'Reimagining Dunshaughlin' - planning for the future of a growing town

Community outreach meeting to be hosted by Town Centre First team

The Dunshaughlin Town Centre First Team is to host a community outreach evening next week in the local community centre.

Dunshaughlin has been selected as Meath's second town to undertake a Town Centre First plan, following Enfield.

Town Centre First (TCF) is a Government-backed initiative that aims to create town centres to function as viable, vibrant and attractive locations for people to live, work and visit, while also being a the service, social, cultural and recreational hub for the local community.

The TCF approach is centred on collaboration and communication; understanding the place with an analysis and appraisal underpinned by a town audit/data gathering-process; defining the place, shaping the plan around high-level objectives that are subsequently expressed through a series of actions; and enabling the place, identifying a clear path to delivery of the plan, cognisant that this will require actions of varying scale to be delivered by different partners such as local authority, government departments or funding agencies.

The process in Dunshaughlin began in May when the Town Regeneration Officer with Meath County Council, Pat Shore, and his colleague, Benan Clancy, hosted a drop-in event at Meath County Council offices in the town, outlining the initiative, and inviting expressions of interest from across all sectors, members of the public, committees, groups, youth groups, residents, traders, businesses and more in the town.

Following a number of subsequent meetings, a Town Centre First team was brought together, who have been meeting over recent months. Their initial information gathering process has been to conduct a 'Reimagining Dunshaughlin' survey during the recent harvest festival and online, gathering local people's views on Dunshaughlin and how they would like to see it develop into the future.

As the collaboration and communication process continues, the next step is the outreach evening in a 'World Cafe' style format to which everybody in the community is invited to on Thursday 17th October between 7pm and 9pm, to give their views, and ideas on a masterplan for the future of Dunshaughlin as it expands.

The event takes place in Dunshaughlin Community and Sports Centre to the rear of the community college on the Drumree Road.