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This BLOG is dedicated to a green and pleasant Thornbury. Without your help, it may not stay that way...

Wednesday 30 June 2010

THORNBURY CARNIVAL SAT 3rd JULY


This coming Saturday's Carnival is going to be a major opportunity for our Save Thornbury's Green Heritage campaign. We will be running a stall on the Mundy's in order to help make our voice heard.
Activities will include face-painting and badge-making for children whilst we try to target the parents/adults with the full impact of Town and South Glos Councillors undemocratic and inadequate planning and consultation methods regarding new housing for Thornbury.
Our long-anticipated "simplified" representation forms for South Glos, will be hot-off-the-press and ready for distribution.
Come along to the stall and collect your own form, and take a few for your friends. Fill it in there and then, if you wish, and we'll hand-deliver them to South Glos Planners en masse!
If you'd like to distribute to all of your neighbours, sign up for a whole street to be leafletted.

Remember the deadline for returns is 6th August.
Let's make a huge effort here so that South Glos are in no doubt as to the feelings of local residents.

Sunday 13 June 2010

EXHIBITION and PHOTO-SHOOT

Two dates for your diary for this week:

Thursday 17th June in St. Mary's Shopping Precint, between 11am-3.30pm - you will find an exhibition run by South Glos, informing you of the proposed housing Development for NW Thornbury. We believe there will be an opportunity to talk to South Glos planners and also to let them know your opinions, maybe even respond to the Core Strategy. To help keep things in balance, Save Thornbury's Green Heritage also plans to have a presence in the precinct, with a few leaflets of our own. (If you have a free hour and would like to join the STGH rota - e-mail us at ourgreenheritage@gmail.com and let us know your availability)

Saturday 19th June at 4.30pm in the field behind Castle School, we will be organising a PHOTOSHOOT together with Thornbury Gazette - the purpose of this occasion is to send a strong message of opposition to the proposed housing development, in a very visual and direct way. Please come and swell the numbers - bring your friends, your children, your placards, your dogs.....
Hope to see you there.

Sunday 6 June 2010

ARE YOUR COUNCILLORS REPRESENTING YOUR VIEWS?

This is a vital time to be letting your local councillor know what you think about the planned housing development.
It's very important to get both Thornbury Town Councillors and South Gloucestershire Councillors speaking out on our behalf, and representing our opinions. We need them to be behind our campaign, not our adversaries. (If they aren't prepared to represent us, then they're in the wrong job, and we will need to vote them out via the next ballot box!)

If you live in NW Thornbury, your town councillors are:
Cllr. Clare Fardell Address: St Arilds Cottage, Kington, Thornbury. Tel: 01454 412486
Email: clare.fardell@southglos.gov.uk
(also a South Glos Councillor - North Ward)
Cllr. Shirley Holloway Address: 19 Chantry Road, Thornbury. Tel: 01454 885161

Email: shirley.holloway@blueyonder.co.uk (also a South Glos Councillor - South Ward)

Cllr. Bob Griffin Address: 71 Jubilee Drive, Thornbury. Tel: 01454 417155

Email: robert.griffin@virgin.net


If you live anywhere else in Thornbury, click on this link to find out who your local councillor is:

http://www.thornburytowncouncil.gov.uk/councillors.htm


Other SGC councillors:
Matthew Riddle:(Severn Ward +Executive member) Address: Oak Farm, Oldbury Lane, nr Thornbury BS35 1RD
Phone:
01454 413263 Email: matthew.riddle@southglos.gov.uk

Neil Halsall: (North Ward) Address: 3 Nightingale Close, ThornburyBS35 1TG Tel: 01454 414311
Mobile:
07776 236145 Email: neil.halsall@southglos.gov.uk

Maggie Tyrrell: (South Ward) Address: 4 Chiltern Park, Thornbury BS35 2HX
Phone:
01454 864065 Email: maggie.tyrrell@southglos.gov.uk


We urge you to get in touch with them as soon as possible (at the moment this is probably more important than completing your response to the Core Strategy - we are still working on ways to make that task more accessible)
Write to, or e-mail, or ring your councillor and make your opinions known.
You may like to begin with some of these points:
  • You think that the process by which NW Thornbury was chosen (the Sustainability Appraisal of 6 different sites) was deeply flawed, with inconsistencies, inaccuracies, bias and conflicting logic.
  • Anyway, you feel that NW Thornbury is one of the crucial Heritage sites in our town (St. Mary's Church, Thornbury Castle, Medieval Fishponds, several other listed buildings) and should not in any way be compromised.
  • You applaud the incoming National Government with its plans to do away with Core Strategies, and a Planning Policy statement that will discourage the development of greenfield land such as this., and will offerthe "highest level of protection for our most valued landscapes and environmental resources. You also echo David Cameron's sentiment: "Today is the start of a deep and serious reform agenda,to take power away from politicians and give it to people....We know that the best ideas come from the ground up, not the top down...We know that when you give people and communities more power over their lives, more power to come together, and work together and make life better - great things happen!"
  • You don't believe the original consultation process was a GENUINE consultation, and that it generated statistically irrelevant results because so few people responded. Furthermore no opinion was sought from NW Thornbury residents at the crucial Stakeholder Workshop - making the outcomes untenable.
For further arguments/discussions browse further on this blog and get to understand some of the underlying issues more fully.
Ask your councillor to respond to specific issues.
Ask them how they might intend to represent your opinions in the weeks and months ahead.
Let us know how they respond at ourgreenheritage@gmail.com

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Grace Davies addresses Thornbury Town Development Committee

On behalf of "Save Our Green Heritage," Grace Davies was invited this evening to address the Thornbury Town Development Committee and raise some of the more pressing issues regarding the South Glos Core Strategy and the proposed major new housing estate for Thornbury.
If you would like to read the text of her speech, click on the link below.

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1GDl5UINlZIfRpFh_SuJZ3deDxfWCMhIH_0QXBSPL0I8&hl=en_GB&authkey=undefined#

Despite a few nerves, and supported by a handful of sympathisers, Grace succinctly raised numerous objections to the current proposals, and boldly requested that the current plans to develop 500-600 houses in NW Thornbury quite simply be withdrawn from the South Glos Core Strategy.

Thankyou Grace and the all the other STGH campaigners
We wait to see the outcome of their efforts...