Introduction

The idea of undertaking a Village Appraisal was first proposed at a public meeting in January and received enthusiastic support from many people. From this meeting the steering group was formed.

The aim of the Appraisal is to gather information from every household about a whole range of issues that affect the way we all live, work and play. Information gleaned will give some valuable guidance to the Parish, District and County Councils in their long term planning process.

We hope it will be the start of a better relationship between the three Councils and in particular it will give the Parish Council a stronger voice to put the village's case in future developments.

A questionnaire was designed and delivered to every household, the questionnaire was analysed and a brief report of the results of that questionnaire also delivered to every household. The questionnaire is only the first stage; the second stage is the day-long workshop of interested groups and individuals to be held Saturday 26/10/96, for which this longer report is written, following which the final Village Appraisal Document will be produced.

Questionnaire Analysis

Malcolm Macdonald and his colleagues of Research and Intelligence at County Hall undertook the "number crunching" part ofthe data analysis for us, producing a 26 page document containing thousands of numbers for us to make some sense of.

Thank you to Malcolm and his colleagues for their hard work. Thank you also to the volunteers who collected the questionnaires, and to Peter March and Rosemary for allowing their shops to be used as collection points.

But most of all a big thank you to the 493 households in Exminster who took the time to complete our questionnaire. This represents a return of about half the questionnaires delivered.