Care for Cleveleys with the Coastal Community Team

What is Care for Cleveleys? Get Involved!

What is Care for Cleveleys? It’s the coming together of everyone who has a vested interest in the success of our town.

We’re working together, taking ownership and responsibility for where we live and work. It’s really making a difference – why don’t you get involved?

Exactly What is Care for Cleveleys?

Care for Cleveleys is the everyday name for the group of volunteers who work together to look after plants and ongoing jobs to make our town the best it can be. They’re the ones you’ll see out and about in hi-viz vests – litter picking, gardening, watering and doing all kinds of small DIY jobs.

It’s now part of Cleveleys Town Centre Group. Formed in late 2022 by businesses and volunteers out of the ashes of the old Thornton Cleveleys Association of trade and Commerce and Care for Cleveleys.

  • Join the Facebook Group to see what’s happening and how to help
  • Come along to the monthly town centre clean-ups. The 2024 dates are: Tuesdays at 9.45 for 10am on 16 January, 20 February, 19 March, 16 April, 7 May, 18 June, 16 July, 13 August, 10 September, 1 October, 12 November, 3 December
  • Come along to one of the Care for Cleveleys Meet-Ups and get involved. Everyone is welcome. 10.15 for 10.30am on Tuesdays at The Dickens Pub. The 2024 dates are: 2 January, 6 February, 5 March, 2 April, 30 April, 28 May, Weds 26 June – 2.30pm with RBB at the Community Centre, 30 July, 27 August, 24 September, 22 October, 26 November

Who Cares for Cleveleys?

Cleveleys might not have a Town Council. But it does have a whole squad of people working together to make a difference.

  • Cleveleys Together – Town Centre Partnership is the strategic group which includes local authorities, public organisations like the NHS and colleges. Its aim is the overall long-term success of the town as a place to live, work and visit. Cleveleys Together looks at medium to long term goals and big projects that need big funding.
  • Cleveleys Town Centre Group is the operational group which delivers the objectives set out by Cleveleys Together. It’s a coming together of existing town centre volunteer groups including Care for Cleveleys and trader groups. The Town Centre Group enables these different groups to help each other and achieve much more than they could on their own.

It’s all about local businesses, groups, public bodies and pockets of people working together to do their best for the local area as a whole.

Achievements of Care for Cleveleys

Since its inception, the group has done a lot of work in the town, to make it better than average. Projects include:

  • Consistently over a number of years, sweeping, litter picking, gardening and maintaining the town.
  • Had the bollards, street furniture and clock shelter painted several times, by volunteers from HMP Kirkham.
  • Installed the new noticeboard at New Look thanks to WEC Ltd – and repainted/restored it in 2022.
  • Brightened up the bus station, including the new wayfinding map. Unfortunately it was vandalised and is sadly not in place at the moment. In 2023 new planters and bunting were added and made a big difference.
  • Instigated the new weekly market – there’s a story!
  • Brought back Cleveleys In Bloom – and in 2023 installed new planters in town.
  • and a whole lot more!

Here’s how YOU can get involved –

Join us on Facebook

Do you love Cleveleys? Whether you live here or love to visit, please join the Care for Cleveleys Facebook group. Moral support is every bit as important as physical support. It doesn’t matter where you live or whether you will join events or not. If you love Cleveleys and want to see it thrive, join this group!

Join Care for Cleveleys on Facebook

Find out about current activities, events and projects. This online group is where you can voice your opinion in local consultation. If you see something that could/should be put right, it’s somewhere to share it.

Our Facebook group is also a positive, can-do place! Celebrate being part of a community that rolls its sleeves up and takes charge of the world around it! As they say, we don’t have problems we have opportunities

Join in with the Town Centre Team

Volunteers meet regularly to look after jobs that need doing in the town centre. You can find the dates of the monthly community clean-up sessions in the Facebook group and the Visit Fylde Coast events guide.

Weeding, clearing out litter grot spots, unblocking grids, gardening are some of the tasks they carry out all year round. Generally keeping the town centre ship-shape and Bristol fashion. It’s also a great way to make friends and meet people, with a brilliant feeling of camaraderie and fun. If you want to join in just turn up, equipment will be provided.

Care for Cleveleys Town Centre Team
Care for Cleveleys Town Centre Team

It doesn’t matter how knowledgeable, strong or physically fit you are. If you can’t do physical work but would like to help and get involved there’s also a job for you. From fundraising to making tea, crochet and sewing bunting to digging and painting!

Get involved: Join the Care for Cleveleys Facebook Group or email jane@theRabbitPatch.co.uk

Help with Cleveleys In Bloom

The Town Centre Team blossomed out to enter the national In Bloom competition in 2018, organised by the Royal Horticultural Society. The 2018 entry saw the team starting from scratch. We entered again in 2023 and were delighted to receive a Silver Gilt Award.

Flower bed at Rough Lea Road, part of Cleveleys In Bloom
Flower bed at Rough Lea Road, part of Cleveleys In Bloom

There are opportunities for fundraising, planting, watering, weeding and a whole lot more. Plus lots of laughs and new friends along the way. If you would like to get involved please get in touch. The more the merrier!

Businesses and Groups – please help!

Do you look after a group who like to help with community projects – like Scouts, Cadets etc? Or does your business/place of work help out in the community as part of your CSR policy/obligations?

By all means get in touch and we can find your volunteers a job to do! From helping to clean and tidy a specific area, to a larger, single project, we always welcome offers of help.

Contact jane@theRabbitPatch.co.uk

The aims of Care for Cleveleys

  • To talk to each other – egg each other on, share enthusiasm and positivity. Complete small projects and encourage each other to do nice things. Just like a real life community group would do if they met each week/month. Most of all to make friends and have fun!
  • Share our positive actions – like picking up litter, and encourage others to do the same.
  • Give control back to local people – making it OK to pick up litter as you pass it. Making it normal to pull up weeds. Giving you back pride in where you live. Just like your mum/grandma had in the 1900’s – rather than expecting someone else to do it all for you.

‘Live here or visit, we love it’ is Visit Cleveleys slogan – and that’s what it means. It means all of us. Local people, visitors, shop owners, businesses, children, old people. We all have a stake in how good or bad the place is – and between us we make it even better.

Where did Care for Cleveleys Begin?

Why does it matter? Why do people want to do all this unpaid work?

It was me, Jane Littlewood, your publisher of Visit Cleveleys, who dreamed up the idea of Care for Cleveleys in the first place.

Not having been involved in community work before I moved to Cleveleys, I always thought that ‘you’ couldn’t do things. That if you didn’t like something ‘they’ had to sort it out. I’ve since discovered that’s not true. If you don’t like something, you DO have the ability to change it. I started the Facebook group initially, to try and encourage people to take responsibility for the things they didn’t like to see – like litter and weeds.

Roll up your sleeves…

“When my mum (Chrissie Blogger) was young, people looked after where they lived themselves. Local councils didn’t do everything for everybody. So it was normal to roll your sleeves up and go and sort out whatever needed sorting out.

“Today, people feel like they shouldn’t take community action. They worry that everyone will look at them, that they’ll feel silly. That they pay Council Tax and so it’s ‘someone else’s job’! Let’s take that control and responsibility back, and each of us do our own little bit to make Cleveleys a place and a community to be proud of!

“Through Visit Cleveleys I’d run the original clock shelter restoration campaign. I was wondering what to do next. That was before the Coastal Community Team began. So I decided to set up a Facebook Group, a sort of virtual-reality community group, with the aim of looking after our town.”

The clock shelter in Cleveleys. Restored and the clocks replaced in 2014 by the local community, led by Visit Cleveleys
The clock shelter in Cleveleys. Restored and the clocks replaced in 2014 by the local community, led by Visit Cleveleys

It all adds up

Jane adds “Like you, I have no spare time at all. Between paid work and my own voluntary activities, I literally work all the time. Much as I would like to breeze about picking litter up, talking to people and engendering community spirit, I just don’t have the time.

“You probably don’t either. We’re all busy with jobs, families, kids etc. So whatever we do as a community must be easy but effective. And open for everyone to feel involved, and part of a team. Lots of little acts of responsibility and care quickly add up to make a great big difference.”

  • We CAN pick up a bit of litter instead of walking past it.
  • Take responsibility for where we live.
  • We CAN talk in a positive manner about the many great things about Cleveleys.

Then in 2016 the Coastal Community Team (CCT) began, a group of local volunteers working with Wyre Council, to make our town better than average. It was one of many Coastal Community Teams in seaside towns around the UK. They were about encouraging local people to work together and strengthen the economy in our seaside towns. All supported by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) at central government, helped with a start-up grant.

More about Coastal Community Teams

A Coastal Community Team (CCT) was a local partnership consisting of the local authority and people from a coastal community who have an understanding of the issues facing that area. It was about working together to develop an effective forward strategy for the place.

Cleveleys Coastal Community Team

Our CCT at Cleveleys was one of many in the UK, supported by DCLG (Department for Communities and Local Government). Fleetwood, Blackpool and St Annes were all been awarded funding for Coastal Community Teams. The Department for Communities and Local Government announced the award of £10,000 following a successful funding bid by Wyre Council.

This team began in 2016 but properly formed in 2017, including those who already work for the benefit of Cleveleys. It’s building on the good work done so far. A Town Team Action Plan was drawn up and submitted to DCLG. It took both short and longer term community priorities into account and any existing plans and sought to improve their impact. After accepting the plan, DCLG awarded a £10,000 grant in early 2017 to support the work of the team.

Care for Cleveleys carries on…

The Care for Cleveleys Facebook Group was adopted as the Coastal Community Teams page. It’s where we discuss and decide what needs doing, plan upcoming projects, and keep up to speed with developments.

The CCT spent several years tackling the most obvious things in the town. The bollards were painted for the first time in years and the grey planters transformed from ashtrays into flower beds! The town centre volunteers got together and started litter picking and looking after the town. The rest, as they say, is history!

Still Caring for Cleveleys…

A global pandemic got in the way and while we were all unable to get out and do things, the town suffered. Everything started to look unkempt and unloved – like it did before Care for Cleveleys began.

The Coastal Community Team project came to a natural end (and so did the pandemic), but Care for Cleveleys didn’t! The volunteers picked themselves up after the Covid pandemic and carried on where they left off. The team carried on looking after the streets, making improvements and planning activities. The aim is always to attract people to the town, to keep it vibrant in the future. The strapline is ‘Putting people at the heart of the town’. Which says it all!

Then in late 2022 everything stepped up a gear with the arrival of Cleveleys Town Centre Group. It’s the operational group which delivers the objectives set out by Cleveleys Together. It’s a coming together of existing town centre volunteer groups including Care for Cleveleys and trader groups. The Town Centre Group enables these different groups to help each other and achieve much more than they could on their own. A LOT of work is being done behind the scenes and some of it is on the new website www.CleveleysTCG.org.uk.

Get in touch

Jane Littlewood is the volunteer who heads up the Coastal Community Team. You can get in touch by emailing jane@theRabbitPatch.co.uk

While you’re here…

Go to the homepage of the Visit Cleveleys website for the latest updates.

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