Weekly Digest: 24th February 2018

There’s a lot to report this week so I’ll skip the normal preamble and get straight to business.

1.      Consultation exercise almost over: a last chance to get involved!

• We are nearing the end of our consultation exercise. We’ve held 3 events so far (including the AGM ‘launch’ session) with 1 more to go – this Monday 26^th at the Village Hotel (1^st floor mtg room) between 2.30pm and 7.00pm
• This series of consultations are designed to gather input to our Neighbourhood Plan. They are centered around you! We need your thoughts and ideas; your concerns and issues; your dreams and aspirations. All comments captured will help shape the policies in our Plan.
• The 2 events held last week were mixed. We didn’t attract many attendees to the session at Chilwell Community Centre, but the weather on the day was pretty awful so it wasn’t too surprising that people decided to stay warm and dry. On the other hand, the session at Toton saw almost 30 people dropping in at various times to have a chat and give us their views.
• We’ve also been running an on-line survey and, so far, almost 90 people have taken part. If you haven’t completed your survey yet, please take a few moments to do it over the weekend. The results of these surveys will provide yet more evidence that we’ll use to justify the policies in our Plan. It is vital your views are included. Here’s the link.  Many thanks!
• Following Monday’s session, we’ll need a couple of weeks to collate and summarise all the input. After that, we will continue to gather further data (demographics, traffic stats etc.) to help strengthen our evidence before we start to draft the Plan.

2.       Drafting a Master Plan for the Barracks

• If you come along to Monday’s session at the Village you will (hopefully) be able to see a draft of a Master Plan for the Barracks site
• As reported last week, we continue to work with Peter, a University graduate, who is developing a master plan for us. We’ve provided him with ideas based on the initial feedback and thoughts collated so far & Peter hopes to have a plan ready to view at the Village.
• Based on your feedback we asked for some key elements to be included:
  1. the heritage elements and major green spaces of the site (mostly the eastern flank) must be protected
  2. position a ‘plaza’ type retail area next to the memorial garden
  3. provide a major north/south road through the site to relieve pressure on Stapleford Lane
• We met Peter, on Monday, to provide further thoughts and he plans to incorporate them in a finished version. We are looking forward to seeing the result! Of course, whatever is presented can be further refined, but it’s still exciting to see something springing up from our ideas.

3.        Meeting #1: D2N2 (The Local Enterprise Partnership for Notts and Derbys)

• Richard and Graham had a useful meeting with the Chairman and Chief Executive (interim) on Tuesday. We asked to meet following the disappointing outcome from the latest HS2 Strategy Board and the struggle to form a Delivery Board for East Midlands Hub Station. The Delivery Board is needed to transform the ideas contained in the Strategy into actions
• We held a wide-ranging discussion that focused on 2 main elements:
  1. our belief that we should all work together to attract a ‘marquee signing’ to the Innovation Village that will encourage other top-notch businesses to the area.  D2N2 endorsed the idea and offered their support
  2. our ambitions to set up our CIC.  We need to access significant funding to avoid the need to continually scratch around for a grant here or a donation there (albeit they are all very welcome). Again, they were very supportive and agreed to provide suggestions of funding streams that would be appropriate for us to access.

4.     Meeting #2: HS2 Ltd

• Richard, Norman & Graham met with Paul Mullins (HS2 Ltd Stakeholder Mgr) on Friday for a quick catch-up. Again, it was another productive meeting and Paul has kindly agreed to come along to our session at Village on Monday. So, if you have further questions relating to HS2, come along and ask him. Paul aims to be with us late afternoon – after 4.
• We discussed a broad range of issues with Paul covering matters such as noise mitigation measures, flood plain risks, & power line considerations. These are all big topics, so we agreed to set up a workshop to discuss them in some detail. We will be inviting key stakeholders along to join us including:
  1. the Environment Agency who are responsible for Erewash Valley & associated flood plain,
  2. Western Power who own the substation at the top of Stapleford Lane and all the pylons/power lines down through Toton Fields Nature Reserve & Sidings
• We still need to finalise the list attendees and agree the process for the workshop, but it was a positive start and reinforces the importance HS2 places on the views of the Forum. We clearly have the ability to influence the design of the site especially since we are talking to HS2, whilst there is still time, before final designs become ‘fixed’.

5.     And finally.…

Our thanks to Cllr Eric Kerry, one of our Area County Councillors, who has kindly donated £250 to the Forum to help us purchase an office printer and associated supplies. It means we no longer need to use commercial printers whenever we need a small number of documents.

Our thanks to Jenny Kirkwood, our RCAN consultant who has been undertaking additional ‘street’ consultations for us. She was at Tesco Toton on Friday and plans to be at Sainsbury’s (Blenheim Drive) and West Point shopping centre next Tuesday. So, if you see her about, please stop and have a chat and complete a survey! Here’s another link to the online version

Our thanks also to John Berry, our Independent Examiner who has completed his review of our accounts for the last year. We’ve been given a clean bill of health and as soon as we have an electronic version, we’ll upload it to the website, so you have access.

Don’t forget the Toton & Chilwell Meadows CAT mtg next Thurs 1^st at 7.30 at Toton Methodist Church