2021 | SEPTEMBER — Future Purley

After the council published the Framework unfortunately it was announced that the council declared bankruptcy, the Purley Panel decided to continue as a community group and a Facebook page was created to share our latest news with the community and also reach out and engage with the community.

We heard about the ‘High Streets For All Challenge’ that was launched by the Mayor Of London and we applied!

We were delighted to win £20k seed funding in the first round, every borough in London had a number of community groups and Councils apply for this funding and we were delighted to be short listed and win £20K.

This money was to be used to investigate what we could do to make positive changes to benefit Purley High street and engage with the local community to see what they wanted for the High Street.

We were able to arrange a number of community engagements, listed below, as well as instruct various professionals to carry out a number of surveys on the Multi Storey Car Park.

The Car Park had been put forward as a space that could be utilised in some way, to hold a variety of events, such as roof top cinema for example. An idea of ‘Purley Sundays’ was put forward, the council would not lose out on parking revenue on Sundays, so could we use the car park space in some other way?

To be able to do this we had to see if this space was safe, accessible and check a number of factors-which this money would enable us to investigate. If feedback and survey reports showed us that the Car Park was not a favoured location to use, then we would have to think about what other areas in the High Street were under used and could be viable spaces.

Purley High Street Fun Day

We held a ‘High street Fun day’ in September. Locals were encouraged to come along and enjoy a community fun day, where they had the opportunity to write down their ideas about what they wanted for Purley on chalk boards and post it notes, whilst there was free entertainment such as children’s activities, a bubbleologist, live music and food and market stalls.

We also used this as an opportunity to promote a survey we had running, we wanted to reach a wide range of demographic groups and focused on the following:

Those that lived in Purley and were over 18
Young people under 18
People living outside of Purley
Local businesses

Other engagements carried out to see what the people of Purley wanted for their High Street:

Promoting a survey to see what the community wanted
Advertising in the local community for health and safety, building and fire consultants, engineers etc
A workshop at Riddlesdown secondary school. A group from each year attended and gave us valuable feedback on what the 12-18 year olds want for Purley High street