Colchester
The parish of Myland St Michael is in the middle of a massive building programme. This includes the building of over 5,000 new homes for 17,000 people, a 300% population expansion, two new primary schools, a million-pound community centre, modern workplaces for 3,500 people, a retail park, a hundred-acre country park, a new regional hospital with a university medical school and a multi-million pound new regional sports stadium. There are five other further major regional projects within the borough of Colchester.
However, the development does not all arrive at once or as promised. Since 2002 housing has been arriving at the rate of a street a month or 48 new streets of houses. Since 2004 the two post offices and most of the local shops have closed. Since 2000 the first primary school build was not realised and the developer built more new houses on the proposed site. Since 2000 the first 8,000 people have moved in to an area with varying degrees of satisfaction.
Myland Churches Together and visiting church leaders were clear that much needed to be done. In the past 30 months they have:
- Planned a half-million pound redevelopment of the parish buildings with the local MP as the project champion.
- Begun negotiating a local ecumenical partnership to found at least two new congregations.
- Forged strong alliances with the community development team and the parish council.
- Joined the local strategic partnership.
- Engaged with the local development framework.
- With the help of the bishop and deanery won three grants for two part-time staff.
- Recruited two volunteer ministers.
- Won a Home Office ‘Faith Community Capacity Building Grant’.
The next deanery vision plan is set to give both strong support in planning for and managing the necessary changes and the energy and enthusiasm required to ask Kingdom questions about how this vast new community is shaped.
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