CIVIC VOICE – REGIONAL FORUM

Meeting at Alan Baxter Associates, Cowcross St, EC1M 6EL

7 March 2016, 1.00pm

MINUTES

Present:

Tony Fooks (Chair) ANTAS and High Wycombe

Helen KidmanYorkshire and the Humber

Freddie GickCheltenham Society and Chairman

John KershawNWACTSCV

Margaret

Helen MarcusLondon

Vernon PorterOxford Civic Society and

Chris Woodman (Minutes)High Wycombe

Colin Davis (Speaker)Public Realm Info & Advice

1.Welcome and Introduction.

Tony Fooks welcomed those present, including the speaker and Chris Woodman (to take the minutes for this meeting only).

2.Apologieswere received from Mike Jenks, Peter Eversden, Howard Vero, Roger Sutton and Peter Lee.

3.Visiting speaker.

Colin Davis gave an inspired illustrated half-hour presentation on the work of PRIAN, the Public Realm Information and Advice Network, covering similar ground to his address to the Bristol conference and referring to the dedicated website publicrealm.org. Focusing on ways to reduce clutter, he referred to the removal of railings, traffic lights and many forms of signage which are mostly unnecessary. Drivers drive in two sorts of ways – fast on roads like motorways and dual carriageways that are clearly designed for speed, and slowly and cautiously on roads where white lines have been removed and which may have been deliberately narrowed, e.g. by expanding grass verges. Roundabouts, where no signs are necessary, rather than traffic lights,make for a good urban environment, encouraging shopping and economic activity. Examples included Poynton in Cheshire, Clifton in Cumbria and between Hampstead and Highgate. Most urban traffic lights should be removed, which may involve a capital scheme but expenditure can sometimes be covered by section 106 and is quickly justified by far lower maintenance and replacement costs and improved accident rates. It is up to individual civic societies to persuade their local authorities to adopt the new technology. Colin would be producing a book version of his guidance in 3 months’ time, through the RIBA, and the website crashmap.co.uk is a valuable resource.

4.Minutes of 14 December meeting. These were approved. It was noted that it was unlikely that clean-ups (Item 4f.) would take place on a specific day.

5.Regional Reports

a.London Forum. Peter Eversden had submitted a short note. Helen Marcus said he remained unhappy that CV seemed not to be making enough fuss about the Government’s “ravages to the planning system”. Freddie Gick responded that CV had recently come out against a number of proposals, although this was a major exercise for CV given their resources. He would welcome more support for their efforts from London Forum.

Helen Marcus was concerned about the impact of the Housing and Planning Bill. She didn’t believe the Government’s position on the shortage of housing, because the number of dwellings was in line with the population. She believed that developers exercise undue influence on the Government and that the real problem was the lack of social rented housing. Tony Fooks noted that High Wycombe residents had discovered that a developer was sitting on a Government committee and had had him removed. He would send details to Helen Marcus.

b.NW ACTS. Margaret Collier reported that their membership was now up to 42 societies. Their main recent success was to prevent Bolton’s Grade 2* listed Town Hall having a café built in front of it. She had been disappointed that Historic England seemed uninterested. In discussion, the Forum had different experiences with HE. In some regions HE could no longer be relied upon to oppose damaging proposals, and a culture of supporting developments out-of-keeping with the existing buildings seemed to have taken over. Some of their advice to Councils was “robotic”. But in one instance in the SW, they had possibly been over-zealous. There was some speculation that the recent split of English Heritage, had not yet bedded-down, and there had been budgetary changes. Freddie Gick undertook to raise these concerns with HE’s senior officers.

c.Yorks & Humber ACS. Helen Kidman reported they had had HE’s Y&H Conservation Director Trevor Mitchell to speak at their AGM, setting out the office’s priorities, including enabling the public to update the historic buildings records and monitoring Grade 2 listed buildings at risk.

e.ANTAS. Vernon Porter reported that ANTAS had eventually found a new secretary. At their next meeting in June in Chesham there would be a speaker from Historic England. In Oxfordshire, the Local Planning process was suffering from a lack of synchronicity between the County, City and District Councils. The role of the Local Economic Partnership (LEP) was unsatisfactory because no elected person was accountable for it to the public or the press. There was an interesting consultation underway on a new development site where a company called “Common Place” was involved which enables people to post comments and suggestions on an online map. This may appeal more to the younger generation than a classic consultation meeting with post-it notes.

f.West Mercia. Referring to a written communication from Howard Vero, the Forum recorded their appreciation of the work of Graham Reddy and George Goodall, both now deceased.

6. Civic Voice Activities and Programme.

Freddie Gick reported:

The level of activity regionally was patchy, many people being focused – rightly – on their own local areas. There had been a very successful meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Civic Societies, ably led by Craig McKinley MP, two weeks previous, with 130 people attending, and there would be another meeting, on Historic Cathedral Cities, on 8 March. Freddie would soon attend a meeting of ASHTAV at Kellogg College Oxford. The War Memorial project was going extremely well, CV now training people to be trainers for volunteers. There were now university students working on getting more war memorials listed by HE.

CV had made a significant response to the Government’s consultation on the NPPF. CV had agreed that a dozen civic societies should be found to trial a toolkit “beauty in my backyard” prepared by the Prince’s Foundation. He echoed Helen Marcus’ comment about the need for affordable homes, adding that it was important that such housing remained available for people who need it and did not get transferred to the open market. (Helen Marcus added that housing demand was a local and regional thing – the problem was that where houses are jaw-droppingly cheap in the north, there are no jobs, and people move to the South-East.)

CV had been working very closely with Historic England. Freddie was now chairing a group, also including NALC, SPAB, AHF and IHBC, to make a bid by the end of March to the Heritage Lottery Fund to carry out “assessments” of Grade 2 listed buildings. (HE currently only monitor Grade 1 and 2* buildings.) The proposal is to cover 100,000 buildings, over 4 years, which will require some 6,000-7,000 volunteers who might be willing to undertake other, related work afterwards. A pilot exercise using 40 volunteers had already been conducted in Worcester.

Freddie noted that when he is invited to civic society meetings there seems to be a great emphasis on planning, but societies’ newsletters contain much more on heritage. Other members noted that their normal meetings are mostly about heritage too – planning does not attract high attendance.

Freddie noted that voluntary organisations are highly-geared in terms of the benefit they offer for what they cost. He was looking at the possibility of a project to appraise conservation areas because 2017 would be the 50th anniversary of the Civic Amenities Act which introduced conservation areas. He was also in touch with HE about their Heritage Angels programme for restoration projects.

Specific points he had for the Forum were: the need know centrally about the events planned by member societies; the need to get more MPs involved in the APPG; and whether there was any appetite for people in member societies to be trained as “ambassadors” for CV, to speak to other societies about CV’s work.

Tony Fooks commented that the level of cooperation with HE was good, but it was important that CV did not become dependent on funding from the Government or a single source, because that had caused the demise of Civic Trust. Freddie replied that other sources of corporate funding were being investigated, e.g. to assist in the running of conferences, but these were not “core funding” for CV’s basic work and costs.

7. Membership Subcommittee Report

John Kershaw reported:

The Subcommittee had been running for 9 months, and its role was to make recommendations to the Board of CV. Therefore in reporting the Subcommittee’s thinking, this was on a personal basis. The subcommittee had been surprised to find that CV had no membership leaflet for new member societies. In the past year, subscription income from 241 societies members of Civic Voice had been £48,025. There were also 34 lapsed members. Throughout England, membership was very patchy, with only 5 in the NE but some of these have multiple affiliated groups. On a personal basis, John repeated his suggestion (made in the past) of the creation of a new category of participation called “supporter”, i.e. individuals who might be willing to pay perhaps £10, who were wary of getting too involved, but believed that CV was a worthwhile organisation. Helen Marcus agreed that in London, for example, participation in CV was very patchy, with about 100 groups being members of London Forum but only 20 being members of CV. In her view, however, the membership charge for societies to join CV had been set too high from the beginning. John Kershaw commented that membership fees from societies, even if they could be doubled relative to existing levels, would still fall well short of covering CV’s core costs, which is why he advocated developing the “supporter” category of participation, which would be discussed by the Membership Committee.

Tony Fooks welcomed the ideas that had been put forward, and asked John Kershaw for a written summary of his suggestions.

8. Proposal for Regional Conferences on Planning

Tony Fooks reported he had been in discussion with Freddie Gick about holding area regional conferences. Although they would be about “planning”, Tony saw them as having a wide compass, not only housing supply, planning and design, but all kinds of infrastructure – schools, doctors’ surgeries and transport connections, the total impact of development schemes. He envisaged three such conferences, one in the north, one in the west, one in the east and possibly one in London. Freddie commented that, if the conferences were to be “themed” in some way it might be possible to obtain sponsorship (about £2,000 per conference) by a housing developer and/or a utility operator active in the region concerned. It would take time and careful planning to put together a good programme and speakers, e.g. a Minister with a particular functional or regional/constituency interest. His intention was that these would be “major events”, not just “30 or 40 civic societies sitting in a room”. He hoped that people from local government, the planning profession and the RIBA might be encourage to attend or participate. The Forum strongly supported the proposal. John Kershaw commented that the CV regions should be involved, and Helen Marcus confirmed that London Forum would want to be involved in any London event and this was agreed. It was noted that the regions are not all at the same point in the planning process. In some cases there might be a strong regional slant whereas in others the approach might be more national. The new phenomenon of “charrettes” was mentioned – workshops where local people, with the assistance of a trained facilitator, can take an active role in how development sites should be developed.

9. Civic Voice Programmes. This was covered under Item 6 above.

10. AOB. Future Regional Forum dates will be Thursday 7 July, Tuesday 6 September and Tuesday 8 November. These dates were chosen to fit in with CV Board meetings and AGM. The Thursday meeting had been determined with regard to room availability.

CMW

26.3.16.

1