Public meeting concerning a Neighbourhood Plan for the Clapton area
A Public meeting concerning a possible Neighbourhood Plan for part of the Clapton area
will be held on
Wednesday January 23, 7pm.
At B6 Sixth Form College, at the junction of Lower Clapton Road and Lea Bridge Road
All welcome
The meeting and potential plan have been initiated by The Clapton Arts Trust and Cazenove Architects
Further details on http://www.claptonartstrust.org/vision_for_clapton.html
This is supported by The Clapton Conference.
(Yes! Despite our silence for the last few months, we are still here and will be more active soon)
The meeting will facilitated by Planning Aid for London.
Come along if you have an interest in improving Clapton where we all live and /or work.
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“we could limit the number of chain store buy ups..” and “ban large apartment blocks with common entrances”!?
I fear a lot of these plans are motivated by the desire of some for exclusivity rather than sound planning judgments to encourage diversity and accessibility;
http://www.chatsworthroade5.co.uk/forum/#/20121112/the-crtra-planning-vision-2036555/
As I’m sure you realise, there’ll be lots of similar, and opposing, ideas that people will have Benjamin. The idea of of this meeting, as I understand it, is to start to build a structure for running a consultation – a fairly lengthy process – across the community (There are certain requirements for establishing a neighbourhood plan). One piece of the jigsaw will be to put together a panel of people from various parts of the community to administer this process. If being on that panel, or being involved in some way, is of interest to you, feel free to come to the meeting and explore just what it would involve.
Yes Dave, but we shouldn’t pretend to not notice that the people pushing for this “Neighbourhood Plan” appear to have an exclusivity agenda.
My dilemma is what to do since I believe the planning decisions for the area would, on the whole, be far better left in the hands of the Planning Office.
All I can give you is my experience Benjamin. Firstly, I don’t like to make assumptions on people’s agendas until I find out for sure what they are. Secondly, my experience of the people setting this up, in working with them, whilst we have some different perspectives on some things (to be expected), is not that they have an exclusivity agenda. Finally, the Localism Bill encourages people to do this. It does not take planning decisions out of the hands of the Planning Office. It is meant to involve the local community more in ensuring that planning guidance for an area is in line with what is important to the local population. It is not purely down to what the Neighbourhood Forum decide. It just strongly takes that into account. I’m not sure if part of your dilemna is whether or not to be part of this, but I’m absolutely sure your input would be valuable. I know you have some preferences for how things should get done and it’d be a shame not to have those be part of the process.
Well in my experience when, over a period of many years, the same faces are promoting policies such as stunting significant housing provision (in a time of housing shortage crisis), campaigning against supermarket chains (which always seem very popular, especially amongst the less well-off), and trying to block developments when they don’t coincide with their subjective and culturally-biased perception of “taste”, it is accurate and fair to say that they “appear to have an exclusivity agenda”. Hidden agendas are difficult to prove, but we shouldn’t feign naivety.
Furthermore, you state that “the idea of of this meeting, as I understand it, is to start to build a structure for running a consultation”. I don’t know whether it holds any validity, but hasn’t the Clapton Arts Trust been carrying out some sort of ad hoc “consultation” via its extremely loaded questionnaire for many months already?
As I said Benjamin, there will be lots of differing perspectives on these matters and I’ve yet to meet another human being without an agenda – admittedly not all hidden. As far as I’m concerned, the challenge of this initiative is to facilitate all the varying opinions being put forward and draw up something that, as much as is possible, takes them all into account.
Regarding the Clapton Arts Trust (CAT), whilst they are one of the two initiating parties of this initiative, they will not be running it. The process will take putting together a panel of, I believe, up to 21 individuals from across the community, and then it will be up to them to administer the further process. Anyone who wants a say in how this goes can be involved. Whatever activities CAT have been engaged in so far may well inform their input to the process, but this is a totally separate one.
As I said, the invitation is for you to be involved, initially via the meeeting on Wednesday evening.