Report from the co-ordinating committee 26th May 2007
Over the past three months, the committee has been regrouping after the end of BCAT. We have had some very welcome support from Shamshad Hussain with the Community Neighbourhood Renewal Team at the SCC and from Cherry Daniels the Regeneration Manager at BNDfC. We have been able to keep on 3 staff, two of whom were part time, until a few weeks ago and we have had one part-time member of staff for the past few weeks. He will be leaving next week.
The committee commissioned a consultant to draw up a business plan for the next three years for BCAF and out of that plan we have applied to New Deal for funding for the next three years to support the working groups, to run the quarterly forum meetings and to employ two staff to work in the BCAF office.
We have had two successful meetings with Community Reps from the New Deal Partnership board and have planned a further meeting in July. These meetings havr been very ably chaired by Martyn Snow in the Welcome Centre here, and mark a new, more co-operative way of working bewtween BCAF and New Deal.
As New Deal goes into it's final three years we are hoping to work together on what Burngreave/Pitsmoor will look like after that. But we have to remember that BCAF has a campaigning role in the communtiy and that we should be holding statutary and other agencies to account on behalf of the community, so we are working out currently how we work within both these roles.
In spite of greatly reduced office staff we have continued to run a drop-in for Slovakian people in the area on Thursday afternoons and we have continued to support the BCAF working groups. These have continued to meet at the BCAF offices – you have reports from each of the working groups with your papers.
In response to requests from members of the Forum at a previous meeting we are looking at the possibility of a “Citizen's Jury” to explore different people's perceptions of why BCAT went into liquidation. We are currently waiting for the go ahead on this from the liquidators, and will be in touch with everyone who is interested in being involved in this. When we separate into groups the facilitators will be noting the names of these people.
Shortly before the recent local elections BCAF arranged a hustings meeting and invited all candidates for election to answer questions on their party's policy on housing issues in the area. This was chaired by a membe of the committee and was a successful and well attended meeting.
The committee would like anyone who may be interested in becoming a member of co-co to talk to one of us. We meet once a month to do the business of the day to day running of the Forum. We can arrange training if you'd be interested in chairing or minuting meetings or working on the financial side of the organisation. According to the time you have available you could just attend monthly meetings or get more involved. Do talk to one of us after or during the meeting iy you're interested.