ABOUT THE COMMUNITY FORUM

The Community Forum is an opportunity for community representatives to come together to build their understanding of the proposed route options, reflect the views of their organisation or community, and provide information or insights that may need to be taken into account during project delivery.

The community forum will meet approximately 4 times between November 2022 and December 2023. The meetings will take place in person on a weekday evening, and will be facilitated by Involve. We expect that meetings will last for around two hours.

The Community Forum will work with Involve to agree the agendas for the meetings and can submit items for discussion. In addition to attending the Community Forum meetings, Forum members will also be asked to attend the meetings of the Citizen Sounding Board in the role of ‘keynote listener’. Those meetings will take place during the weekend of 3rd and 4th of December, and again later in 2023.

Who can join the Community Forum?

Membership of the Community Forum is open to representatives of community organisations, for example, disability or special interest groups, community leaders, sporting associations, residents groups, churches, environmental groups, and business groups from within the geographical area of the project. The aim of the Community Forum is to give a voice to community members who otherwise have less of a platform to influence the outcome of the project. Membership of the Forum will therefore exclude people who currently hold elected office, including Councillors, MLAs and MPs.

What does membership of the Community Forum involve?

The purpose of the Community Forum is to ensure that the views of a range of stakeholders and communities are understood and given consideration throughout the project.

The role of members is to:

• Represent the views of their organisation and community in relation to the project and its proposals;

• Consider the project and provide guidance on local needs and priorities;

• Assist in enabling the resolution of local issues resulting from the project in a timely manner.

• Support the project team in identifying local sources of information and analysis, strategies and proposals which may impact on, or need to be taken account of during project delivery;

• Provide feedback at key stages in the delivery of the project;

• Facilitate a ‘local voice’ and communicate information to a wider group of regional and local stakeholders;

• Contribute to the selection of speakers to input into the Citizen Sounding Board by offering feedback on suggestions presented by the organisers to ensure a balanced range of views are presented.

• Act as ‘Keynote Listeners’ to the Citizen Sounding Board, by attending their meetings, observing, taking into consideration, and reflecting their views within the Community Forum discussions.

mEETING 1 - 24 NOVEMBER 2022

Meeting Notes

Meeting 2 - Thursday 12 January 2023