Last month dozens of residents attended a community council led town meeting to give their ideas on how their home town could be improved.
They ranged from creating a stronger identity in the form of a town theme, to twinning Lockerbie with the USA’s Syracuse.
And it was decided to set up a steering group for the town to help create a vision for Lockerbie’s future in the guise of a community action plan.
Lockerbie local and Foundation Scotland employee Katie Nairn has been the driving force behind establishing the group, which is currently recruiting members, and getting the ball rolling where the action plan is concerned.
Urging people to join the steering group, she said: “The job of the steering group is just to help the consultant, who will be hired to develop the plan and chosen by the group following an interview process.
“It’s a talking shop. Steering group members are not there to fill out forms, just help whoever they chose to develop the plan, let them know what works in Lockerbie and how to engage. “The group will probably meet four to six times in total.”
So far a select few community councillors have signed on to join the group and Katie plans to contact other organisations in Lockerbie such as the Swimming Pool Trust, Scouts and Rotary to request they send a member to help form the new group.
But progress goes further than just a call to members. Katie has already drawn up a mock timescale and plans and will start to tender for the job of action plan consultant tomorrow.
The would-be developer will be tasked with creating a plan complete with a profile of the area, a community vision, identification of key themes and priorities and much more.
The budget for the project is thought to be a maximum of £9000, plus £1000 to assist with publicity and rental space for events.
The timescale, dependant on the availability of the successful contractor, could see applicants interviewed in January and the final plan completed and presented as early as June 2017. Community councillors praised Katie for her hard work and are happy to see the project move forward as quickly as possible.
■ Would you like to join the Lockerbie Steering Group? If so e-mail [email protected].
