Hackney LCC meeting
6 September 2001
Venue: Pub on the Park, London E8
Present:
Oliver Schick, Trevor Parsons, Sally Haywill, Katie
Hanson, Marian Farrugia, Clare Groom, Dave Fowler, Lucy Thomas, Roger
Blake, Patrick Field
Topics discussed:
1. Reports
2. European Car Free
Day
3.
London Bus Initiative
4. LBH draft
cultural strategy
5. Congestion
charging
6. Membership survey
report
7.
Hackney Summer Festival
8. Stoke Newington
South, modal filtering scheme
9. Any other
business
1. Reports
Memberships
Congratulations to all. During August LCC
membership in Hackney increased by 56. This means that all the hard slog
put into stalls and festivals has paid off. This is set against 43 lapses
with their membership payment during the same period - ie a net gain.
Lapses might be due to several factors including the fact that many people
are not around in August and might forget to pay etc. People suggested
that LCC should try to improve its credit card and on-line payment
facilities.
Training in schools
Congratulations to Sally who has managed
to get £1400 funding for a "children and parent/carer cycle training and
bike maintenance" project at St. Thomas Abney School N16.
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top
2. European Car Free Day
This event will see Curtain Road motor-free from 8am to 8pm, and we
have applied for a music licence from 10am to 7pm.
The short stretch of Rivington Street between Curtain Road and
Charlotte Road will also be closed to motor traffic, and will be so till
midnight! (Soon this section is likely to be motor-free permanently, at
least at certain times of day.)
Leaflets and other publicity items. Trevor produced the sponsorship
leaflet, which is available here. He
will soon have general publicity - flyers and posters - prepared.
Volunteers are needed for wider distribution around the area: Call Trevor
on 020 7729 2273 for more information, or email him.
News release will be sent out on Thursday 13th, to the Hackney Gazette
and elsewhere.
Stewarding The music (and dancing!) licence obliges us to adhere
to certain health and safety conditions, one of which is stewarding. We
need 10 stewards in-situ all the time, which means about 30 volunteers for
the day. Oliver will co-ordinate. If you're able to help us out for four
hours or more on the day, please do come and be a steward! Email Oliver. To encourage you,
we're sorting out a generous amount of free grub for stewards on the day.
We decided to arrange three shifts of four hours, with stewards to be
briefed at the beginning of their shift. We will communicate by mobiles
(possibly walkie-talkies, if the budget runs to it), although it's OK to
have one mobile per section of the motor-free area, rather than one for
each steward.
First aid
The licence requires us to have two qualified
first-aiders. Lucy to co-ordinate.
Emergency lighting
The licence also appears to demand that we
have emergency independent lights available to cover the last hour or so
of the event, as we move into dusk (sunset is at 6.57pm that day). We're
fairly sure this would be prohibitively expensive. We will negotiate with
the licensing authority / building control department, and if necessary we
will stop the event early. [Addendum: Trevor has ascertained that Curtain
Road is served by two separate electricity substations, one north of
Rivington Street and one south of it. It would therefore be very unlikely
that an outage would cover more than half of the street. This may be a
useful argument for us.]
Our stall
The Hackney LCC stall will be the HQ and general
info-centre. We will have 300 free bus saver tickets from London Buses to
give away on the day. Lucy will co-ordinate the stall.
Trade stalls
We can make stalls available for traders,
although time is now tight for letting interested parties know. Lucy
volunteered to co-ordinate this if we feel it's viable to go ahead.
Further tasks
A large amount of work which will obviously
build up as the date gets nearer, so people should feel free to contact Trevor to check
if he needs any help.
Budget
Meeting decided to allocate £400 maximum out of our
budget towards the event.
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3. London Bus Initiative
Roger presented the Bus 149 consultation document. This is just one of
several consultation documents for various bus routes, which Hackney
Council is currently conducting. Documents can be obtained from the One
Stop Shop at the Town Hall, and from libraries.
We agreed that Oliver will co-ordinate our responses by email. People
are also encouraged to respond directly as individuals. Deadline early
October.
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4. LBH draft cultural strategy
Hackney Council has circulated a draft cultural strategy document,
which considers culture in a very broad sense. Cycling is mentioned in
various contexts, especially to do with health and leisure, and in
discussion of the built environment, but Oliver's feeling was that there
is scope for including it more centrally in the strategy.
People felt strongly that the idea of fostering a cycling culture
should constitute an important part of the vision underpinning this
strategy.
Oliver volunteered to draft a detailed response, based on members'
suggestions, then distribute on our mailing list for
comments before the final version is sent out.
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5. Congestion charging
LCC as an organisation has a position supporting congestion charging -
indeed, suggesting that it be more strictly implemented than the current
proposals, eg higher charges, no exemption for powered two-wheelers.
We agreed that because of this, and because there is actually a
distinct lack of consensus around this issue within the Hackney
membership, the group would not express an opinion. Members, however, are
encouraged to send their individual suggestions to Transport for London by email or by post to:
Transport for
London
Congestion Scheme Order consultation
Freepost LON17507
London SW1H OYZ
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6. Membership survey report
Oliver presented the results of the survey, which were tabulated with
Clare's help. Details of the findings will be posted on this site ASAP.
People agreed that besides learning a lot about cycling behaviour and
practice, we also gained a lot of know how about the consultation process
itself which will prove invaluable if we where to decide to conduct any
other data collection in the future. Certainly one thing that we learnt
that before undertaking a similar exercise we need to be very clear why we
are doing and what we will be using the information for, from the start.
We also need to look at issues of audience, register, content and format.
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7. Hackney Summer Festival
Hackney Summer Festival will be held on Sun 16th. Sept at London
Fields.
We agreed not to have a stall at this festival since it will only be
one week prior to the Car Free Day. Clare might distribute some flyers.
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8. Stoke Newington South, modal filtering scheme
Roger presented plans for new traffic calming plans for this area, with
lots of mode filters (AKA road blocks) to filter out through motor
traffic, as has been done for many years down the road in the De Beauvoir
area (N1). As far as we are concerned this is a Good Thing, and we should
support it as much as possible.
Clare was mandated to draft group response and show it to members for
comment before sending it out. Members who live locally were also
encouraged to response individually.
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9. Any other business
Patrick encouraged members to attend the City LCC group meeting on
Thursday 6/9/01, at LCC HQ. 6pm.
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Next Meeting: Wednesday 3rd October, Pub on the Park, London Fields,
8:00 pm (social get together from 7:00 pm)
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