Prioritising projects

 As part of your getting to know your area, you’ll probably have discovered that there’s lots you could do to improve the paths in your area.  But it’s unlikely that you can achieve everything at once, so work out what is most important and what is most achievable with the timescales, volunteers and budgets that you have.

So how do you decide where to start, which activities are the most important and whether or not the ideas are feasible? There are different ways of deciding on your priorities, and you may have to make some difficult decisions. The most important thing to do is to look at your options fairly and come up with reasons that help to justify your decisions.

We have listed some things that you can consider for different options to help in identifying priorities, but you may need to add other items for your local circumstances.

• Demand: what evidence is there that people want this option?
• Benefit: how many people will benefit from this option?
• Added Value: will this provide a new resource or add to existing resources?
• Impact: will this option help raise the profile of paths in the area or give you an opportunity for further development?
• Cost: how does it compare with other options?
• Resources: how much effort will you have to use to complete the work?
• Timescales: can it be achieved to an agreed timetable?
• Maintenance: will it require a high input of labour to manage?
• Evaluation: can you measure whether the work has been successful or value for money?

You could simply try and "score" each of these considerations using some form of numbering system. This might be useful as a starting point, but be wary of relying on this to make a final decision.

There are other external factors which might influence the importance of different paths in your area.  For example, you may find it easier to access funding for some paths and harder for others – this is likely to influence your choice of priorities.  There’s information on some of these opportunities here.

When you involve people in a decision-making process, you need a way of taking account of their views, and demonstrating that you have done so.  To start with, you might want to try and prioritise your various options just amongst those in your paths group.  Once you’ve done that, you might also want to try asking the wider community.  This is important so that people can see what’s going on and why. It may also help to make sure that you can anticipate disagreements or problems further down the line.