Another month has flown by and the Forum workload continues to build up. You will have received an interim digest during the week concerning the launch of the HS2 Growth strategy. We don’t intend to overload your inbox with Forum matters, but it was important for you to receive the new strategy ‘hot off the press’ as it does provide fresh thinking for the Toton Lane area.
- Part 2 Local Plan consultation kicks off
- We held our first consultation event last Weds at the Village Hotel with a turnout of about 15-20 people (including some councillors) who came along to ask questions and provide their thoughts. We have written up the key comments made and questions raised and have posted them on our website here for you to look over.
Please add your comments/queries & we’ll do our best to answer them - Next week’s consultation event is on:
Weds 11th Oct between 6pm and 9pm at Chilwell Community Centre & Library, Inham Road (next door to the pub)
Please come along and let us know your views.
- Links to consultation documents are on our website but, as before, this is the key one to read…. Local Plan Core Toton & Chilwell
- The remaining 2 events are as reported before – with the correct day this time!
- Weds 18th Oct 6pm to 9pm at Toton Methodist Church, Stapleford Lane
- Mon 30th Oct 6pm to 9pm at Village Hotel – as a final wash-up
- Back to the future at the University of Nottingham
- I promised last week to share a couple of ideas the post graduate students came up with following their initial 2-day design workshop. There were lots of ideas presented but ones that impressed us were:
- Build a ‘land bridge’ over the A52 (somewhere near Archer’s Field) to link Stapleford to Toton. This bridge would provide pedestrian/cycle access to Toton Lane developments and the new HS2 station
- Design more and wider pedestrian/cycle routes than normally provided on similar developments. The aim is to encourage public transport options of buses, trams, trains
- Proposals to build some apartment style dwellings. This, of course, results in higher density building but allows for more community space, more green space/wider green corridors.
- At this stage, these are just ideas being bandied about. However they do provide ‘food for thought’ on how the site might look and reflects some of the thinking contained in the HS2 Strategy.
- Work in earnest by the University has now started. We intend to meet them each week over the next month or so to provide further input.
- Last Tuesday we provided an overview of the Forum along with our initial thoughts on the scale of the task. Steffan Saunders (Head of Planning at the Broxtowe) also came along and provided an overview of the development sites from a planning perspective.
- Next Tuesday, we will provide a history of Toton and Chilwell so they understand the evolution of our area and the heritage we have built up in the community and on the Barracks
- The post graduates want to hear from you before finalising their ideas. We have tentatively set aside Monday Oct 23rd at Toton Tesco. The date/location still needs to be confirmed but please pencil the date in your diary. More on this next week.
- More consultations being planned for the new year
- We also met our grant-funded consultant during the week to plan further consultations across our patch. We were initially planning to hold these events before Christmas.
- However, given the current Local Plan events and the University work, we feel it is better to reschedule our ‘bottom-up’ consultation for the new year.
- We’ve given Jenny (from RCAN) an outline of our requirements and suggested some locations. She will now build a work plan for us to review and sign-off
- Jenny will also help the University with their planned consultation event so you will likely meet her when that takes place.
- And finally….
- George Spencer Academy:
We met with Fraser Mitchell, the Principal, last week to discuss the idea of moving the school to the other side of Toton Lane as suggested in the HS2 strategy. The meeting was very constructive and we agreed to meet again (along with the Trust’s CEO) in a couple of weeks to discuss next steps - Peveril’s current planning application:
The council have been in touch to say that Peveril are re-working their proposals to take into account some the comments they have received. The expectation is that the revised plans will be submitted in late October for a further round of consultations. We’ll keep you updated… - Font size changes:
The feedback from the changes made last week have all been positive so we’ll stick to current style for the time being.
That’s enough for this week and apologies for the length. However there was a lot to cover and, as the saying goes, we live in interesting times…..
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