Forum Digest 28th August 2021

Posted on 28/08/2021 by CTTCDavid

As promised in last week’s Digest, here is the formal

Notice of the Forum AGM – Thursday 7th October 2021 at 7pm via Zoom

Please see the website AGM Page for details. We will add more information in the coming weeks to the AGM page.

As you will be aware, this is the first time the Forum has held the AGM by Zoom. There will be updates on what we have been doing, and we need formal approval by the membership for a number of items on the agenda. We also hope to have a guest speaker, but this is still to be confirmed on the agenda which you can access with this link AGM agenda Oct21.

One of the issues to be considered is whether to extend the life of the Forum for another five years (a brief explanation is given at the bottom of the agenda).

Click the link to complete the online AGM Registration Form in advance, plus there is an opportunity to volunteer to be a member of the Steering Group using this form. A separate voting form will be made available later (see below) which will include the option to raise any questions you may have.

Please register for the AGM by completing the Registration Form by 30th September. After which, you will be sent details of how to join the meeting. The same form can be used to volunteer to be a member of the Steering Group. The deadline to receive your nomination for the Steering Group is 16th September. Once we have the names of volunteers, we will issue the separate Voting Form (for full Forum members) to be returned by 30th September to ensure votes are counted ahead of the AGM.

Before volunteering for the Steering Group, please read these documents – the Forum Constitution, the updated Steering Group Roles definitions and Ways of Working.

Membership of the Forum is open to residents 16 years or over, or who work, in the Broxtowe Borough Council wards of Chilwell West and Toton & Chilwell Meadows (The Forum Area).

If you are not already a member and are eligible to do so, then please join us and become a member by emailing assist.cttcnf@gmail.com with your full name, address and postcode, or write to us at our address on the website. Junior members under 16 are also welcome.

Only full members are allowed to vote at General Meetings or stand for the Steering Group, but non-members (‘Friends’) and junior members are welcome to attend and observe the AGM.

The minutes of the last AGM held in 2019 are here 2019 AGM Minutes DRAFT. Unfortunately, due to Covid restrictions we were unable to hold an AGM in 2020, so there is quite a lot to catch up on, and the annual reports for 2019 & 2020 will be available soon on the website. In the past year we have all become familiar with using Zoom or similar video calling/conferencing for work and/or keeping in touch with family, so we are fairly certain that you are all used to it by now, and can bear to attend one more meeting (for about an hour)! So, please do add the date above to your diaries and calendars.

As always please do feel free to ask any questions you may have on this or anything else via the Contact Us page, and we’ll do our best to answer them via the Questions and Answers page.

David, Vice Chair

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Forum Digest 21st August 2021

Posted on 21/08/2021 by CTTCDavid

Just a couple of quick updates this week:-

Infrastructure Focus Group

One of the papers recently mentioned by Ian in a previous Digest (3rd July) is now available to view/download with this link Making cycling a viable option for accessing Toton Area Development from within a 5-mile radius. Please do have a read, it is worthwhile. 

A Date For Your Diaries

Following on from our post on 31st July, the date for the Forum AGM is now set as Thursday 7th October at 7pm and will this year be held via Zoom for the first time! As you can imagine it has taken quite a bit of organising for us to do it this way, but we are nearly there! We are just finalising the nitty gritty and aiming to publish the agenda, registration process and formal notice next week. We hope to have an invited guest speaker, and once confirmed the agenda will be ready to share with you all.

In the meantime, please add the date above to your diaries and calendars. The AGM is scheduled to last just over the hour, but please bear with us if it takes a little longer using the technology!

We all know that these type of meetings can be a fairly dry affair (which is why we hope to have an invited speaker), but it is necessary that we share important information with you in a formal way, and as required by the Forum Constitution. It also provides our members with the opportunity to raise any Forum related issues with the current Steering Group. Without you, its members, the Forum wouldn’t exist so please do make every effort to attend the AGM as there will be some important items of business requiring formal approval by the membership, not least electing the new Steering Group for the coming year.

If you would like to put yourself forward to volunteer as a member of the Steering Group, there will be an opportunity to do so using the AGM registration form available next week. If you would like to consider this, as well as the Constitution (above), please also take some time to read the updated  Steering Group Roles definitions and the Ways of Working.

Forum Membership

We have noticed that some of you receiving our posts & Digests are not on the Forum membership list. This is not an issue in itself, but if you would like to become a full member of the Forum please email your full name, address and postcode to assist.cttcnf@gmail.com. The criteria for full membership are anyone aged 16 years or over and who is either a resident or works in the two Broxtowe Borough wards of Chilwell West or Toton & Chilwell Meadows (The Forum Area). Junior members under 16 are also welcome. Everyone else will continue to be a ‘Friend’ of the Forum. Only full members are allowed to vote at General Meetings or stand for the Steering Group.

Rest assured that everyone registered to receive our posts & Digests will continue to do so irrespective of membership status.

As always please do feel free to ask any questions you may have on this or anything else via the Contact Us page, and we’ll do our best to answer them via the Questions and Answers page.

David, Vice Chair

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Forum Digest 7th August 2021

Posted on 07/08/2021 by CTTCDavid

Community Masterplanning

Back in June in his Chairman’s Forum Update, Richard mentioned that we had received grant funding to extend the masterplanning work contained in the draft Neighbourhood Plan. The grant has been provided to the Forum by Locality and Groundwork UK to initiate the work needed to create a Neighbourhood Development Order (NDO) covering Chetwynd Barracks and those parts of the Toton Strategic Location for Growth that are now described as Toton East & Toton South in the Strategic Masterplan – Supplementary Planning Document (SM-SPD) which is being developed by Notts County Council, Broxtowe and EMDevCo.

The funding received is over £40,000 (a significant sum!) for this initial work. As the Forum is not incorporated, the grant is held by our Community Interest Company (CIC) acting as the accountable body on our behalf. Both parties have had to ensure due diligence with processes in place to provide an audit trail for the money spent, as this is essentially public money provided by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG).

We are now in a position to let you, our members, know that we have appointed & contracted Kefa Design as the consultants for this masterplanning work, and that the work is underway. So exciting times ahead! Some of you may remember that Kefa Design previously provided the high-level masterplan designs for us in the draft Neighbourhood Plan, and with that prior knowledge of our Area, they can now take that further and provide a more detailed masterplan guided by the Forum’s policies, aspirations and guidelines set out in the draft Neighbourhood Plan i.e. to put ‘more meat on the bone’ so to speak.

Clearly there is a lot going on in our Area currently, and the various masterplanning exercises may seem confusing, but we will try and provide as much clarity as we can as things progress. There will be a series of consultations and public engagement exercises on all these in the coming months. As well as the formal and official methods of communicating these, we will also let you know via the Forum digest. In addition to the Forum response to each of these, we encourage all members of the Forum to provide their own individual responses to ensure the community as a whole has its say on what we all know will be significant development in our Area, whether or not HS2 comes to Toton. These are both exciting and daunting times for us all, but if we want to shape the future of Toton & Chilwell for the benefit of the existing and future community, as well as the generations to come, we need to ensure our collective and individual voices are heard loud and clear. The coming Forum AGM will provide an opportunity to engage or re-engage with these developments. More on this in the coming weeks.

More information about NDOs can be found here under Further Reading at the bottom of the web page.

Please do feel free to ask any questions you may have on this or anything else via the Contact Us page, and we’ll do our best to answer them via the Questions and Answers page.

David, Vice Chair

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Big Notts Survey

Posted on 07/08/2021 by Mark T

Nottinghamshire County Council is asking for views on the future of Nottinghamshire. The Forum will not be making a submission as we consider it important that as many individual views are submitted as possible.

How do you want Nottinghamshire to look in 10 years’ time? This is just one of the big questions in the ‘Big Notts Survey’. We want to hear from every Nottinghamshire resident on your hopes and concerns for the future as we emerge from this pandemic and look to a brighter long-term vison for our county.

This survey is short in the time it takes to complete but is big in its themes and aspirations.  Feedback from the survey will form the cornerstone of the council’s new ambitious Council Plan which will be finalised this autumn and will look to the next 10 years and beyond whilst setting out its detailed priorities for the next four years.

Click on the picture above to compete the survey which is now open and closes on 19 September 2021.

Thank you in advance for sharing your views and for helping to build a better Nottinghamshire that benefits us all.

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Infrastructure Focus Group – Sustainable & Active Travel

Posted on 31/07/2021 by Ian C

Following on from Ian’s Infrastructure Focus Group introduction on 3rd July, here is a link to one of the papers mentioned that was in the final stages of completion at the time Chetwynd and Toton Area Development – Sustainable and Active Travel and now finalised. As always please ask any questions or provide comments on this document via the Contact Us page, and we’ll do our best to answer them via the Questions and Answers page.

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The Forum AGM is coming

Posted on 31/07/2021 by Mark T

Just a quick heads up that the Forum AGM will be taking place in the autumn with details to follow in the coming weeks as the Steering Group work through the process of hosting a AGM electronically this year for the first time!

Thanks to all of you who responded to our recent questionnaire, your answers have helped us to arrive at the decision to hold it online in what are still difficult circumstances for us all. Understandably there was a reluctance by many to meet a large number of other people indoors. Thank you for taking the time to respond, it is very much appreciated.

We’ll give you the date, time and registration process over the next few weeks.

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Community Development Focus Group – 31st July 2021

Posted on 31/07/2021 by Mark T

Just a quick note to let you know that we are doing things. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been active going to presentations on topics which are of interest to us:

“Office of Place”

A couple of us attended a webinar hosted by createstreets.com entitled “Communities Create Streets” based upon the “Build Beautiful Places” agenda. Here Robert Jenrick spoke about the new “Office of Place” being set up by the Government, the National Model Design Code and the updated National Policy Planning Framework. He waxed lyrical about how communities should be leading developments, not the big developers, much in line with what we are trying to do with our Neighbourhood Plan. It was music to our ears, particularly his statements to “take the power away from the big home builders” and “buildings with beauty stand the test of time”.The (1hour 15 minute) presentation & discussion is available to see on the Policy exchange website here with Jenrick’s presentation taking the first 20 minutes.


“Lockleaze Loves Solar”

We also attended a Webinar hosted by the Innovation Lab of the Community for Sustainable Energy entitled “Lockleaze Loves Solar”. Lockleaze is an area of Bristol of similar size to our Area. The Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust runs a number of community led projects one of which was a proposal to install 1MW of solar panels on roofs of homes within Lockleaze to reduce energy bills and to alleviate fuel poverty. Whilst their plans are not exactly the same as we have incorporated into the Neighbourhood Plan, they are sufficiently similar that we followed up to get a copy of their Business Case to see how it could help us get started.

They highlighted the need to be clear what we were trying to do and to create a number of possible options (ranging from “simply” encouraging people to put solar panels on their roofs to running a solar farm as a Community energy project). They also emphasised the need to ensure that the community was “on board” with whatever option was chosen and to work with stakeholders such as Western Power, Power companies (such as Octopus Energy) and the Developers of the New Housing.

It has given us much food for thought and we will be building on that knowledge and we’ll publish the link to the recording of the presentation when we have it.


“Census Outputs”

We also attended a presentation by the Office for National Statistics about the way in which the 2021 Census data will be presented. Whilst it was primarily intended for companies which were going to produce applications using the data, it was interesting to note that the first outputs would be available in early 2023. Unfortunately this seems too late for us to use to refine aspects of the Neighbourhood Plan that were based upon the 2011 Census data, it nonetheless gave us a view of what might be available and when.

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24th July – Keeping you informed

Posted on 24/07/2021 by Mark T

In the spirit of letting you know what is going on in and around our area, you might be interested in the following couple of points. We will not be making any comments as the Neighbourhood Forum (we’re busy doing other things) but you might like to read and make your own comments directly.

Broxtowe Community Governance Review: Broxtowe is reviewing and potentially making changes to the governance arrangements at a parish level and is inviting comments; and

Mill Hill Quarry Mineral Extraction: An application has been made to Nottinghamshire County Council for planning permission to extract & process sand and gravel in the Land off Green Street, Mill Hill and land at Barton in Fabis, off Chestnut Lane, Nottingham

All the best

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Broxtowe Survey on Parks & Gardens

Posted on 17/07/2021 by Mark T

For those of you who may not have seen it, Broxtowe are asking our opinion about the Parks & Gardens within Broxtowe.

Follow this link to the Broxtowe Survey and let them know your views. The survey is open until 31st August 2021.

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Please answer our AGM Questionnaire

Posted on 10/07/2021 by Mark T

We will be holding an AGM this year. We would like your input to decide the best way to hold it. Please complete this questionnaire.

The questionnaire will be closed on Tuesday 20th July 2021 so that we can analyse the results.

Thanks

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