THE EXHIBITION -Two years too late?

Even if you've been reading your Gazette today you may not know that South Glos has finally proposed an "exhibition" about Thornbury's housing needs, to take place on Tuesday 18th January at the Cossham Hall from 10am-12pm and again from 6-8pm.

"South Gloucestershire Council’s ward members wish to ensure that local residents understand how this decision (to adopt the Core Strategy) has been reached. The exhibition will be a chance for local people to see why the Councils think there is a need for some more housing in Thornbury and why the Park Farm area has been chosen as the preferred site. "

This may well be SG's stated wish, but when does it plan to inform residents that this Exhibition is taking place?
If this exhibition does indeed deliver what it promises it would be quite remarkable. To date SG council has failed miserably to demonstrate both a need for more housing in Thornbury and reasoned evidence as to why Park Farm could possibly be the preferred site.

• Their Core Strategy was unintelligible to normal members of the general public lacking expertise in such matters (as was belatedly acknowledged at a recent Council Meeting by Clare Fardell 13-12-10).
  
• The Sustainability Appraisal was not a balanced appraisal whatsoever, but rather a biased, contradictory and inaccurate attempt to justify a decision that had been made long before any "consultation" was ever instigated.
  
• Local residents were not fooled, and responded en masse to the Draft Core Strategy official Consultation. More than 2/3rds of all respondents to the Core Strategy were making representations about the Thornbury section, and of the 739 individual representations concerning Thornbury 713 opposed the strategy and only 26 supported it – 96.5% against!
  
• But apart from a few cosmetic tweaks here and there, South Glos made no significant concessions to local opinion, and the main thrust of their plans remain unaltered.

So ultimately, what do we hope to learn from this exhibition? Difficult to answer at this stage, (a shame it didn't happen two years ago at the outset of the whole process!) but we are actively encouraging as many members of Thornbury/Morton/Oldbury as possible to attend the exhibition in an attempt to make South Gloucestershire planners accountable to local opinion. We will shortly be distributing a flyer suggesting lines of questioning residents may find useful in attending this event. (Also to be posted on this blog by early next week)

WE NEED HELP
- looking for some volunteers to deliver flyers to local residents over the next week or so.
Please contact me at ourgreenheritage@gmail.com if you can spare even as little as half an hour.

South Glos are also planning a stakeholder workshop on Feb 1st from 6.30-9.30pm to discuss further plans for the development of Park Farm, but that event is by invitation only. Have you been invited? Would you like to have been invited? Why not take it up with organiser Jane McDermott (jane.mcdermott@southglos.gov.uk)?

Following on from the exhibition it is not too late to make comments on the revised Core Strategy, which will be submitted not to the same old local SG planners who have pointedly ignored our views, but to an independent Planning Inspector who will scrutinise the whole process. (Deadline 18th Feb) Hopefully s/he will hold planners and councillors to account in favour of a fair and balanced process in Thornbury where the views of local residents count for something. But presumably we'll be told all about how we can submit our comments at the exhibition!