Stonebridge Farm

And in other local campaign newstThe Stonbridge Farm campaigners are cautiously optimistic that they may have been successful in persuading the council that nicking their land is a dumb-ass move. From their Facebook page -

"City says it will write to the farm today (2nd feb) to offer a lease without conditions and go back to the drawing board to see how the farm fits into the regeneration of the stonebridge estate. Has the city council listened to the many friends of the farm? Well going from comments from officers you can judge for yourself "the issue of taking land from the farm has become a nightmare" and even with a new lease the council "can use a compulsory purchase order to remove land from the farm ". Is the offer of a new lease without conditions a political ploy to appear to be protecting the farm or is it a genuine commitment to protect the farm. It may become clearer latter today."

Congratulations to the campaign if the optimism turns out to be justified. Quite how NCC ever thought it would be anything less than a PR disaster trying this on while at the same time trying to encourage more local food growing is beyond me.

Mind you, PR doesn't appear to be the City Council's strong point.

Update 3 Feb - looks any optimism was largely misplaced. From the Facebook page today -

"Councillor Alan Clark today admits that the threatening way the council "negotiated " with the farm was wrong. That a new lease will be offered and then a negotiation will commence with the farm for the removal of 10% of its land for use as residents parking. This change of approach by the council has been achieved thr...ough us making our opinions heard. We unfortunately have not won yet! To strengthen the farms position in negotiation please get friends to sign the petition and write to councilors."

More on the Stonebridge Farm Debacle

Signs of a complete lack of joined up thinking at NCC, on the one hand they are shaving land off Stonebridge Farm but on the other the on Tuesday St Anns and Dales Area Committee is being presented with a draft strategy for developing food growing opportunities in Nottingham which very much relies on facillities like, um, Stonebridge Farm.

To be fair the document acknowledges that -

"... until now there has been no central point to bring together all the work regarding food growing taking place across the Council..."

which is probably at least partly why these situations arise.

The 'Protect Stonebridge City Farm' campaign is encouraging interested parties to attend the area committee meeting which is open to the public and is being held at 7pm in the Committee Room at the Council House later today (Tuesday) 26 January. You can also follow their campaign on 'Twitter'.

Talking of Twitter, NCC's Portfolio Holder for Environment and Climate Change Katrina Bull has been tweeting away about her enthusiasm for locally grown veg and wondering aloud whether it would be possible for such local goodies to be served in school dinners.

Obviously this is to be applauded but she's so far been silent on my requests for her views on the Stonebridge issue.

Maybe you'll have more luck, if you do tweeting you can find her @katrinabull.

Some Petitions...

Was going to write a bit more about these but I'm restricted for time so this'l have to do.

I mentioned before the sudden announcement of the Viccy Leisure Centre's early closure but I think I should also link to the campaign website. So I have.

They have also started a new petition against the closure which I think is worth a link of its own, so here it is.

Another local campaign also deserves more of my atention, so I hope my blogging coleague Alanadale won't mind me poaching his write up about the campaign to stop NCC encroaching on Stonebridge City Farm in order to provide more car parking.

They to have a petition against the plans and it can be found here.

Go sign. Then make all your friends sign.

Again, sorry to both campaigns about the brevity but I'm a very slow typist and I'm temporarily forced into the world of public internet access, best of luck to you both.