Our Aims and Objectives

Sussex Branch has conducted a major review into its aims and priorities. Our Chairman, Roy Haycock, wrote to members in August 2006 outlining our plans and inviting all members to complete a questionnaire.

The response to the questionnaire was outstanding with a return representing almost 30% of all members. The questionnaire asked members to tick the ten issues they consider to be the most important and place a cross against a further two they consider to be less important but should still be on the ranking. There was also a set of questions for volunteers to indicate that they might be interested in helping in specific areas (namely planning and fundraising - our current top priorities).

Our Executive Committee and Branch staff spent a day "locked" in the Branch Office in early September. The objective of the day was to examine the results of the questionnaire and use this information to review Branch Aims and Objectives and help develop a forward plan.

The results of the questionnaire were very interesting. The first two results were not very surprising with 91% of members wanting to retain Sussex rural character and identity and 88% wanting to ensure the prioritising of usage of brown field over green field sites. As these represent the main aspirations of the charity we would have been very worried indeed if these two did not get a high score! Campaigning for the South Downs National Park ranked highly as did promoting Local Foods to maintain working farms. Planning issues including LDFs was ranked 5th .

More surprisingly was the ranking of the item for campaigning against major road developments in 10th place with half of the members responding including it in their list of choices. This is clearly one of a group of more difficult issues for the Branch Executive. With this issue in particular, members were split. The comments section represented a small vocalization of the feelings of a fairly substantial group of members that our Executive will need to continue to address the balance between our aspirations for a beautiful Sussex against the harsh practicalities of being able to travel around Sussex .

The Forward Plan is almost complete as we change our focus to implementation. We have several new potential volunteers to contact and are delighted with the results of the questionnaire which has created a real sense of optimism of how the Branch can move forward to meet the challenges ahead.

>Aims and Objectives