Updates

I delivered the 28 northamptonshire arc response recieved - thank you all for your ongoing support.

It seems to now be official that the RSS (regional spatial strategy) ie the driver for all the development plans has been scrapped!! We know a directive from central governement said as much, but on the ground confusion remained. However people in know seem to be confident that planning as returned to a local level so the major development plans look like they are fading fast.

We are not popping the bubbly just yet until we get more clarification and the bodies behind the plans are dissolved or confirm this, but things certaintly seems very promising!

Northamptonshire Arc

The county council has recently devised a top down housing led growth plan that ties some of the previous plans together into one document. Although the majority of the supporting evidence is now out of the date, it seems those in power are determined to push ahead with destroying northamptonshire despite governement guidence to the contray.

Quinton Action Group have completed a response that will be distributed via the news letter in the next few days - just sign and return if you are happy to support our views. Alternatively if you would like to complete your own response, or want to view the report please visit http://www.northamptonshireobservatory.org.uk/news/newsdetail.asp?theme=&newsid=3164&source=default.asp .

Tories to deliver?

So with the Tories winning the election (with a little support from the lib dems ;-)) it is hoped that the destruction of Northamptonshire can finally be halted as they promised.

There are lots of rumors flying around that the RSS will be stopped in there tracks, that the JPU/WNDC/JPC or whatever group of letter you throw together will be scrapped etc etc. This is all very promising but we will not stop until offical word is given and relevant assurances recieved. As and when any news is recieved we will pass on as always.

Spatial Consulation "offical" results

Pete has found a JPU report that summarises the results of spatial consultantion.

Some of the numbers make no sense, eg q28 (do you support S/E development) got significantly more responses than any other, but they have managed to count the majority of these as non-responses!! That's it massage the figures!

No matter how you look at it though, the spatial review got a kicking form all sides and would be impossible to progress with this if there is any ounce of democrary still left in this country. The awarness campaigns undertaken by the action groups in the area also had a massive impact with responses from NN7 2 region 50% higher than next nearest area. NN7 2 includes the villages of Hackleton, Hartwell, Horton, Piddington,Preston Deanery and Quinton - so well done all!!

The full report is defo worth a read (item 7) http://www.westnorthamptonshirejpu.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=TlAWheFc2cg%3d&tabid=114

Cogenhoe setup meeting with prospective MPs

Our friends at Cogenhoe have invited us to a meeting with prospective parliamentary candidates to answer questions on the Northamptonshire Growth Agenda.

The session is 7.30pm on 20th April in Cogenhoe Village Hall.

Click here for more details.

See you there!

Proof that all this development is for London, not northampton ongoing needs

The cron and Echo has revealed the £500,000 marketing campaign that aims to get Londeners to North Northamptonshire.

www.nndev.co.uk

I wonder how long it'll be until we see one of these for West Northamptonshire.

We must fight these appalling plans, to destroy northamptonshire and make us a suburb of London! If we wanted to live in London, we would, but Northamptonshire is special in its own right.

SHLAA Delivered

The SHLAA responses were dropped off this morning.

We had roughly 50 households respond in the village and got at least 500 seperate forms completed in total!

A great effort by all - thank you for the continued support!

SHLAA Deadline

Wednesday is last day to inform Quinton Action Group about supporting the SHLAA response.

SHLAA consultation

As mentioned at the Christmas party, the JPU are now carrying out a Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment. So despite our responses they seems to have completely ignore this for now and moved on to the next stage as they seek desperatly to justify themselfves ahead of general election......Who said cowboys are no more!!!

This assessment apparently is just to check land identified in there barbaric spatial plans would be suitable to build on. So they say even if land is approved it doesn't mean it will be built on - believe that if you will....

Response must be of a technical nature - ie the land is unsuitable for building because xxxx

We have until 11th Feb to submit our responses so the action group committee is busy gathering information and evidence to form a response. We need everyone input again, so we will be in touch soon with instructions for all against the destruction of Quinton and northamptonshire's green fields with information of what and how to response.

A map of the exact plots unders consultation can be found at https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9uU0snC78v-MzIzOWY3OTMtMzc1MC00OWQ0LWEzYzEtOGExZjJmYmRmOTQ5&hl=en.

Full information can be found at http://www.westnorthamptonshirejpu.org/Documents/EvidenceBase/SHLAA/tabid/123/Default.aspx.

Quinton Action Group Christmas Social

Friday 18th December
1930 onwards
Village Hall
Bring Drinks, nibbles and pennies for a raffle.

All Welcome - look forward to seeing you!

To celebrate all the village has achieved in fighting the development plans and to provide great village christmas get together we are hosting a social as detailed above.

There will also be an opportunity to gain update on the night on the progress the action group is making for those who are interested.

RSS8

In case you have not seen the strategy document that is dictating all this unnatural unsustainable growth rss8

River Nene Regional Park

You probably haven't noticed, but apparently there is a regional park being constructed in the area! Yes really!

Sounds great doesn't it?! However it is acutally just a lot of smoke and mirrors as it is constructed of Green Infastructure. Again green that sounds good....it really isn't! The list is below:-

Green Infastructure consists of public and private assets, with and without public
access in urban and rural locations, including:

■ Allotments
■ Amenity space, including communal green spaces within housing
areas
■ Green corridors and hedgerows, ditches, disused railways, verges
■ Brownfield and greenfield sites
■ Urban parks and gardens
■ Registered commons and village and town greens
■ Children’s play space
■ Natural and semi-natural habitat for wildlife
■ Playing fields
■ Cemeteries
■ Pocket parks
■ Country parks
■ Woodland
■ Historic parks and gardens and historic landscapes
■ Nature reserves
■ Sites of Special Scientific Interest and Scheduled Monuments
■ Locally designated heritage sites, including country wildlife sites
■ Waterways and water bodies, including flooded quarries
■ Development sites with potential for open space and links
■ Land in agri-environmental management
■ Public rights of way, cycleways and other recreational routes

So basically the majority are things that already exist or are needed and the rest can be made up of non-public spaces - what a great park!!

The planner are going to try and soften people opinions of development by including green infastructure so important we know what they actually mean - because this just sounds like marketing speak to me!

More information - http://www.riverneneregionalpark.org

Number 10 fails to take notice

Despite Gordon Brown admitting that Labour have let their immigration policies destory communities, they don't seem to care about the impact that signficant growath and inward migration will have on the communities in northamptonshire.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9uU0snC78v-ODg5MzIwZjktZDg2OS00YjgwLTk2MmMtNGM4YzFhYjZiODM3&hl=en

Same old same old - say one things, do another.

Charity Breakfast - Saturday

Although not related to the action group, this event is for such a good cause I felt it should be added to the site - please do attend if you can.

I've not got all the details - but a child in the area has a very rare illness and a breakfast is being held from 8.30 - 1200 on saturday (7th nov) to raise money for their treatment. Prices are only adults £4, children £1.5 so treat yourself to a lovely breakfast and raise vital funds for the campaign.

See you saturday!

MNP meeting minutes - 24th sept

minutes - http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AduU0snC78v-ZGM2azhocDlfMTlkdHI2MzRjeA&hl=en

Contact John Healy MP - Minister for Housing and Planning

Why not contact John Healy to inform him of your concerns about the plans in northamptonshire.

John Healey
Minister for Housing and Planning

Department for Communities and Local Government
Eland House
Bressenden Place
London
SW1E 5DU

Email:
john.healey@communities.gsi.gov.uk

Phone:
0207 944 4400

Homeless Teenager proof to build 42k houses?

Well according to John Healey MP building 42000 houses will magic away the problems of homelessness in northamptonshire!

So sounds like John thinks that no large town/city has any homeless people because there is plenty of homes to choose from!? Lucky a few people have more balanced approach to building and consider actually what the causes of homelessness are - http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AduU0snC78v-ZGM2azhocDlfMThqaGg0aDdncg&hl=en

Harpole and Kislingbury need our Support

A reminder that there is some sort of protest planned at Kislingbury about the specific issues these areas are facing tonight. The details are a little unclear but the email I recieved is below so if you are free to attend I am sure it would be appreciated.

-----------------------------

Kislingbury Action Group, in conjunction with Harpole are holding a protest meeting at Kislingbury village hall - starting 7:30 on 27th October 2009. The meeting will be addressed by several well-known speakers and is open to people from all over Northamptonshire. Kislingbury and Harpole are threatened by uncontrolled urban sprawl which will comprise mostly more warehouses and houses stretching from Junction 16 of the M1 all the way to Duston and Upton.

Please do your best to turn up and show solidarity with the folks of Kislingbury and Harpole. A show of strength from residents goes a long way towards influencing the Planners.

Quinton Action Group implements new structure

Fighting the barbaric plans of the JPU is an emotive subject for us all. Therfore to ensure the efficient and effective running of the action group it was decided by those present at the last meeting that a more formal structure and meeting format should be put in place.

The committee will meet regularly to discuss and plan actions and general meetings that all residents can attend will take place bi-monthly (probably) to provide a forum for everyone to have their say and gain updates on progress.

The current committee is below. This is temporary to allow for any other nominations to come forward ahead of final confirmation on 3rd nov:-

Liam (Chair)
Pete S (Vice Chair)
Helen (Secretary)
Nola
Kathey
Katie
Alan
Gary
Di
Joe

The committee has agreed to certain working formats but is primarily designed to reflect Quinton's residents views and implement any actions required to the fight the JPU plans for Northamptonshire. Therefore if there are things you wish to raise before the next general meeting simply speak to one of the committee members and we can add to the next meeting.

To ensure time spent together is well used, meetings will have an agenda to follow. Therefore any items people wish to be discussed should be flagged before a meeting ideally, or left until the final AOB section of the meeting.

Summary of JPU meeting on 20th Oct

Steven Hollowell's excellent summary of the JPU meeting on the 20th october.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9uU0snC78v-YTMzZTdiNjktOWM5My00ZDdmLWFkN2ItYWFiYjFkNDE4ZmEz&hl=en

Tune to Heart today

We have just given an interview with Heart FM to share of views on JPU's meeting tonight to dicuss consultation.

Should be used on news from 1600 so tune to heart 96.6 FM later today.

WNJPU

Item 5 of the meeting notes below gives overview of JPU thoughts to the "effective consultation"! Seems over 6000 individual response were submitted which given the nature of this consultation is not to bad. Also because it still seems that people in the town are either naive or just plain oblivous to the impact this development will have suspect the majority were from surrounding communities so would represent a very high response rate.

There even seems to be some admission that good points were raised by the public and that the fact much of the evidence is missing and there is no funding in place for infrastructure that this was an issue! to be fair this has somewhat been mentioned by the JSPC (not sure how these link to JPU) in their response to the East Midlands Regional plan.

It also appears that the size of response means that they are now going to miss original deadlines. They will also need to seek additional funding to complete job and given the government cuts this may also be difficult for them!

http://www.westnorthamptonshirejpu.org/Portals/0/Repository/Documents/JSPC/WNJSPC%20%20Agenda%2020.10.09.pdf

County Council Reject Spatial Review

http://cmis.northamptonshire.gov.uk/CmisWebPublic/Binary.ashx?Document=6067

Another small step in the right direction!

Woods Trust to Monitor Plans

The woodlands trust have now registered as a consultee to the JPU so that they can monitor the plans and react to any potential impact these may have on the woodlands in the area, particularly salcey forest.

As a non-governmental body they will take a more objective view at plans and be more willing to speak up against the destruction of green field sites than the environment agency and forestry commission seem to be doing.

Radio coverage from the march

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p004hb81/Richard_Savage_and_Annabel_Amos_29_09_2009/

All the news bulletons (mostly headline):-

5 mins 52 sec - Roger Kingston, PDA and Katie

39 mins 15 sec - interview with borough councillor Paul Varnsverry and reference to dom on his tractor!

Listening to the traffic reports during the show highlights that we didn't cause any significant travel issues to travelling public so as hoped the timing was good.

Superb Video of march to JPU

Thank you to Roger to spending all night putting this together!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKHOJ9scba0

video snap shot of march

March today

A massive thank you to everyone who gave up their time to join the march this afternoon. Action speak louder than words and your action were heard wide and loud!

The level of support should have given the JPU a flavour of our disagreement with the plans to kill northampton and its villages and prove we are serious about fighting these barbaric plans.

Katie on the Radio

BBC radio northampton this morning.

Goto 1h 19 mins and 30 secs - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p004hb7s/Joe_Pignatiello_29_09_2009/

March to JPU

Don't forget to leave plenty of time as we need to leave becketts park at 1630. If you can might be a good idea to car share.

We are still going with the theme of the death of our villages and northampton so dress in black if you can.

Bring any banners etc that express your feelings.

See you there!