THE RESULTS

Introduction

The Combe Martin Community Appraisal was delivered to 971 households by our many helpers, and 540 households returned the forms. The replies represented 1,271 people, of which 1,051 were in the 11 + category and therefore had the opportunity to respond to the questions. This was a response rate of 55.6% which was well above average and very encouraging.

Of those people who flled out the form, 55% were women and 45% men. The table below shows an analysis of males and females aged 11 and over in the 540 households.

Housing

There are 36 households who currently need alternative accommodation and a further 12 households said that members had moved out of the parish in the last five years because they were unable to find suitable housing. 96 people said they are currently looking for alternative accommodation, 52 of these are looking for accommodation to buy.

197 people felt that no housing is needed in Combe Martin. The remaining people were strongly in favour of housing for locals (450 people) and for young people (336 people). Respondents also thought that there is a need for housing both for the elderly and low income families.

Transport And Roads

The majority of households have either one or two cars with very few people not owning a car at all. Most people either park their cars in a garage or off the main road. This does not vary greatly from off season to summer season.

Most people think that Combe Martin needs additional car parking (759 people) and even more think that we need coach parking facilities (803). When asked where the coach parking should be, the majority of people opted for the site adjoining the Pack of Cards. There were several other places suggested, the main one being at Seaside. When it came to additional car parking, people were most in favour of parking in the centre of the village although the Seaside was also very popular as a site.

Not surprisingly, pavements, traffic speed and heavy vehicles are all given as problems on the main street, as are parked cars.

Those people who use the bus service have very mixed feelings on the route, timetable, reliability and cost.

Sport, Social And Entertainment

Villagers have widely differing views on how good the play, recreation and social facilities are for under 8s. 30% said the facilities are reasonable, and 36% said they are poor. However, everyone agrees that the 8-24 year olds all need additional facilities and both the facilities for 25-60 year olds and over 60s are felt to be reasonable.

The Town Hall is used by just over a quarter of the village for sport (27%). In addition, 572 people said that they occasionally use the hall for social events.

Most people never use Hollands Park for sports or social events, nor do they use the Snooker Hall or Bowls Club. Exactly half of those who replied use the pubs and a quarter use the Community Centre. Overall, it seems that nearly everyone uses one or other of the village's facilities.

The Sports Council will be glad to know that there is a lot of support for expanding facilities at Hollands Park. Over 140 people are in favour of facilities being provided for each of the following:

although the most popular improvement would be to provide a children's play area.

There is a lot of enthusiasm for improving the beach. 525 people would like to see sand added to it and almost as many (520) would like to see landing facilities for small boats provided. Other proposals which were popular were to improve access to the beach and to create a platform/stage for various entertainments. There were several other suggestions made for improvements which the Working Party should look at.

Employment

324 people who replied are employed, 139 are self employed and 346 are wholly retired. The remaining people are either in education or training, not in paid employment or sick/disabled. Of those who are in paid employment or studying, 35% work or study at home, 40% work or study in the area or travel up to 8 miles from Combe Martin, 21% travel between 8 and 30 miles and 4% have to travel over 30 miles. There is surprisingly little seasonal work in the village and most people who work, work full time. Employment is fairly evenly spread over the different kinds of work.

57 people who are not currently in paid employment said that they are either looking for work or will be doing so in the next 12 months. They will be looking for a spread of different employments, eg 16 want clerical work, 14 want unskilled manual work. Of the 57 people, 10 have been looking for work for over 2 years and 16 have been looking for less than six months. Most people want full time work, and the majority have found that the biggest problem is a lack of employment opportunities, although transport is also a big problem. 44 people said that they had had to turn down a job or training opportunity because they could not get there each day. Of these,10 said that this was because of family commitments and the rest had difficulties with transport.

156 people run their own business, and these businesses employ a further 233people. Most businesses are in the hotel/catering/tourism or retail/repair sectors, although there is quite a good spread of different businesses. 85% of the businesses are located in Combe Martin. Most businesses expect the size of their workforce to remain the same over the coming year and there seem to be no diffculties when recruiting staff. However, there are little or no training facilities provided for staff. Of those businesses who do provide training, 17 use other establishments, 13 have training for qualifcations and 11 have an in-house training facility.

There are 16 people in the village who intend to become self-employed in the next 12 months. Not surprisingly, lack of start up finances was the reason given most often for not starting a business.

There is strong support for the provision of a few small-scale light industrial workshops in Combe Martin, and most people thought that Park Hills would be the best place for these.

Apart from paid work, 27% of respondents do some kind of voluntary work.