Agenda and minutes

Your Chair Councillor Amrani, welcomed everyone to the meeting and explained the process for awarding the funding this evening.

He explained that the total of the fund is £15000. However part of it can  be used as councillor discretionary funding. As such the councillors and Coordinating group have agreed to award £420 to help develop the new community web site. Therefore the total remaining fund available is £14580

He thanked and welcomed the organisations who applied for funding and invited them to present their projects to the attendees and voters

Hear from the organisations applying for funding this year. Detailed below.

Ageing Well in Lewisham – Social activities in Care Homes

Ageing Well in Lewisham - LCC are experienced in running groups for isolated older people living in Lewisham with an excellent record of reducing isolation and improving community cohesion. Our bid 'Creative Social Groups in Residential Homes' seeks to provide 26 community art sessions in three residential homes in our ward to encourage interaction and encourage the development of friendships. There are 8 homes in the ward of Catford South.
We will develop the sessions in the homes where current provision does not enable residents to participate in therapeutic groups. Our main purpose will be to bring fun, laughter, stimulation and the feel good factor to people through the activities! (Residents sometimes complain of feeling lonely and spending  too much time in front of the television).
We will encourage local volunteers to engage in the sessions led by our experienced tutors. We are also hoping care staff will get involved and learn simple art skill.
At the end of the project we will encourage and support participants who have enjoyed the sessions to take the next step and join regular Befriending Groups outside their homes so they can feel closer to their community and valued members of it.
Please consider providing funding for this valuable project to often over looked older people and help to give residents more purpose  in life and for some the confidence to gain ongoing enjoyment in their community.

Brownhill Road Baptist Church (BRBC) – The Garden on the hill

Brownhill Road Baptist Church (BRBC) has been a landmark building and a gateway into Catford for over a century. We have the largest public frontage on Brownhill Road and we want to work with local residents to create a new colourful community garden in the large beds in front of the church and community hall. Brownhill Road is renowned for being dirty and noisy with many front gardens either paved for parking or overgrown with weeds and discarded furniture. 

OUR SOLUTIONS:

1. A BIG Community Clean Up Day: Working with the Council, we’ll provide bin bags and gloves for residents to clear those front gardens, and we'll even share our skip!

2. ‘The Garden On The Hill’: We're inviting everyone to join us to build a beautiful garden, erecting trellis, replacing hand rails, adding soil and plants. The garden will brighten up Brownhill Road, showcasing the area to the hundreds of cars and people passing by every day. Fundraising is already under way to cover the bulk of the refurbishment, replacing old hand rails, the big notice boards and super new benches! 

We serve this community: The new garden will be a space for the community to congregate and socialise outdoors. Two churches use our building- BRBC and El-Bethel, a long standing Tamil Baptist community. Our community hall is well used with a full time day nursery in residence, plus a weekly youth club and Scouts & Brownies. There are also weekly sports clubs meetings and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2.

Lucy Formolli, Coordinator of the Catofrd South Assembly, explained the process for voting

•          You have been given 8 stickers on arrival. We ask that you use these stickers to vote for your favourite projects

•          A3 posters for each project are around the room – all organisations were directed to their poster in order to take questions

•          During the break please place your  stickers on your preferred projects.

•          Use your stickers wisely – you can use your stickers how you want but try and vote for as many projects as possible

•          You have until the end of this break to use your stickers.

•          The posters will be collected at the end of the break. If you have not voted your will not get another chance.

•          The stickers will be counted for each project and the projects receiving the most votes will be funded until the money runs out.

•          The Councillors and coordinating group reserve the right to allocate any remaining fund, as per the councillor discretionary portion of the total available.

Sam Kirk, Strategic Waste & Environment Manager for Lewisham, Environment & Community Development.
Lewisham Council wants to know what is most important to you about your waste and recycling service and will explain how you can be involved in the consultation.

Lets talk Rubbish video was shown to the room
Sam Kirk then gave a presentation on the consultation (available to view on agenda items) Assured the room that nothing has been decided and encouraged those who haven’t to go online and complete the consultation survey

Questions

Q. With all the large developments of flats being put up in Catford and Lewisham I would like to know if these changes apply to the flats.

A. These changes are for wheely bins as flats often have large communal disposal units

Q. Are you working with Beckenham regarding their recycling service as it costs money and is dangerous to the environment to burn fuel to get all the way to Deptford Recycling centre

A. Sam confirmed that the team are working with other boroughs on all options

Q. Issues with fly tipping around Culverley Road. Do you think removing litter bins solves this issue

A. Sam felt that this did not stop fly tipping

Sam will also address the recurring issue of dog fowling and responsible dog ownership.
She will tell you how the team are tackling problems, enforcing legislation and supporting responsible dog ownership in the borough

Much of what we do around dogs is encapsulated in our statutory responsibilities and through our partnership working with a variety of organisation, so this evening I’ll give a brief overview of what these are.

Cleansing

Stray Dogs

·        Lewisham has a statutory responsibility for stray dogs.

BARK – Borough Action for Responsible K9’s

Set up about six years ago, the Animal Welfare Dept works with our partners and holds bi-monthly meetings with The Safer Neighbourhood Teams, Enforcement, RSPCA, housing providers, Glendale, Battersea Cats & Dogs Homes and the Status Dogs Unit and now local assemblies.

Education & Awareness Raising

General:

Community Events:

Schools Education:

Legislation and Enforcement

There are a number of pieces of legislation relating to irresponsible dog owners and dogs.

Dog Control Orders

Control of Dogs Order 1992

Animal Welfare Act 2006

·        Much of our work around this is in partnership with the RSPCA;

Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 - Two key pieces to this legislation:

Communications working group made up of local volunteers are presenting the new Catford South community website – Surinder Phuller

Surinder Phuller, Local resident and volunteer on the Catford South Assembly Communications Working Group presented the plans for the new community website for Catford South

This is my first meeting. I moved to Catford in March  - amazing turn out tonight and the things you are all doing is super exciting .

I am here to give you an update on the Catford website, it is not just me, it is a whole group of volunteers, giving up time to develop one place as a go to hub for the whole community

We have a survey and an email set up to hear from you from now

Starting point is what is the vision – why are we setting up this website

Create one hub there to inform and engage residents and  potential future residents interesting in moving into Catford. There is a ton of info out there and amazing things out there but sometimes difficult to find out if you don’t already know which makes it harder to get involved.

This website will eb your go to on your phone, computer, ipad at any point to find out what’s going on where can you volunteer, get information and  what’s the latest and greatest thing happening

This will be built by residents, for residents - no offence to the council as they are giving us great support, but that website  is info only. The Community website will be exciting content not just info, you look forward to seeing the latest block or article

Spoken to lots of residents where the impetus comes from - you have to already know about something to get involved. What we want to do is build a site th

4 key goals - Already started  build

One place for your to access all info

Make it easy to use, looks good and intuitive to everybody

Make it meaningful – there are volunteers for the site at the moment, but we want to find out from you on what content you want we want it to be meaningful to help everyone, the less people involved the less meaningful to all aspects of the community

Inform and engage

The working group have come up with 4 key categories, 4 buckets of information.

Local  - what’s going on, events, societies and services, good projects. It will be great for all these projects to be on the site to give maximum exposure

Meet – have a calendar of events  - what about everything else happening, how to  volunteer, what opportunities are there – minutes and actions will also be housed here. Residents have a place to go to find out more and an opportunity for you to submit a questions and have your say, This bucket will allow you to do that

3 – Out and About.  Make it engaging  - blog posts will eb a large feature like online news stories that are  really interesting to local people. i.e. the memorial plaque for instance would be perfect  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

i)          Lewisham Local Community Contributor Card
ii)         Lewisham Library consultation meeting and survey

iii)        Curious Catford Big Draw

Give Local – Shop Local, Community Contributor Card

The community contributor card is for active volunteers. This is through the Rushey Green Time Bank. We are starting the pilot with Catford South for people who give their time through time banking, befriending volunteering for this assembly, with local organisations anyone who gives time to benefit their community. The card will allow local shops to give local discounts to volunteers.  For more information contact Joan Roach joan@rgtb.org.uk

Consultation on the future of the library service

While we will not be able to discuss this in detail today, we would like to draw your attention to the proposals for changes to the Library and Information Service.

We have a limited supply of questionnaires here tonight, but more are available online or at your local library.

You can access the questionnaire, get more information and join the consultation online using the link below. Please help spread the word with friends and neighbours who are not online and help them to be involved in this consultation

www.lewisham.gov.uk/librariesconsultation

The Library Service would like to invite you to attend one of the public meetings that have been set up to discuss this proposal.

Upcoming public meetings will be held on the following dates at the following venues:

Date:                     22^nd October 2015, 7.30pm

Location:             Sandhurst Junior School, Minard Rd, SE6 1NW

Date:                     4^th November2015,  7.30pm

Location:             St Dunstan’s Jubilee Hall, Canadian Avenue, SE6 4SW

Curious Catford – The Big Draw

The Catford Big Draw Is Back! Free, no ticket required, all ages welcome

24^th October 2015, 10am to 4 am

Abbotshall Road Healthy Lifestyle Centre
Abbotshall Road, Catford SE6 1SQ

Useful links to take away:

Facebook            Facebook.com/bigdrawcatford
Twitter                 @bigdrawcatford

Councillor Amrani explained that the free bulb annual event started today. And bulb bags with planting instructions are available for collection this evening and ongoing from Torridon Road Library, Abbotshall Road Healthy Lifestyle Centre and Holy Cross Primary school until they all go.

Plant them in your front gardens, in pots on driveways, in window boxes. Anywhere at the front of your house and flat so all the community can benefit from the bulbs in the spring.

Thank you to all the volunteers who helped pack up 10000 bulbs for distribution and the distribution points for agreeing to help this year.

Cllr Amrani announced the projects that will be funded through the open public vote. In order to fund as many organisations as possible we are £93 over budget. Lucy will work with the funded organsiations to reduce that overspend.