The results are in: Kenilworth residents list improving leisure facilities and safety for cyclists among top priorities on which town council should spend funds from pot of up to £5 million

Providing or improving facilities for young people, improving leisure facilities and cycle routes and making Kenilworth more environmentally sustainable were the top priorities of more than 1,000 townspeople who responded to a survey asking them how a multi-million pound pot of funds should be spent

Kenilworth Town Council has secured between £3 million and £5 million from the region’s Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). to invest over the next five to ten years.

And in June and July this year, residents had the opportunity to complete an online or paper-based survey to let the authority know how they want this money to be invested.

Residents were asked to rank 11 investment themes in a number of ways and consistently, their top four were providing or improving facilities for young people, working smarter within the town's natural environment and making it more environmentally sustainable, improving general leisure facilities and making cycling easier and safer in the town.

Kenilworth Town Council leader Cllr James Kennedy said: "“More than 1,000 residents completed the survey which is amazing when you consider how many distractions there are with the current health crisis.

"And more impressive still was the number of considered and constructive ideas we received that will help us to make investment decisions based on what residents believe is important to their town.”

He added: “The fact that all the groups we analysed - older, younger, working, retired and from right across the town - ranked investing in our young people as their number one priority, I think speaks volumes about how positive and forward-looking our community is."

Residents were then asked to submit any other ideas they had which were collated into tangible themes that impact directly on everyday life and then prioritised based on how popular the ideas were.

The most popular of these ideas were traffic calming and traffic flow management to reduce speed and congestion, improving civic amenities by adding more benches and bins, and improving signage, improving arts facilities and improving and better maintaining verges, pavements, hedges and trees and plating more trees as well.

The second, optional, part of the survey focused on if and how residents want the Town Council to communicate with them.

It was completed by 81 per cent of respondents with 95 per cent stating they want the authority to communicate more directly with them.

Cllr Alison Firth, of the council's communications group, said: “The fact that so many respondents made a point of completing the optional questions means we need to pay attention.

“People told us they want to hear about progress being made on local projects, about planning and development issues and, perhaps more importantly, they’ve told us they want to know more about how decisions are made locally and what Kenilworth Town Council does alongside our district and county council partners.

"We’ll be taking this on board as we pull our communications plan together."

The council has acknowledged that residents aged between 15 and 24 were under-represented in the survey and it is keen to make sure that this key group’s voices are heard.

Cllr Kennedy said: "“Over the next few Council Meetings, we will be discussing how to better engage with our younger residents and invite all local residents to contribute their ideas too, via our social media platforms and via the contact details available on our website.

"We will also be agreeing how best to take forward the communications activity that residents have said they want to see.

"Now we have an understanding of how residents want CIL funds to be invested, our first step will be to broaden our current, dedicated web pages for the programme to include a full summary of the survey results plus a set of simple steps outlining how residents can submit proposals for CIL funding."

Further information on Kenilworth’s Neighbourhood Plan, which underpins the investment themes included in the survey, can be found at https://www.warwickdc.gov.uk/info/20444/neighbourhood_plans/1006/kenilworthFor information on how CIL funds are managed and allocated by the Government visit https://www.gov.uk/guidance/community-infrastructure-levy#spending-the-levy