Welcome to the East of England Civic and Amenity Societies

The East of England Civic and Amenity Societies is an informal regional cluster of active civic and amenity groups. Its aim is to exchange experience among its members, and to organise meetings on topics of interest to them.

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February 2012 e-newsletter

Message from the Chairman

Smart cities

Cambridge, Chelmsford, Norwich and Peterborough are among the 27 cities that have been invited by the government to bid for money to install ultra-fast broadband. The benefits for entertainment are obvious, but the challenge is to make an impact on business and the economy. At a workshop on "Smart Cities" in London last autumn, a speaker from Cisco told us that he had helped a town in Spain reduce its energy consumption by 40% through the widespread use of sensors.

May 2012

Localism Act

The government has set up a useful web site on neighbourhood planning and on community rights to

build small-scale, site-specific projects without going through the normal planning application process
challenge to take over a council service they think they can run differently or better
bid to buy and take over the running of local assets that are important to them

May 2012

Impact of clock changes

My attention has been drawn to a paper by four academics in the Cambridge University Department of Engineering about the impact of the UK changing to European time in the winter months. Usually the arguments for this change are based on road safety issues, but the Cambridge engineers calculate that there would be energy savings of at least 0.3% in the winter months, leading to a reduction of about 450,000 tonnes of CO2 emission.

May 2012

Master classes in Peterborough

Alice Kershaw, Heritage Regeneration Officer, Opportunity Peterborough and Peterborough City Council, has issued an invitation to civic societies to various master classes:

20th April: Legislation and 'At Risk'
28th April: Heritage Interpretation
19th May: Peterborough Local Studies Archives
23rd May: Maintenance and Building Usage
24th May: Bats and Historic Buildings

April 2012

Ring the bells for the Olympics

It is being urged that all the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes at 8 am on Friday 27 July 2012, the day of the opening ceremony for the Olympics. A special "tune" has been composed. Details here.

April 2012

Economic benefits of the environment

We have plans later this year to organise a workshop on economic benefits of the environment. Meanwhile, Natural England has just issued an extensive report on the economic benefits of green infrastructure, for example to health, community cohesion, climate change mitigation and water supply security.

April 2012

Historic Environment Forum

On 6 March the region's Historic Environment Forum was told that the Heritage Lottery Fund is still looking for good applications for funding, and that the National Trust intends offering to civic societies places on its training courses for volunteers.

We were told that the New Anglia LEP (Norfolk/Suffolk) has been appointed the Green Economy Pathfinder. It will address

Energy - incorporating case studies on; localization/off grid, nuclear, and offshore.
Low Carbon Innovation and Finance - incorporating energy/resource efficiency.
Natural Capital - incorporating landscape, wildlife, leisure and recreation, local food and tourism.

The Olympic Torch will travel slowly all round our region from 3 to 9 July, and a busy programme of events in the region for the Cultural Olympiad has already begun.

March 2012

Transport

Cambridgeshire County Council is taking the lead in persuading the government to upgrade the A14, because its link to Felixstowe Port is crucial to the economy of the whole country. Also, the Highways Agency is using its power to ban developments that would cause further congestion on the road. It seems to be inevitable that part of the cost be paid by a developer, in return for receiving an income from tolls to be charged on upgraded parts of the road. The remainder of the money might come from community infrastructure levies, Section 106 agreements, and the EU.

On 9 March I attended the Regional Transport Forum, which is composed of portfolio holders and officers from the counties and unitary authorities which are the local transport authorities. Although the government has disbanded most of the cross-region bodies, largely replacing them with the LEPs, the Forum agreed that for transport there is a strong case for continuing region-wide cooperation. The government is consulting on devolving to local transport authorities control of decisions and budgets for major local transport schemes in their areas. This is to be done on the same geography as the LEPs, but the local authorities agreed that, although the LEPs can give advice, as elected bodies they must take the responsibility.

We were given a presentation on the extensive preparations for the disruption to transport that will be caused by the Olympics. Most affected will be Hertfordshire and Essex, as two of the Olympic venues are

Lee Valley: white water rafting
Hadleigh Farm: mountain biking.

In addition, from 3 to 8 July the Torch will make slow progress through every county in the region.

March 2012

Green Belt

An issue that has come up in Cambridge, is that a company of major importance needs to expand, and if it is not allowed to expand into the Green Belt there is a danger that it will leave. On the other hand, the Green Belt is important for providing a well-defined boundary to the City, so helping prevent it from mushrooming outwards, and for keeping it an attractive place to live, which business regards as important for attracting highly-qualified staff against global competition. There is also need for there to be interesting things to do, so what should be the attitude towards a proposal to build an 8000-seat football stadium in the Green belt?

Of course, similar issues arise elsewhere. For example, the Radlett Society is campaigning against an energy from waste incinerator and an enormous rail freight terminal.

March 2012

Local Plans

Spurred on partly by the threat from the proposed National Planning Policy Framework, many local authorities have begun to frame their Local Plans for the next two decades. This involves a huge amount of detail - the 2006 Cambridge Local Plan covered 96 policies. And local authorities are under an obligation to consult their neighbouring authorities. Civic Societies surely need to contribute to the process, but the amount of work is potentially daunting. Also, the Localism Act requires the drawing up of registers of community assets, where again civic societies surely have an interest but again this will mean more work.

March 2012

Local Enterprise Partnerships and skills

Many of the LEPs seem to be getting off to a slow start, partly because their board members are unpaid and have other, full-time, jobs, and partly because of lack of money to take on staff. One of the duties of a LEP in our region is to try to rectify the serious shortage of staff to serve our knowledge-based economy. The Wolf report drew attention last summer to the fact that much of what is taught in schools will not get jobs for the students, and there has recently been publicity for so many of our schools being rated "satisfactory", which actually is not good enough. A workshop I organised identified as a remedy an urgent need to bring schools and business together, as at present knowledge of the world of work is seriously lacking in schools. Also valuable is for people from the outside world to help run discussions and projects in schools.

March 2012

Heritage assets

A meeting in Norwich organised by English Heritage on 17 February publicised the Heritage Counts website. It contains a lot of useful information, for example a check-list to help organisations that want to increase community involvement in heritage. There is also a link to the web page giving information about heritage assets in our region. We were told that, although English Heritage has suffered a budget cut of 30%, its grants budget is still there, and it is setting up a Heritage at Risk team for the region.

March 2012

National Planning Policy Framework

The government's proposed new National Planning Policy Framework aims to simplify the planning rules but has attracted a lot of opposition because of its stated aim of favouring the needs of business. A couple of months ago I wrote a letter to the region's MPs, along with the regional directors of the CPRE and the National Trust. A dozen or so responded. They included Andrew Lansley, whose reply was maybe not what we would have wanted, but at least indicated that we had given him cause for thought. The CPRE and the National Trust are keeping up the pressure.

February 2012

City growth

According to a report issued on 23 January, Cambridge, Norwich, Peterborough and Ipswich are among the 10 cities in the country with the fastest-growing populations.

January 2012