Agenda and draft minutes

The Assembly meeting started with a Marketplace event with 11 projects bidding for a share of £14,000 from the Grove Park Assembly Fund.

The projects seeking a share of the funding were:

•           Grove Park Community Group – Dark Skies £2,000

•           WG Grace Senior Citizen Tuesday Club - Senior Citizen Tuesday Club £1,400

•           Baring Primary School - Baring School Road Safety Initiative £1,150

•           Northbrook Park Community Group - Trim Trail Pull Up Bars £850

•           Carers Lewisham - Young Carers Club and Outdoor Learning Activities £1,900

•           Friends of Grove Park Nature Reserve - Nature Reserve Fencing Repairs £1,500

•           Volunteer Centre Lewisham - Grove Park Timebites £2,000

•           Chinbrook Dog Show - Chinbrook Fun Day and Dog Show £1,225

•           9th Lewisham North Scout Group - Improving Local Scouting in the Community £1,200

•           Dalmain Athletic Girls Football Club - Grove Park Girl’s Football camps £1,850

•           SCALE Projects - Grove Park Youth Matters £1,850

For more details about any of the projects please contact Paul Gale on 020 8314 3387 or email paul.gale@lewisham.gov.uk

Cllr Colin Elliott Chair of the Grove Park Assembly welcomed everyone to the assembly meeting and apologised on behalf of Cllr Hilary Moore and Cllr Suzannah Clarke who were both unable to attend the assembly.

Several tributes were paid to Barrie Anderson a former Grove Park Ward Councillor and active member of the Grove Park community who sadly passed away earlier in the week.

Cllr Elliott advised the assembly that maintenance work around the station started on January 31st on the underside of bridge, this work will go on until July 31st. Residents should have received a letter detailing the timetable of the works.

Upon completion, work will start on the shops around the station and the parking spaces. Whilst there will be some inconvenience, ultimately this is good news for Grove Park.

Kay Kelleher explained that she is from the Volunteer Centre Lewisham (VCL) and they are the Locally Trusted Organisation (LTO) and bankers for the BIG Local which is 1 million pounds over 10 years for Chinbrook Area.

This project is all about local people being more involved in the shaping of their community and making Chinbrook a better place to live. ChART is working towards its first year plan and this includes areas such as green spaces, developing communities through volunteering and projects around employment and education. In addition to this there is a Young Savers Club in collaboration with the Credit Union and local schools. ChART is keen to get more local people involved and there is a Steering Group whose function is to ensure that projects are delivered. The next meeting is at 10.30am on 26 February at the WG Grace Community Centre.

ChART is now recruiting for several posts and please do let other local people know about these vacancies.

•           Financial Inclusion Outreach worker

•           Health and Green Spaces Coordinator

•           Education Employment and Training Outreach Worker

Q Do you have a website

A Yes we are working on this and will have it within the next month or so

Joan Roach told the assembly that the Lewisham Local ‘Community Contributor Card’ is an initiative of Rushey Green Time Bank, delivered in partnership with Volunteer Centre Lewisham.

The scheme is designed to recognise the invaluable contribution volunteers make towards improving our communities. It covers whatever kind of volunteering people do – whether it is traditional volunteering, time banking, befriending, and grassroots localism initiatives, anything where neighbours do something for the benefit of the community. It is about strengthening the local economy by encouraging more people to shop at Lewisham’s amazing independent shops and businesses. Traders throughout Lewisham are signing up to the scheme to offer favourable deals to cardholders, visibly demonstrating they are community contributors.

The scheme is free to join for both community organisations and traders. We work only with recognised community organisations in Lewisham, who wish to further acknowledge the efforts of their time givers. All we ask is that the card recipient is active and committed and that we receive basic contact details before cards are issued. There is no further administration! This first card issue will be valid until June 2017 with annual renewal thereafter.

Traders are offering their favourable deals based purely on goodwill. All they are asked to do on joining the scheme is to display a window sticker in a prominent position advertising they accept the card. Their offer is stated on the Lewisham Local website, plus they are given an electronic badge to use on their publicity materials and website to highlight their support of the scheme. Traders like this as it is good publicity for them and they are known as Community Contributors.

We are now looking at working in the Grove Park area and would love to hear from community organisations who wish to give the card to their volunteers and talk to shop owners about joining this community scheme.

Find out more at www.lewishamlocal.org.uk

Stephen Kenny Chair of the Grove Park Neighbourhood Forum told the assembly meeting that the Grove Park Neighbourhood Forum has been established by local people to develop a Neighbourhood Plan for Grove Park.

Early last year we invited people to our Grove Park 2030 Vision Day. Since then, we have received some additional funding from Central Government and we can now make further progress on our plan.

This spring we aim to start developing our key planning policies and local projects. However, before this we would like to further engage with the local community to ascertain to what extent our work and vision is hitting the mark and whether there is more that we can do.

To assist us we ask that you complete our short survey which can be found at

www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/GroveParkNPlan

If you would like to be more involved in the Neighbourhood Forum please visit: www.groveparkneighbourhoodforum.com/

We will soon be sending out invitations to the next Community Planning Workshop.

•           Capital Clean-up - Capital Clean-up is the Mayor’s partnership campaign to help Londoners get together to spruce up their city. It’s part of his wider Team London volunteering programme and is supported by McDonald’s. The application period will be open from 11 January and closes on 14 March 2016 at 5pm. For more information visit: https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/waste-and-recycling/capital-clean

•           Clean for the Queen initiative - Clean for The Queen is a campaign to clear up Britain in time for Her Majesty the Queen's 90th birthday, which will be officially celebrated in June 2016 For more information enquiries@cleanforthequeen.co.uk

•           Former Grove Park Youth Centre - Heidi Alexander MP has a further public meeting about the Former Grove Park Youth Centre and local community provision scheduled for: Saturday 23rd April, 3-4.30pm, at WG Grace Centre. This will be an opportunity for people to help shape the proposals for the site. For more information please contact Laura Harper, on Laura.harper@lewisham.gov.uk or 0208 314 6096.  Questionnaires inviting comment were left on the information table and these can returned to Laura Harper, Lewisham Council, 4th Floor Laurence House, Catford SE6 4RU

The following projects will be fully funded by the 2015/16 Grove Park Assembly Fund

•           WG Grace Senior Citizen Tuesday Club - Senior Citizen Tuesday Club £1,400

•           Baring Primary School - Baring School Road Safety Initiative £1,150

•           Carers Lewisham - Young Carers Club and Outdoor Learning Activities £1,900

•           Friends of Grove Park Nature Reserve - Nature Reserve Fencing Repairs £1,500

•           Volunteer Centre Lewisham - Grove Park Timebites £2,000

•           Chinbrook Dog Show - Chinbrook Fun Day and Dog Show £1,225

•           9th Lewisham North Scout Group - Improving Local Scouting in the Community £1,200

•           Dalmain Athletic Girls Football Club - Grove Park Girl’s Football camps £1,850

•           SCALE Projects - Grove Park Youth Matters £1,850

Unfortunately the below projects did not receive enough votes to be funded on this occasion.

•           Grove Park Community Group – Dark Skies

•           Northbrook Park Community Group - Trim Trail Pull Up Bars

The Assembly closed at 1.10 pm and Cllr Elliott thanked everyone for coming   along to the meeting. No conflicts of interest were declared.