Weekly digest Nov 4th 2017

I can imagine you are now getting pretty tired hearing about the Local Plan consultation exercise and perhaps also about the University project.  Both topics have dominated the digests over the past few weeks but…… no more or, rather, not so much this week! The Local Plan exercise is now completed and the University work is entering the home stretch.  So time to focus attention elsewhere….

  1. Your views matter!
    • We are planning a further series consultations in Jan/Feb across our patch to gather your thoughts. I know you are probably worn out with consultations but this time will be different.
    • Up to now we’ve asked you to comment on proposed developments at HS2/Toton Lane or the Barracks. But what else is important to you? We need our Neighbourhood Plan to include everything that is important to you relating to Toton and Chilwell West.
    • So for instance & I’m being deliberately provocative here….
      • “it’s time for yellow lines on stretches of roads in Chilwell Meadows”
      • “let’s introduce a one-way traffic system in Woodstock Road/Banks Road area and make space for wider pavements/dedicated cycle tracks.”
      • “get rid of the speed humps on Inham Road/Field Lane. Find a better way to stop cars speeding”
      • “replace turf football pitches with artificial all-weather pitches”
      • “plant more trees”
      • “time to compulsory purchase the old garage at Manor Corner and redevelop”
      • “we need a shoe shop at the West Point Centre!”
    • Okay, you get my point. We are interested in your ideas, big or small, for our Area. They may not all be relevant for our Plan, but let’s get everything ‘on the table’ and see how best to tackle them.
    • We’ll be covering this again in the New Year, but never too soon to start thinking and jotting down some thoughts
  2. Spring time activities:
    • I mentioned last week that we have been giving more thought to our next set of tasks. And, as well as doing lots of listening, we need to gather basic information and facts about our Area to use as evidence to back up our ideas.
    • So (another) for instance, not so provocative this time
      • how many doctors/dentists do we have covering our Area? Do we need more?
      • what’s the current capacity of our schools? Do we need to expand existing ones or build new ones?
      • what is the true traffic situation on Stapleford Lane? We know it’s congested a lot of time and we all mutter expletives under our breath when held up. But, what are the facts?
      • what type of housing stock do we have? What sort do we need to see more of?
    • We have started to work on elements of this – we are building a good picture of our schools and their current situation. But we need to do a lot more.
    • The Steering Group will focus on this topic – and the consultations mentioned above – at our meeting next week.
  3. Some stakeholder meetings coming up:
    • Besides our forthcoming Steering Group meeting we are also seeing some key stakeholders in the next couple of weeks.
      • DIO (the MoD organisation selling the Barracks). I reported a couple of weeks ago that we’d held a fairly tense meeting with them. We asked for a quick follow-up to explain why we think it better to share ideas to produce a plan that works for us all. So we’re meeting again next week to discuss our response to Local Plan relating to the Barracks and to understand their thoughts.
      • D2N2 (local business enterprise body). We met this group in July and were invited to meet again with ideas/suggestions that they would be interested in supporting. We know we need more technical consultancy to help us with our evidence gathering phase, so we plan to make a pitch for a grant to help fund it
      • We have already built a good relationship with the HS2 Growth Partnership (the organisation looking at the commercial developments around the station hub). But we have been invited to meet with HS2 Ltd themselves to talk about the development of the actual station. We still need to finalise a date with them, but it should be in the next 2 weeks.
  1. And finally……
    • Local Plan response. Our final mention of this topic (at least for a while). Our response to the consultation can be found here and it has now been submitted to the Council
      If you would like to see the comments we gathered from our sessions, here is a summary report. Many thanks, again, to all who took part
    • University project. This work is now entering the final stages. The students were very pleased with all who took part last Monday at Tesco – they gathered more information than they were expecting. They are now preparing to present back to us in mid-November with their initial thoughts and plans. We hope to have something to show you by early December.
    • Toton & Chilwell Meadows CAT meeting scheduled for Tues Nov 28th at 7pm at Toton Methodist Church. Our local councillors have asked us to let you know of this meeting at the end of Nov. We will attend and pass on some of the comments received in our consultation that need to be handled by the councillors.

 

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