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.
