Chairman's Report 2010
Dear Members
A spring in our steps
Thanks to all of you who responded to our draft strategy or agenda for a more sustainable Hove (and Brighton). As a result we now have a number of new recruits to the Committee that will help us to start influencing policies, actions and hopefully investment into our area. Our first new addition is the setting up of an infrastructure group, where we will strongly argue that we need to plan better for the use of renewable heat and power in the City – accepting that the current state of affairs is unacceptable and that we need to make much better use of existing resources, harness wind and sun (which now seems to have come back after a long winter) and waste heat. It’s all about energy security – local resilience – and just moving with the times. John Kapp, with a solid engineering background, is leading this group and we hope to be able to recruit eminent members of academia and from the professional engineering fraternity to develop this group.
Our second addition to the Committee is Mike Brown, a retired engineer who will form our sea front watch together with our Honorary Treasurer, Louis Grabsky. We feel we need an ongoing dialogue with the Council on repairs needed to seating and shelters and other furniture along the seafront. This is important to the area, to visitors and to us and unless we are vigilant there will not be sufficient resources set aside to maintain this part of the city.
Thirdly, and flying a kite, we have managed to recruit a younger member to our team, Andrew Haicalis, who will explore what we can do to influence better access to the sea. Broadly speaking it’s for those of us who love to swim, but who hate pebbles or can’t get into the water easily. We have been told that there were pontoons in the water to swim to during the 30s – it’s the sort of idea we would like to examine and develop.
Fourthly we have strengthened our traditional roles. Our
Honorary Secretary Anne Moncrieff is
now pounding the streets of Hove weekly to inspect all relevant planning
applications to support Carolyn Oxenbury, who is fronting up the society on
conservation area matters and at the official City wide conservation area
group, set up by the Council. After Graham Deane sadly passed away, we have a
big gap in this group and we would love to have some help – especially from
somebody who understands modern architecture and all the requirements needed to
make buildings more sustainable. Sadly Anne will be standing down as Secretary of the Society at the AGM in October so we have already started to look for someone who might be interested in taking the Minutes at our committee meetings - about 8 per year along with other light duties such as booking the rooms for our lectures and meetings. If anyone is interested please give me a call to find out more. 01273 884877
Which brings me to planning. You will recall from my last letter that we want to influence buildings to be more energy efficient and we think a more open minded approach to issues such as solar panels, wind turbines etc is called for in the community – especially now that we have got the feed-in law from the 1st April. We also feel strongly that we must try to influence policies in the city to secure more sustainable outcomes in a number of ways. So we have put in representations to the Council’s core strategy on the basis of challenging its soundness. This will, I hope, be of particular interest to members:
1. We feel that there needs to be firm minimum sizes for flats, not just in public, but also in private developments. The UK produces some of the smallest dwellings in Europe and this is just not good enough.
2. We also feel that the offering of new dwellings somehow needs to better respond to demand, so we have suggested that fewer 1 bedroom and more 2 and 3 bedroom developments are permitted.
There is much else that has happened, we have welcomed the Planning Brief for the Queen Alex site; we have established communication with the Press; we have started to develop closer relationships with the Brighton Society and with the Council through a visit to the Leader of the Council, Councillor Mary Mears, and we have just brought to its conclusion a very successful series of lectures organised by Elaine Evans.
One area we want to work on and develop next is an approach
to our street tree heritage. We are an amenity society, caring for Hove, its
past and future. Hitherto much of our concern has concentrated on buildings.
Time has come to give similar attention to our trees and street trees in
particular. We need many more to replace all those that have been lost over the
years and need to see this as an essential part of our work. If there is
anybody among the members who is a tree expert and would want to work with us
on giving this essential component of our City a higher profile then please
contact me. More about this in the next letter. Please do support us, we can only do as much as we have
More about all this in the next letter. Please do support us
– we can only do as much if we have members willing to help.
I am delighted that we have introduced a new feature in this newsletter - a members article. This can be seen on the 'Articles tab' titled St Peter's Church.
Let me finish on a Spring theme – the Brighton festival is coming up and the many local artists that work together in Hove Arts are again setting aside all their time from now to the end of May to provide excellent show-cases of painting, sculpture, photography, jewellery and other arts and crafts. Do visit and support – they are an important part of our community. We have agreed to distribute the Hove Arts flyer with this newsletter – in exchange they will display the Hove Civic Society members recruitment card at the various venues. Enjoy the show – and help recruit another member!
Helmut Lusser - Chairman