’ve got a river running through Warsop—the Meden—but we’ve got young people who can’t swim. We used to have a swimming pool, built by the Sir John Eastwood Foundation, because two children had died in the river. But it closed down eight years ago.

A pool is much more than a place to swim

The Strategic Leisure report was used to apply for funding with Sport England for a health hub. Through our partnership, we’ve brought in funding. I think putting this funding in the hands of the residents was a turning point for us.

Mansfield District Council committed to investing in the hub. It’s got a swimming pool, a splash pad, a gym, and a multi-purpose room. Having a pool means we can teach children to swim. We can do rehabilitation work in the pool, like supported walking for people struggling to get around. In the health hub, we’re doing seated yoga, exercise to music, table tennis, and dance. It’s got a community hub feel.

So, our partnership with the council enabled a more collaborative approach. It has been about putting your cards on the table, leaving your ego outside, and saying, ‘How can we better work together?’ And we had a pretty strong voice around the table. You start to see the results of working together. The thinking is so much more creative together than it could have been as stand-alone organisations. People start to jump on board and see the value, which I’m sure they absolutely didn’t see at the beginning. 

Even after what we’ve done, having it written into law would be a massive support for us. (We’re Right Here is calling for communities to have a legal right to form Community Covenants, or formal power-sharing agreements between community organisations and their local councils). It would give residents the feeling that they do have a right here and that they will be listened to. 

‘Doing with’ not ‘doing to’

I was invited to speak on community covenants for the Do With campaign’s webinar. The campaign is about ‘doing with’, not ‘doing to’, and that’s one of the things that resonated with me. When we first started this work on the covenant, we talked about consultation. The community just felt, oh, you’re just going to do what you want anyway, so why bother? Taking a different approach and speaking to people about health and wellbeing was a new way of looking at it. The district council didn’t have to listen, but they did, and it worked.

It was quite inspiring to see so many other people, attending the webinar, around the country, who are doing what we’re doing in their own way, and recognising that we need to do it together. It feels liberating because there are all these other people who want to see what we can do together. You’ve got to have courage, and being part of other organisations that are already on this journey gives you a fighting chance.  

A Community Champion for We’re Right Here

For us, being part of the We’re Right Here campaign is really important. I don’t do politics, but we have to step up. If we can change the law to make things happen, that’s what we need to do. We’ve got a chance to do this, and we need more voices. Our part is to get more people to be aware of this and join in, then politicians might listen. Politicians need to realise this is a no-brainer—all the answers are here from the residents. 

—Interview ends—

We’re Right Here is asking for the creation of community covenants—formal power-sharing agreements between community groups and their local councils. Find out more about what we’re calling for and how you can get involved.