Present: Jane Pickard (minutes), Richard Moore, Bernie Bullbrook, James Slattery-Kavanagh (chair), Chris Pointon, Ann Ridley, John McMullan, Jeff Avis, Grahame Wilson.
Apologies: Geraldine Evans, Robert McConnell, Rod Brown, Pat Fisher.
Minutes and Matters Arising Minutes were accepted. No matters arising.
Richard Moore proposed we write to members highlighting the fact that we now meet at Lancaster's Wine Bar, in the basement, and are engaged in a number of positive activities, including discussions about Tulse Hill. Jane undertook to highlight this in the minutes.
1. Survey Jane Pickard apologised for not having finalised this as she had been away in the United States. James Slattery-Kavanagh handed round the survey of Crystal Palace traders done by the Chamber of Commerce.
Agreed that the simple lay-out on A4 was what we should aim for.
Agreed to add box for respondent to indicate whether business or resident, plus district they lived in plus whether they were starting or finishing a journey at Tulse Hill.
Chris Pointon offered to design the survey and JP said she would send questions.
2. Julian's Field Jane Pickard said she understood there was some progress on this between the council and the land owners. There was a campaign meeting the following week to discuss detail.
3. St Luke's Gardens Jane Pickard reported that Groundwork Southwark, the charity which had originally led us to believe it would be able to manage our project, had now withdrawn from all but the initial, consultation stage, as our project was in Lambeth and it was not able to spend large amounts outside its own borough. This was despite originally telling us that the location of the project was not a problem.
The steering group was meeting the following week and NAG members on it generally seemed to feel that we should go for the lesser offer anyway and hope to find someone else to manage the subsequent phases. The meeting agreed with this.
Richard Moore said a council document coming out on 26 July would state an amount of money available for St Luke's Gardens. He proposed writing to Groundwork to suggest they ask the Charity Commissioners for a change of remit to allow spending beyond Southwark.
Agreed to put this to the steering group and see if anything else could be done to bring Groundwork back on board.
4. AOB (a) RM said crime on the Hainthorpe estate was out of control. The supposed partnership between police and the council seemed not to be working and police had decided to mount an operation on the estate. He urged councillors to pick up on these problems.
(b) JP said we needed some new officers at our next annual meeting, as some of existing ones were tired or finding they could not attend as many meetings as they had envisaged. Agreed we needed more publicity for NAG, including fliers to flag up meetings.
Agreed to hold our annual meeting in October in place of the normal monthly meeting.
(c) JP flagged up the latest draft of the council's proposed 15-year Unitary Development Plan.
Agreed to discuss it at the August meeting.
(d) Jeff Avis said the message-in-a-bottle scheme was being extended and built on by the council. Vote of thanks to Jeff for initiating it.
Next meeting: Tuesday, 10 August, 7.30pm, at Lancaster's Wine Bar. Anyone can attend: these are public meetings so you can bring a friend. If you want to get involved more long term, we would like you to join. Membership is £3.
