The Otley Town Enhancement Study is an Otley in Bloom project which began when we identified many areas of the town where improvements could be made. It was decided that the way forward would be to devise an action plan where we could list everything we wanted to do and prioritise the proposed projects.
This idea was developed further and in 2003 we produced a substantial document entitled “50 Ways To Green Our Town“. This document contained details of all the projects the group would like to tackle. Projects ranged from improving the car parking areas of Otley and removing huge advertising hoardings from certain areas to creating a community orchard for everyone to use.
We contacted Leeds City Council about the document and ideas and were invited to submit a copy of our proposals to their planning department for consideration. After having these approved the next step was to advertise the document and plans in the local library and media. We also invited the local community to a public meeting so that everyone could be included and have their say in how we could make progress with the project.
At the meeting we displayed a brief description of each of the proposed projects. We had a wonderful turnout where over seventy people ranked the projects in order of preference and put forward any other projects that they wanted to see done. When the meeting was over we then collated the responses and have been able to group and prioritise the projects according to the interest shown by the people of Otley.
From these responses we created a “Framework for Action” document, which we submitted to Leeds City Council and the Market Towns Initiative. The MTI then agreed to provide funding for consultants to provide designs for the areas that have been identified as needing work. As a group we gave over 500 hours of voluntary time before we were ready to call on the consultants to do their work.
The consultants then made a survey of the town, considered the viable improvements that were possible, and provided us with an 80 page document entitled “The Otley Town Enhancement Study”, which you can see at the top of this webpage. It contains design ideas and detailed costings for the following main projects:
- Town gateways
- Main road corridors
- Public parks
- Car parks
- Street furniture
- Railway trail
- Hoardings removal
- Marketplace
Otley in Bloom 