Opportunities

When you reflect upon the countryside and natural phenomena do you think of opportunities? Or do you just want to experience it and enjoy it? It depends what and where it is one might say.

But for managers it's definitely a case of looking for opportunities - opportunities to manage. If you rack your collective brains enough in an awayday facilitation session, competitively brainstorming until you can think of nothing more .... then with a bit more effort and furrowed brows all round you come up with yet one more opportunity, well a decent list of jobs for managers will be compiled. Sighs of relief all round, we've talked ourselves into being necessary.
From the Sheffield Moors Partnership Action Planning minutes.

The proposed process for developing the action plan and consultation covered four stages:

• Stage 1 Focused Consultation over Process and Principles – prepare a summary document of the work to date. Introduce the concept to wider range of stakeholders (like Stanage Forum; user groups, etc), & get their buy in/support (Aug-Oct 2011)
• Stage 2 Developing the Action Plan – led by a proposed SMP Project Officer, the draft action plan is prepared, informed by workshops with stakeholders focused around four proposed themes e.g. ‘Access & Recreation’ (Nov 2011-Mar 2012)
• Stage 3 Public Consultation – Taking the outcomes from Stage 2, develop a series of statements and ‘opportunity’ maps for the SMP area to consult with the wider general public and gather their views and support (April-Oct 2012)
• Stage 4 Final Plan Production & Adoption – Produce final ‘glossy’ SMP strategic action plan and launch.

THEN later,

The group then reflected on the suggested themes within the Master Plan. The four theme were agreed as follows:

• Participation
• Access & recreation
• Cultural heritage
• Sustainable land management (suggested reword of land management for nature conservation, but with plea that nature conservation is not forgotten!)

The following chapter or section headings were also felt to be important to include:

• How we will work together
• Links to corporate and national plans / policy
• The benefits of the work inc: delivering the green economy / ecosystem services; our measures of success; health and wellbeing



Opportunities & issues

The sessions either side of lunch required the group to explore the four themes in more detail. Working in small groups, for each theme relevant opportunities across the SMP area were identified. Alongside each opportunity key issues were listed that needed to be considered / the new SMP project officer should to be aware of. Groups worked on each theme building on the content of previous groups’ contributions.

Opportunities opportunities opportunities. Have you seen them coming down your street calculating the opportunities - the window salesmen, the tree surgeons, securing their future by selling their wares. And each house an opportunity. That's fine. We all have to earn a living. But is this not different? Isn't this a question of them deciding on our behalf what we want with very limited scope for us to influence the result? To the window salesman I say no thanks and close the door. That's not a consultation. These people are making sure there will be a presumption that they'll get their way.
Oh, and we're paying for it.