We focused on the following six topics:
1) the Refreshed Preferred Options Document to be published in Spring 2008.
2) the Refreshed Sustainability Strategy to be performed later this year.
3) the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 - we await details of the Guidance on this.
4) Open Houses / Sustainable Homes, expected to feature in the Brighton Festival.
5) The Council's/PMP's report RE Open Spaces Policy - possible need to amend to reference (a) Climate Change (b) Peak oil (c) Need for land to grow food locally.
6) Need to study the process by which info is disseminated from the LA to neighbourhoods and to improve networks.
More detail on each of these points
1) the forthcoming consultation on the Refreshed Preferred Options Document is to be published in Spring 2008. I have created a web page to update those interested on the background to The Council's Core Strategy and Preferred Options.
2) refreshing the Council's Sustainability Strategy. It seems pretty certain that One Planet Living will get the go ahead for this, and that public consultation on this topic will follow later in 2008. It remains to be seen if the Council's Sustainability Strategy, currently 12 priority areas, is merged with the 2020 (Local Strategic) Partnership's 8 key areas. It is possible that One Planet Living's "10 checks for sustainability" could assist as the organising principles for this merger.
3) Sustainable Communities Act 2007 - we agreed that we cannot take action on this until we have the Guidance on how the Local Authority is to implement the Act. We are relying on Mita to make this available to us once it has been received.
4) Open Houses / Sustainable Homes - reference to Eco-houses in the Open Houses in Brighton Festival, May 2008 is made in the TB&H Buildings & Construction Group's notes of their meeting on 17th December 2007. We agreed to give this initiative our support. Our Liaison Group was also keen on pursuing the idea of a transportable Exhibition House for Energy Saving (something with a visible presence) in prominent locations in Brighton and Hove.
5) Open Spaces - The Open Spaces Questionnaires/ Household Surveys undertaken by the Council/PMP have elicited comments on parks and recreation grounds pooled between several neighbourhoods. See The Council's 2005 questionnaire and PMP's 2007 Household Survey. This "top-down" approach where the questions are framed to limit comment mainly to publicly accessible open spaces fails to meet the Government's Planning Policy Guidance PPG17 which states that Open Space Needs should be locally-derived and that assessment should be neighbourhood-specific. The Council has been using the adjective "city-wide" to suggest a thorough approach, where in reality neighbourhoods which are deficient in publicly-accessible open space risk losing their open spaces to developers. My critiques of the 2005 and 2007 surveys, were attempts to prevent the loss of green space to development in Round Hill, where all our open spaces (including a wildlife garden which has won national awards) are on privately-owned and relatively inaccessible plots. The Government's guidance says that: "the value of open spaces, irrespective of who owns them, depends on two things:
i) The extent to which they meet clearly identifiable local needs
ii) The wider benefits they generate for people, wildlife, biodiversity and the wider environment.
PMP's report on the progress of its Open Space Study is expected this year. If necessary, we should be ready to suggest amendments to their proposals, which reference TB&H's concerns about (a) Climate Change (b) Peak oil (c) Need to grow more food locally.
We might enlist the support of both The Brighton and Hove Food Partnership and TB&H's Food Group in arguing for the protection of Open Spaces in our city for growing food. Reference can be made here to Moulsecoomb/Whitehawk/Stanmer initiatives. I have noted that Ann Baldridge of TB&H's Food Group has been seeking info on how the Council plans to use all the land it owns and leases out that could be used for food growing (question raised at 30 Jan General meeting) and respond to this in my web page on the Council's Core Strategy and Preferred Options where I have also posted Graham Ennis's calculation & observations RE food self-sufficiency. It should be noted that PPG17 gives the community influence over the retention and use of open spaces whether they are publicly or privately owned, so our interest in protecting open spaces need not be limited to plots which are owned by the Council.
6) We also discussed how information is disseminated i.e. from The Council to neighbourhoods, how certain people are key to successful networks and how the latter might be strengthened. We wondered whether additional log-ins could be permitted for active group members other than co-ordinators who could post directly to the relevant section of the main TB&H website. Some Groups may wish to make the role of co-ordinator into a "job-share" with more than one group member posting to the site. Alternatively, content for posting could be emailed from other group members and then posted by the co-ordinator. I am flexible about either of these options within the Liaison with Local Government Group.
Liaison with Local Government Group meeting 19/02/08
