Have you signed the petition about Stonebridge City Farm yet? You can sign at  http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/33312.html

You can find more details at  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=247195272869

A couple of weeks ago I wrote to Councillor Jon Collins about the City Council's pressure on the farm to agree to a loss of 10% of their land for a car park when they have to re-negotiate their lease. My original email and the subsequent correspondence were as follows:

Dear Councillors,

I understand that Stonebridge City Farm being pressured by the city council to give up of 10% of the farms land as a condition of renewing the lease for the farm. The council wants the land to be used by the farms neighbours to park
cars in front of their houses.

I understand too that this was after a consultation with 31 neighbours next to the farm and that 15 neighbours wanted this parking scheme. Were the 10,000 visitors to the farm last year consulted? It appears not.

I cannot tell you how upset this makes me feel. I spent many years developing Ecoworks and know how difficult that was. Projects like Ecoworks, Arkwright Meadows and Stonebridge City Farm had to be worked for, under often stressful
conditions to get funding and to build them up. A lot of work and commitment has gone into bringing green skills and values into the city. It encourages local food growing and draws in vulnerable people into that task. You should
be really grateful for that. You should be celebrating that. Yet you take it for granted and are now acting in a way that undermines it. It appears that you think nothing of undermining the work of generations of people. Stonebridge City Farm is an institution whose longevity against the funding odds is to be congratulated, not cut back for car parks.

The City Council tells us that it supports sustainability, it assures us that it is working against climate change. We are led to believe that you are working to help prepare the people of Nottingham for peak oil. You pass resolutions. You posture as the place which issued the Nottingham Declaration
on Climate Change. OK then live up to your words!

The development of local urban food sources, skilling up local people and drawing in vulnerable people are all a major part of giving tangible expression to what needs to be done in the face of imminent energy descent. May I remind you in 2008 global food prices went through the roof - this was because of scarcity of energy and high oil prices and a host of other problems in the worlds food system. These problems have not gone away. They will be back with a vengeance. You need all the community gardens you can get
and you need to give them all the support that you can. They are vital to the future of the city, to training in DIY cultivation and food skills, for setting examples to people which will ultimately be key to the maintenance of
public health in this city. Around the city Transition Groups are trying to encourage local food growing and community gardens. Is this the message that you want to send out about how secure these projects can feel - that after
the effot has been put in that you will think nothing of putting people's work under tarmac?

You want to take this land away to develop a car park! A car park? Oh come on.....What does this tell us? It tells us that the City Council have a skin deep understand of climate change and peak oil. It tells us that the city council cannot be trusted, that you are not reliable partners. It tells people that if they spend years of time and effort developing a community garden politicians can and will undermine their work if it seems expedient to
do so - so why should they bother? It is a very ugly and discouraging message.

Jon Collins replied that

18 January 2010

Letter reference JC/MC/TP/KL/Stonebridge180110

Dear Mr Davey

Thank you for your email addressed to me and other Councillors.

Officers from the City Council are currently talking to the City Farm about the Stonebridge Park regeneration project and the impact this might have on the farm.

You may know that outline planning permission for the Stonebridge development was granted last year, but construction around the farm cannot begin until a mitigation strategy for the farm has been worked out. This will involve discussions between relevant officers of the Council and trustees of Stonebridge City Farm.

I appreciate your comments about all of the hard work and effort that has gone into creating projects like the City Farm. The City Council has continued to support and
congratulate the farm on its achievements and this is reflected in the Council’s continued financial support for the venture.

The plans for regenerating Stonebridge Park, which have been endorsed by the Stonebridge Park Tenants and Residents Association and the Stonebridge Park Project Board, include an access lane to the west and north boundaries of the farm. The architect has pointed out that the farm would lose a strip of land of approximately 3.5m around the edge of the current boundary.

I hope you can appreciate, that the issue is one of striking a fine balance between the interests of affected residents, the aims of the regeneration scheme and Stonebridge City Farm. This underscores the importance of the current work in attempting to find a suitable solution.


Thank you once again for your comments.

Yours sincerely

Councillor Jon Collins
Leader - Nottingham City Council




20 January 2010 21:05:29 my reply

Dear Cllr Collins,

Thanks for your reply to my letter.....well, sort of.. As you know I've been involved in community activity in Nottingham over several decades and have had cause to write to representatives of the public authorities about different matters many times. I have grown to expect that the official replies" that I get to my letters will have certain common features - so much so that they can be described as conforming almost to a kind of genre.

In this case your reply is a classic of the type. In a nutshell:

(1) it avoids engaging with the specific issues and arguments that I raised (undermining a community group, discouraging effects of insecure land arrangements on community cultivation in a time when urban cultivation
desperately needs to be encouraged, negative long term knock on effects in relation to urban food supplies etc)

(2) it presents the issues by sparcely restating the official viewpoint in a way that loftily gives the appearance of a kind of 'above it all impartiality' by the authorities. The public authorities are balanced whereas people likely myself argue a partial one sided viewpoint. In this case by you claim "to balance"...sorry I do not credit you with necessary level of precision...you claim "to finely balance" ..... all sides.

Yes, I wonder how you would feel if someone asked to carve a piece off your garden in the interest of creating a fine balance between you and your neighbour's car parking needs. Or how about creating parking spaces for the residents of the Promenade by cutting a slice off the Victoria Park in order to create a fine balance between the needs of Victoria Park users and those of them that are car users? After all Victoria Park users are just sitting around or playing and enjoying grass and trees. Wouldn't it be a finer balance to give the Promenade owners car parks in front of their houses too?

Or I live on Mount Hooton terrace which is up a footpath at right angles to Forest Road. There is a problem for car owners on my terrace not having cars directly in front of their houses. But wait, I've got an idea - take over the
garden of our neighbour who lives behind us and that will solve that one. It would not be in front of our houses but everyone would be able to see their cars through the back windows and if our neighbours object then you can say
that you have to finely balance between their needs and ours.

Of course, your fine balance is a fine phrase to seem reasonable and proportionate as you use your powers as landlords to overturn a situation that has persisted for decades, where you unbalance the relationship between
the farm and its neighbours - where there are probably other solutions in any case - and where you are actually making very clear how much you (don't) value the land of a community cultivation project, how you don't value (and
obviously don't understand) the importance of security of tenure for urban cultivation projects in the context of the climate crisis and peak oil crisis.

Actualy balance is a governance concept that relates to the overall whole - and that is the needs of the city at this point in time in relation to peak oil, climate change, the need for more people to engage with green issues, the need to encourage groups like Stonebridge City Farm, the need to inspire confidence that the city understand the long run issues. Balance in that large sense requires a prioritisation shift - a re-balancing towards more
support for green projects. It requires recognising that car parking, in an era of rising energy prices, will be rather less important anyway. So "finely balancing" involves matters of political, economic and cultural judgement of
a wider kind - and not just a balance between Stonebridge City Farm and the Stonebridge residents....

But here I am raising points of wider political judgement in a letter to a political leader. How stupid of me! This implicitly assumes that you might be interested in getting involved in some kind of political discussion...I already know that it is naive and foolish in correspondence of this sort to actually expect anything other than the formulaic reply.

Yours

Brian Davey

Comment from Peter McGuire

It is interesting that the amount of land wanted is increasing every time it is discribed by the city council, it started as .5 meter then in Director of Housing said between 2 and 3 meters now we have 3.5 meters

Pete. 18.01.2010

Additional points:

According to the City Council’s “Statement of Community Involvement. A Guide to Community Involvement in the Planning System” of June 2007

“Our vision is to ensure that everyone has access to the planning process, and that everyone has a meaningful opportunity to influence the development of the City” - everyone apart from Stonebridge City Farm it seems.....

It continues that

“Nottingham City Council wants consultation and community involvement
on planning matters to be:
1. Genuine and meaningful
2. Appropriate to the level and scale of planning
3. Open, accessible and relevant to all sections of the communities concerned
4. Accountable with accessible feedback; and
5 Linked as far as practicable, with other consultation strategies and
mechanisms happening in Nottingham”

 http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=812&p=0

Yet this official policy is combined with telling Stonebridge CF not to oppose planning permission – on pain of losing their lease!

This can be dealt with like this – everyone who is a friend of the Farm writes to their councillors saying that they want to know when this planning matter is made public so that they can put in an objection as a private individual.

 http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=812&p=0

Brian