Between June and December 2019, staff from the Council's Community Planning Team, and the Community Learning and Development (CLD)Team, worked alongside third sector colleagues and community groups across Denny, Dunipace and Dennyloanhead area to develop a Community Action Plan (CAP) for the area.
A draft CAP was prepared in early 2020 and contained a list of actions to tackle priority issues in the area such as loneliness and social isolation; food poverty; fuel poverty; mental health and well-being - and many more.
However, since March 2020 much of the work on this has had to be paused, as the community and service providers have come together to deal with the impact of COVID-19. Much of this emergency response is still ongoing, and is being led by community-based organisations working in close co-operation with third sector groups.
Lockdown restrictions, such as not being able to meet in person or in groups, have meant that many of the actions in the CAP haven’t been addressed in a way that we all would have wanted. We recognise of course, that this hasn’t been ideal.
Despite these difficulties, many of the actions listed in the draft CAP (e.g. establishment of a community-led food pantry; a new substance recovery drop-in support service; issuing of low-energy LED light-bulbs, etc.) have been undertaken by colleagues in CLD, CVS Falkirk and the wider third sector working alongside community groups and individuals. These actions have played a crucial role in ensuring that our most vulnerable communities have had the support they need during the pandemic.
In light of the huge impact of COVID-19 on our communities, and the shift in priorities over the past year, we recognise that the draft CAP is now out of date and needs to be refreshed before it has even been finalised and published.
This work is important. The Falkirk Community Planning Partnership is now working with communities across Denny, Dunipace and Dennyloanhead to ensure that the needs and priorities of the local community continue to be addressed. Together, we’re determining what the key actions are, and what the communities feel are the priorities moving forwards.
We’re encouraged that our Community Choices initiative, which allows communities a direct say in how Council funds are spent in your area, has had a very strong uptake in the Denny, Dunipace and Dennyloanhead area. This shows there’s a strong sense of community in the area which we can build on to develop and refresh the CAP.
The Community Planning Partnership knows that the difficulties we discussed and looked at taking action on together haven’t gone away, and that many have been made worse because of the pandemic. We want the community to play a full part in taking this work forward to update the CAP. We want to ensure that the communities of Denny, Dunipace and Dennyloanhead feel supported to address the challenges as we all come out of the pandemic together.
We’ll place regular updates on this webpage and also through the Partnership’s social media channels. For further information, or to learn how you can get involved in refreshing the CAP for Denny, Dunipace and Dennyloanhead, email:
In the meantime, thank you to everyone who has been involved to date by participating in surveys, attending events, planning work, or delivering on it. We look forward to continuing to work in partnership with you all.
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DDD Community Action Plan
PDF file, 1.8 MB