Facilities For The Youth

Parson Drove's former Youth Club in the Village Hall

Looking at the results of the youth questionnaire and meeting in more detail, we find several interesting results. Although the response to the youth questionnaire wasn’t particularly high, the youth meeting in February 2005 yielded more answers. Where appropriate, those answers have been added to the original statistics. The full results of the youth questionnaire can be found in Appendix B, but the key points will be highlighted here.

A common complaint levelled at the parish by the youngsters, was that there is very little to do in the village, especially for the 11-19-year-olds. To understand how to remedy this, we first asked in which activities they currently participated. The results are shown in fig. 9.

The high value in the ‘Other’ column indicates a wide variety of activities can be pursued in or around the parish if people have the time and/or transport.

fig. 9 – Activities currently participated in
by the youngsters in the parish

Amongst those listed under 'Other', were: swimming, hockey, cricket, rugby, playing musical instruments, Parson Drove Players, dancing, horse-riding, table-tennis and quad-biking. However, a large proportion of these are pursued outside the parish.

When we asked where they went for their activities, 40% of people pursued activities inside the parish, 30% went to Wisbech St Mary and another 25% went to Wisbech. Some even went as far afield as Kings Lynn or Peterborough. Of those that did travel, almost all went by car. The current bus service to Wisbech was totally unused by the younger people for anything other than the dedicated school buses.

Continued...