One of the first things we did as a group was focus on maintenance, because we felt it had become reactive rather than proactive and this was a contributing factor to flooding. We created this spreadsheet to itemise the key tasks to do at all ends of the village. Having one list has given conversations much more clarity and consistency. A year on, we’re now improving this by creating an annual schedule becauses we think ideally all these tasks need to happen year-in, year-out.

This spreadsheet was created in Google Sheets rather than an Office application because:

• we wanted to be able to share a link, not a file.
• it is a live editable document, there is only ever one version.
• no software required, so it is easily viewable by anyone in the community on all types of device.