Today at the Winchester March

Some pictures from the event:

Quite a big group had assembled on the
recreation ground by 11am. Hazel Agombar
from Friends Of The Earth is leading the way!

Just before we started marching.

If you look closely you can see Councillor Tait taking
a peek at us (he is in front of the white building).

Not the only dog on the march but quite possibly the cutest one!

The crowd is gathering in front of the Guildhall.

Bumped into our ward councillor Jim Maynard!

Ward councillor Dominic Hiscock and
prospective MP Jackie Porter were also present.

Speeches from the stairs, at this point
it was Councillor Gottlieb's turn.

Unfortunately we didn't get to see the dancers, there were simply too many people coming into the area - which actually isn't a bad thing at all!

News Roundup

Hello all, just a very quick News Roundup to let you know about the Winchester March and a few other things!

Winchester March

If you have found yourself being unhappy with how Winchester City Council is going about building projects (e.g. Silver Hill) or consultations (e.g. the one about the council house development in Abbotts Barton, or the one re the Leisure Centre), you will have the chance to join other Wintonians on a march from North Walls Recreation Ground to the Guildhall on 29 November! This march is being organised as peaceful and non-political (i.e. not being organised by a political party), and with the help of various protest/action/community groups from Winchester. More details can be found on the (very short) Winchester March website and in this Hampshire Chronicle article. If you are free that day, please join me and hopefully many other people from Abbotts Barton on this march - and bring the whole family, this is about the future of Winchester!

On Wednesday evening I will be at an organisational meeting for this march: the organisers are looking for people to help as stewards along the route. Is there anybody who is able and would like to help? Please let me know via the Contact page! For our street champions: we would also like to distribute postcards about the event throughout Abbotts Barton and are hoping that you will be able to help us again! If there is anybody else who would like to give a helping hand every now and then, please don't hesitate to contact us! Even the smallest contribution is appreciated!

What's going on in Winchester?

Today there will be the open meeting "Shaping our future: the Local Plan for Winchester District" organised by WinACC and the City of Winchester Trust at United Church in Jewry Street: start time is 7.30pm, with refreshments from 7.15pm. The meeting is free, all welcome.

Tomorrow the Council is displaying Local Plan 2 Consultation documents in the Discovery Centre (3pm to 8:30pm). You can find an online comment form and all the documents via this page on the City Council website. I am particularly interested in how the City Council managed to ignore completely the statement from September 2013 and put the same plans back in place without consulting anybody!

Have you seen the analysis of the various options re the Leisure Centre as published by the Council recently? The information is available on the City Council website.

Other

Sadly our free trainer-run fitness sessions are now over, they were so much fun! Thank you so much to Charlie, who managed to keep us engaged over seven weeks in total in the end!

There are still some people interested in continuing a weekly fitness routine, and we are still meeting up in the park on Sunday afternoons repeating the exercises we learned from Charlie. If you are interested in joining us, send me a message with your phone number via the Contact page, so that we can keep you up to date about the time (which is getting slightly earlier every Sunday as the sun is setting earlier every week). This coming Sunday we are going to meet at 3:45! Why don't you just join us?

And finally, with the weather getting dreary and the days getting darker, I thought I share with you a recipe for the perfect winter warmer: Spicy Dal and Carrot Soup. Oh how I wished I had taken a photo earlier - it looked and smelled so very appetising and it did not disappoint! :) UPDATE: here is a photo:


Keep warm and dry!
Sylke

Councillor's Surgery November

After last month's cancelled surgery, this month Jane and Sylke were welcomed by Paul Williams (Local Campaigner) and Jackie Porter (Prospective MP), instead of Jim Maynard and Dominic Hiscock (two of our local ward City Councillors) who were attending a Council meeting.

The main topic of our meeting were the housing development plans for Abbotts Barton and how little democratic involvement of residents there is by the City Council. We pointed out that there was the Council Leader's announcement in September 2013 in which we were told that the Council in the foreseeable future was only going to build houses along Hillier Way and in place of some of the garages. This statement is getting completely ignored by the current plans as laid out in the documents published recently by the City Council for the Local Plan 2 consultation (see the Save The Parks site for a guide to the draft documents).

We also talked about the City Council's September press release re Abbotts Barton and Stanmore in which Councillor Mike Southgate was quoted saying "The planning frameworks for Stanmore and Abbotts Barton were developed with the community." We have been wondering about this statement and have actually emailed Cllr Southgate to ask for a clarification from him on how exactly these plans were developed with the community. We do not remember any consultation besides the one in late 2012.

We were promised by Jackie and Paul that some questions would be asked about how the development plans just went back to how they were in 2012 despite the 2013 announcement.

We also pointed out that the Local Plan 2 Consultation that will take place on Wednesday 12 November in the Discovery Centre has a very awkward time slot for many people, especially parents of school children (3pm to 8:30pm). It was explained to us that the same plans will be available for viewing at the open meeting that is taking place the day before (organised by WinACC and the City of Winchester Trust) at United Church in Jewry Street: start time is 7.30pm, with refreshments from 7.15pm. The meeting is free, all welcome. So people who cannot make the Wednesday could make use of the Tuesday meeting if the timing suits them better.

Apart from that we asked if they could let us know if there were any news about some additional noticeboards that we were hoping to get which we had been talking about with Jim Maynard two months ago. They promised to get back to us.

The next Councillor's Surgery will be Thursday 4 December!