No one would or could suggest that Filkins & Broughton Poggs is an intrinsically unpleasant place to live. For it is what most people would consider beautiful, and is relatively unaffected by the problems most people would regard as particularly troubling. But that does not mean that there are not both shared and individual problems; of course there are, and we should try to alleviate them, for the good of us all.

  What is more, many would look at our little world and see it as unchanging. And they would be both right and wrong! Watch the film and see our village as it ever was, but look again, and count the ways (some small, some bigger) in which it most certainly has changed...

  Change can be a Good Thing... Take the 100 years to about 1950: we acquired a chapel, church, school, school house, vicarage, two reading rooms (one becoming the village hall), swimming pool, bowls green, doctor's surgery, public hot baths, caretaker’s flat, allotments, children’s playground, village museum, several houses for local employees, bus shelter, churchyard extension, village pump, cemetery, and community field... All of it principally the result of local effort for public good. And, of course, social housing came splendidly to the middle of our village because that is what we wanted, not stuck out on the edge as in many other villages.

  So we have certainly seen change that we wanted in the past... And since the wheel keeps turning, and change will continue to happen, whether we like it or not, perhaps we should have a view on what happens next? These days, most of it originates outside of our village: it is largely imposed upon us.

  But acting together, and if we have a plan, we might at least create a chance of seeing change that we like, and staving off change that we do not like. So let's start now to pool ideas and thoughts about our village's future, and let's see what we can come up with.

  In short, let's together get to work on our Filkins & Broughton Poggs ' Community Led Plan'...