We have had a very busy beginning to Autumn beginning with the CREst Fun Day on Saturday 2nd September. This was attended by our local MP Ed Davey and his wife Emily Gasson. Cllr Cathy Roberts and Kingston’s new mayor, Cllr Julie Pickering also came. She is shown in the picture below with CREst Chair Jill Preston who has been organising these very successful community events for the past sixteen years.

The Chairs of our three Community Groups, Jill Preston of CREst Harry Hall of CRERA and Mike D’Souza One Norbiton have been holding regular meetings with our local Ward Councillors Bill Brisbane LibDem, Sheila Griffin and Linsey Cottington Labour, the Deputy Leader of the Council Terry Paton Conservative and the Leader of the Opposition Liz Green Lib DEm. This is to get regular updates from Marcus Carling and his Team about the progress of CRE regeneration.

Following the signed survey endorsement that the three groups got to represent them from the CRE residents we obtained unanimous agreement for the following rules of engagement on the 26 July 2017

Rules for Engagement between the joint three Community groups and
RBK staff Development Partners and their commissioned Companies etc
Rules for Engagement between our joint three Community groups, RBK Council, its staff, development partners and its commissioned companies

With the promise of a decade or so of upheaval due to the planned CRE Regeneration,it is more important than ever for ourselves and RBK to establish a stable collaborative and constructive dialogue so that all Stakeholders can be engaged in working towards what could be a win-win situation for most participants.
Now that 95% of those responding to our recent survey have endorsed our three Community groups to negotiate with RBK on their behalf, matters can be simplified.
(For example, we now know that the information, offered at our last meeting by Genastacia and Cllr Cottingham, claiming that residents were wholly supportive of RBK’s current proposals was simply incorrect and damaged trust when it was uncritically accepted as true. Furthermore, to fail to try to reach those Residents out at work during the daytime will cause further damage to mutual trust.)
We believe that what is now needed are legally enforceable guarantees concerning Decant and Residents’ Rights to return.
It is important to involve the newly appointed Pinnacle team and ensure that the Resident’s Friend works out in practice to be acceptable to Residents or can be replaced.

Proposal
From now on we propose:
A) That our meetings adopt standard committee rules chaired by One Norbiton unless a suitable replacement is agreed.
Therefore, there should be the following:

1. Pre-meeting preparation
The times, venues, minutes, background papers and agendas.
2. The items on agenda should be jointly agreed.
3. All should turn up to meetings or make timely apologies to the Chair.
4. Proper introductions must be made so that all new participants can explain
who they are and what their experience and brief is.
5. Minutes or at least notes on agreed actions must be made at each meeting and mutually agreed as accurate
6. All discussions should be through the Chair and conducted respectfully.
7. There must be timely completion of agreed actions

Other agreements
It might be wise for certain issues to be temporarily treated as confidential. All documents, emails etc about them will not then be shared except by mutual consent. This will apply as long as these rules are met.
That we all work towards a common end that is agreed to be fair to both residents, council and developers. That, if possible, the latter should be an (embryonic) London wide “DevCo” * rather than any commercial concern solely motivated by maximisation of profits.
Wherever possible we will encourage Co-design and Coproduction by Residents and important contributions made by individuals should be recognised publicly (Kudos theft i.e. erroneously claiming to have been the sole author of “good things” that were, in fact, done by others or jointly done with others) must be strictly avoided and publicly exposed if it ever occurs.)
While RBK obviously has a duty to talk to every individual resident to establish needs etc. it should only consider the joint panel of the three residents Groups, CREst, CRERA and One Norbiton, as having been elected to give opinions on behalf of all CRE residents.

Further Action
The three Resident Groups may apply jointly for grants from the HRA to defray costs (e.g. for stationery) to undertake independent resident’s surveys etc. consulting over regeneration issues. Finally, RBK should be transparent about its Regeneration plans and about any changes to these plans.

* DevCo is a proposed London wide publicly owned development company that could partner Councils to do regeneration.

Sorry I have not had time to update this website before now but that is because we have been very very busy.

Our Bid
Our bid , made last year, for One Norbiton to become Commissioned to do some of the tasks of the Resident Participation Team, was, after a three month wait, turned down by RBK. Although our offer was the most economic and did involve giving important work to our chronically disabled members, RBK saw fit to award the Contract to a company called Pinnacle owned by a Chinese Billionaire. We have just heard that Pinnacle has since been taken over by another (? larger) commercial concern. Even though it is now July, we have yet to meet any of its staff.

Our Hub
Our full plans to create a Community Hub at the foot of Madingley tower were also turned down by RBK but we are going ahead with a very much more limited scheme simply to enlarge our meeting room and create a Disabled toilet. We are at present awaiting a peppercorn lease from RBK.

Regeneration of the Cambridge Estate
This topic continues to dominate our plans. We have been working closely with CREst and CRERA to get fair treatment for all our members. Very recently we completed a survey/petition on the Estate which suggested that over 95% of the residents are not happy with RBK’s plans and want our three community groups to work together and negotiate the best outcome possible for them. We hope the present administration will respect their wishes. Download this PETITION POWERPOINT
to see all the latest results.

The Homeless

For over a year now, every Thursday afternoon in Queen Mary’s Hall from 1.00 pm to 3.00pm and every Tuesday from 12.00 to 2.00pm in Piper Hall, CREst and One Norbiton have been jointly helping run a service for the local homeless. For six months, we allocated most of our free hours to the group when RBK began requesting £450 rent for Queen Mary’s Hall.
The group was originally set by Angel Levick and the MOT (Moving on Together) recovery group and has been financially supported £30 a week by Kingston Wellbeing via the WDP (Westminster Drug Project). Recently Sainsbury’s (Sury Basin branch) has started donating food which is shared between the two days.

We are providing all-comers convivial encouragement with meals, music, hair dressing, First Aid and helpful advice – particularly for those with addictive disease, and well over 160 people have attended so far (About 50 a week). Attendees have been helping research to update our i-bet-me App based on earning credit for helping themselves and others. We are measuring Quality of Life with our simple faces scale that we also used in our Survey on Regeneration.

In all together with a local support group on Thursdays Jill Preston (CREst) on Tuesdays have served over 1,178 meals. I will shortly be writing up a full report for publication.

One Norbiton has been told that for the next four weeks from 20th March,regular drop-in surgeries are being held in Piper Hall on Mondays and Thursdays from 2.30pm to 5.00pm and on Tuesdays from 12.30pm to 3.00pm to explain what is happening. Also late evening sessions can be booked by emailing [email protected].

For on-line information visit www.kingston.gov.uk/CRERegen

People living in the area scheduled for regeneration who are interested in selling their property please register by emailing [email protected]

The One Norbiton Board have just sent a letter to RBK’s Residents Participation Team accepting their offer to have a peppercorn rental on the Madingley Community Shop and enlarge the office space to create a Community Hub and internet Cafe. This is the culmination of over three years planning.
We will be seeking help to raise funds for this project via crowd-funding and grants and welcome any ideas and help from our members.

Our Draft One Norbiton Area Plan was approved

Our One Norbiton Accounts for 2015/16 were approved

Jill Preston was unanimously elected as Vice Chair and Company Director
Jill
David Ryder-mills and Geraldine Burgess were both unanimously re-elected as Company Directors.

RBK’s offer of a Peppercorn Rent and approval to enlarge our Madingley Community Hub was referred to the Company Board meeting

Looking forward to seeing you all at our sixth AGM. Please see the

AGENDA

1. Apologies and introductions

2. To receive and agree the One Norbiton 2016 AGM Draft Minutes

3. Matters arising from these minutes:

4. Chairs Report & AGM Vision 2017

5. Our One Norbiton Area Plan Open Discussion

6. To receive and agree 2015/2016 Accounts

7. One Norbiton Officer Appointments:

A. To Re-elect RETIRING OFFICERS to ‘One Norbiton’ Board

Director: David Ryder-Mills Proposed……………Seconded……………

Director and Treasurer: Geraldine Burgess Proposed……………Seconded……………

B. To Elect as our new Vice Chair and Director

Jill Preston Proposed……………Seconded……………

8. Date and Time of next AGM

9. Any other business. Free hours for MOT

We would like to wish all our members a very happy Christmas. One Norbiton is anticipating a busy 2017 as we expand our plans to organise Postcode Parties.
On Thursday 15th December, the MOT (Moving on Together) rehabilitation group had a Christmas Party in Queen Mary’s Hall on Cambridge Gardens. Norbiton Councillor,Linsey Cottington, kindly supported this by contributing £200 from her discretionary funds. It was a very successful occasion and over 30 men and women attended. See Photo; (Councillor Cottington is in the orange sweater).
This Volunteer run Group was started by Angel Levick with some support from both the NHS and Social Services. It has now been going for over six months and provides a weekly meal, haircuts and convivial social contact for over 50 people recovering from addiction. One Norbiton and CREst allow the group to use some of our free Hall time and we provide a first aid service for any attendees in need of it.
Councillor Roberts the cabinet portfolio holder for Housing, Adult Social Services and Health has informed us that RBK is about to appoint a permanent employee to support this service. We are hoping that we can get agreement for the Group to continue to operate during the Christmas period.

This survey was done on the Cambridge Estate at the same time as one done by RBK to find out more about current resident views on Regeneration. Clearly there are mixed feelings and some of our residents still have not understood what is happening. As a part of the survey, participants were asked if they agreed that our three elected Community Groups should represent their interests in negotiations over Regeneration.  Of the 111 forms returned none objected.
At our invitation Kevin Davies, the leader of the Council, is answering questions in Piper Hall (at 6.30pm 29th November).
SURVEY RESULTS
For more information See RBK Regeneration Team: www.kingston.gov.uk/CRERegen
Or CONTACT
One Norbiton:[email protected]
CREst: [email protected]
CRERA: [email protected]

We are awaiting for final agreement to our plans to refurbish our Community Hub in Madingley.

Kevin Davies has responded to One Norbiton’s request to to speak at a public meeting on Tuesday 29th November, chaired by former Mayor Ed Naylor. He will talk about RBK’s plans for Regenerating the Cambridge Rd Estate and respond to questions from residents.

We are awaiting the result of a bid we have just made to RBK Housing Service to improve the capacity of Residents to engage with the Council in Co-Design and Co-production.(We will be printing the text of this bid on this site so that members can see its relevance to expanding the scope of Localism.)