Debbie has always been an ardent supporter of the Community Shop, whether by investing in community share issues or representing the shop to the Parish and District Councils or liaising with the Post Office.
Today the Elders of the Adventist Church opened up the premises for the villagers to look at what they were investing in, in the latest Community Share issue. The Committee need to raise £50k by the 13th December to ensure the shop has secure premises. Debbie and her daughter visited the site together with lots of locals to view the premises.

Debbie this evening visited the No Limits Club and met with Jake Pryszlak who runs the project.
The club is staffed by students from the University of Gloucestershire at their Oxstall Campus in Gloucester and aims to integrate sport for those with learning difficulties and physical disabilities with their able bodied siblings.
A wide variety of sports are provided from chair volleyball, multi-sports and tonight's golf session.

Debbie spent an hour today with fellow councillor Simon Pickering supporting the IN OUR TOWNS initiative. This project is to promote the festivals, fetes, concerts, fairs that our market towns offer to encourage people to come in to the towns to enjoy the entertainment and use the local businesses.
This is a bi product of the Portas Project and Debbie sits on the Towns Team which oversees the scheme. Local MP Neil Carmichael got the initial funding from BIS which the council matched and the project is due to last for a year. The next meeting of the Towns Team on Monday will look at how the project can become self funding in the future.

On Monday Debbie chaired the 2nd of Chalford Parish Council's consultation concerning Neighbourhood Planning.

Twice the number of people attended the meeting and there were several volunteers offering to take on some of the work.

On Wednesday Debbie chaired a Neighbourhood Planning Meeting. This introduced the concept of neighbourhood planning to the local community. Neighbourhood Planning is about the community deciding what they want and where they want it, and this was the first of a series of three meetings to be held in the Parish.

Further meetings are on 18th November at the Methodist Hall and the 28th at the Youth Centre

Debbie sits on the Board which is looking at services for older people. This means that support for older people which is currently only given to those in supported housing should be available for all.

This week she attended an Appreciative Enquiry whereby all those involved were encouraged to make positive comments about what is good and what can be improved.

For the second time this week Debbie met with representatives of Westmorland, the company which will be operating the new Motorway Service Area on the M5. This company operate a very different business model to most service areas, in that all the food is home made, using locally sourced products and with no franchises.

Debbie visited Stroud Ambitions today to talk to exhibitors and pupils alike. The event is to introduce pupils to the world of work, further training and apprenticeships through interactive workshops with a wide variety of employers.