Chairman's Annual Report 2006

Throughout 2006 we have continued to be very active in working to protect the riverside area both in the immediate and the long term future.

Bulcote Farm planning application

Our most urgent work continued to be concerned with Tarmac’s planning application for sand and gravel extraction and a composting plant at Bulcote Farm. Members will know that the application was withdrawn in September 2006. An enormous amount of effort had gone into securing this result: Gunthorpe Environment and Flood Alleviation Group, Bulcote Conservation Trust, Bulcote Parish Council and our own Association had been continually active since the application was first made in July 2002.
It would seem invidious to single out people for special mention but I must pay tribute to Roger Fell of the GEFAG for his outstanding and persistent efforts in researching, understanding and challenging the Environment Agency, consultants working on the Trent Fluvial Strategy and Tarmac’s consultants over their interpretation of flooding data since 2000 – and convincing them that their data and interpretations were often flawed.
We are also greatly indebted to our two County Councillors - Cllrs James O’Riordan and John Clarke – for their work in keeping the issue before the County Council and its Committees, which eventually led to the Planning Committee setting a deadline for Tarmac for the submission of additional information for which it had waited since April 2003. We understand that this is the first time that a deadline has been given by Nottinghamshire County Council to a planning applicant – so we are very conscious of its significance.
However, this is only a very small step forward. Tarmac has withdrawn its application but we understand that the firm has engaged new consultants and has indicated that it will be resubmitting the application in the future. So we continue to be vigilant.

Flooding issues

Our other main preoccupation has been with Flood Alleviation schemes. In December 2005 we were alerted to two flood alleviation schemes proposed by the Environment Agency to protect the urban areas around West Bridgford and Nottingham. Although these would have increased flood risks for rural areas upstream and downstream of Nottingham, the Environment Agency had not consulted or informed councils or residents in areas likely to be negatively affected. The West Bridgford scheme had already been agreed before we or our Councillors knew about it.
Cllr O’Riordan arranged a meeting at the Village Hall in February at which Environment Agency officers explain the likely impact of the scheme on flood risks on downstream villages. At that meeting, the EA project leader said that provisions would be made within the scheme to mitigate additional flood risks created by the Nottingham scheme.
Later in the year, further consultations on the NFAS appeared to ignore the impacts on the villages downstream of Nottingham and we therefore made representations to the EA and worked with our Councillor, Cllr O’Riordan to ensure that BJ was not overlooked. We are greatly indebted to Cllr O’Riordan for the lead he has taken over the flooding issue with the result that the Environment Agency has agreed to fund pumps to alleviate problems at Crock Dumble and to explore the effectiveness of the railway embankment as a flood barrier. The EA has indicated that further funding will be sought to provide more effective embankment protection for the village as a whole if this is found to be necessary as a result of their explorations of the embankment.
In December the government published a new Planning Policy Statement (PPS25) on Development and Flood Risk. At the consultation stage it seemed that the government’s original intention was to ban all development in the functional flood plain, but changes in the final document made it clear that the government had responded to considerable lobbying by the minerals industry with the result that minerals extraction will be permitted in the functional flood plain – which includes our Burton Meadows area. We were concerned that at the consultation stage, Nottinghamshire County Council supported the minerals industry lobby by making a submission stating that almost all the sand and gravel in the County is located in the functional flood plain and unless extraction were permitted in this zone, virtually all the sand and gravel in the County would be sterilised. It is our understanding that this statement is not true, and that most of the sand and gravel in the county lies on the river terraces rather than in the functional flood plain.
We continue to be concerned that misleading information of this kind is still being placed before Councillors and we have taken the opportunity to raise queries whenever possible. Generally the new PPS tightens up procedures in some areas, but loosens them in others so the overall effect of the new statement in terms of minerals extraction is uncertain.

Consultations

We have continued to read many glossy expensively produced consultation documents and submitted comments on plain paper where appropriate. The most important of these was the Nottinghamshire Minerals and Waste Development Framework which is, effectively, the new Minerals Plan which will replace the Nottinghamshire Minerals Plan adopted in December 2005, which includes the so-called Gunthorpe allocation of which half is in Burton Joyce.
We made representations in respect of two stages of the consultation. We commented on the “Statement of Community Involvement” and subsequently argued the case for various improvements to the County’s proposals at the Examination in Public in October 2006. As a result some minor amendments were made to the Statement but our substantial arguments about requiring officers to consult and involve local people and organisations in Plans and planning applications and extend near-neighbour consultations to all those likely to be affected by a development were rejected by Officers and ignored in the Inspector’s report.
We have also made representations on the next stage of this Plan – “Nottinghamshire and Nottingham Waste Core Strategy and Development Control Policies – Issues and Options”. Our main concern in this document was that it proposed that facilities for disposal of waste and recycling facilities could be sited in the Green Belt in the future. At present this is prohibited. This proposal has important implications for the Green Belt in general and for our area in particular given Severn Trent's ownership of a considerable amount of land in this area, their commercial interests in disposal of sewage waste and recycling and the previous proposal by Tarmac for a sewage recycling plant at Severn Trent’s Bulcote Farm.

We also submitted comments on several other documents:
   Nottingham Trent left bank flood alleviation scheme
   Gedling Borough Council Local Development Framework - Core Strategy Issues and Options
   Draft East Midlands Regional Plan to 2026
I must record my concern about the Parish Council’s failure to draw these important consultations to the attention of residents or to study and respond to them. It is particularly disturbing that the Parish Council has shown no interest in the new Minerals and Waste Framework. Members will recall that it was the failure of the Parish Council to notice and inform residents that part of the parish was allocated in the previous Minerals Plan that led to the establishment of our Association. Having failed in its duties in 2002, one might have expected the Parish Council to be on the ball next time. Unfortunately this has not been so. The Parish Council was informed about the initial stage of the new Minerals and Waste Framework early in 2005 but did not bring this to the attention of residents or our Association. A chance observation brought the ongoing processes to our attention in October 2005.
At the Annual Parish Meeting in May, the Parish Council agreed to make information about public consultations available on the Parish notice board. But, in spite of this undertaking, they failed to do this until we made a complaint in September. We are pleased to see that since then notices have been posted. However, it is disappointing that the Parish Council itself continues to fail in its responsibility to study these documents, consider the implications for the Parish or to advise or consult other village organisations or residents who may have a particular interest or expertise in the issues under consideration.

Ombudsman complaints

(1) Local Government Ombudsman. As agreed at the last AGM, in November the Association made a complaint on behalf of 21 individual members to the Local Government Ombudsman alleging maladministration by Nottinghamshire County Council in respect of the Minerals Plan. At present the complaint is still awaiting allocation to a case-worker.
(2) Parliamentary Ombudsman. A complaint was also made in October to the Parliamentary Ombudsman via our MP Vernon Coaker alleging maladministration by the Government Office for the East Midlands in respect of its failure to call-in the Plan and investigate irregular actions or failures by Nottinghamshire County Council during the processes of the Minerals Plan. This complaint was rejected in the first instance by the case-worker but the matter is being pursued as it was clear that the case-worker had not read or understood the documents presented to him.

Information

We have continued to display news updates on the village notice-board at the Old School and in our Association’s folder in the library. We also launched our website (www.bjra.org.uk) during the summer: we are most grateful to Suzie O’Neill for designing the website and establishing this for us. All these media are updated on a regular basis to enable everyone in the village to have access to up-to-date news without the expense to us of publishing and distributing newsletters.

Contacts with other organisations

I was invited to contribute to a conference on the Green Belt being organised by the Nottinghamshire Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England in March on the theme of the residents’ experience of protecting the Green Belt view based on our village experience. I am most grateful for Dr Peter Toghill of BJ Preservation Society for presenting the paper I prepared on my behalf during my absence abroad.
We have continued to be in active contact with many other individuals and organisations. The co-operation between our Association, Bulcote Conservation Trust, Bulcote Parish Council and Gunthorpe Environment and Flood Alleviation Group has been central to our activities and we would have achieved little without such a good level of communication between us all.
We have also continued to keep Burton Joyce Parish Council informed about our activities. I am most grateful to Ron Wilkinson for attending parish council meetings regularly for this purpose.
I would like to thank our County Councillors James O’Riordan and John Clarke for their very active interest in the work of the Association and the problems of the village and our MP Vernon Coaker for his continuing interest in our concerns.
Finally, I would also like to thank the Officers and members of the Committee for their work and support during the year.

Julie O’Neill