Agenda and minutes

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting. Everyone introduced themselves.

Apologies were received from Matthew Toresen (Northampton Volunteering Centre and FAN Northants), Christiana and Samuel Owusu-Akuffo, Sargeant Amanda Di Rienzo and other Northamptonshire Police colleagues, Cllr Winston Strachan, Morcea Walker MBE.

The Minutes were agreed.

There were no matters arising.

It was noted that there was only one officer on duty covering hate crime for the county on evening of 15 March 2012 and so the Police were unable to attend this meeting.

It was noted that the Stamp out Hate Crime campaign had progressed well, with the Northampton Youth Forum being awarded a countywide youth award for “Outstanding Contribution to Anti-Bullying”. The young people had been presenting about the campaign to young leader awards nights around the county in response to enthusiasm about the work from young people and leading to further interest in the campaign.

What had begun as young people introducing other young people to the concept of hate crime and that it includes bullying, has begun to move on from that initial awareness-raising as young people continue to drive activities and change in schools. The week of 19 – 26 March would be an anti-bullying week at Weston Favell Academy, organised by the students, including Stamp out Hate Crime and a showing of the exhibition the young people had created which features local people’s stories of experiencing and surviving hate crime and includes information about a number of ways to report hate crime online and otherwise. Moulton College had shown interest with their student association organising an initial pledge sign-up, their multi-disciplinary welfare team staff identifying that they could work with the Stamp out Hate Crime campaign to support students reporting and well-being, and their college Police officer identifying she could use the campaign to help her in encouraging students to report incidents.

The exhibition at the museum had been well received leading to interest from a number of organisations in working together. Copies of the exhibition made by the young people were being made, with one set to be provided to the Northants Police to support their community engagement and work on tackling hate crime.

The elephant for the Safari Northampton small sculptures exhibition was ready and in temporary residence in the Guildhall, having been painted by local artist Lee Burrows.

The young people on youth forum would be meeting soon to look at how to move the campaign on, working with other interested organisations. They had already accepted a number of invites for community events in the summer to help get their message out to people. They felt it was important to raise awareness to help people recognise what hate crime is and what it’s impacts and consequences could be – in case this could help make safer cultures in organisations and prevent incidents happening. They wanted to look more at reporting going forward and recognised feedback from some young people about wanting schools to do more.

Anjona Roy noted that across the county there was a mixed picture of hate crime and hate incident reporting coming through from schools. It was not clear the extent to which schools might be dealing with hate crime and incidents internally and not producing reports to go beyond the school. She noted that Paul Burnett at Northants  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Members of the Forum reviewed the images of the proposed bus interchange design and gave feedback.

There was concern that the hours of staffed operation are limited with closing at midnight, and that the location of the interchange is close to The Drapery which is a known hate crime hot spot. There was some concern to at the proximity to the major gay bar in town and whether people would feel scared of being seen coming and going from the venue and potentially being targets of hate crime.

It was suggested that the interchange and the Council should take steps to mitigate the risks of exposing people to becoming victims of hate crime and to help keep them safe in the event they became a victim or witnessed an incident. Staffing and information showing commitment to stamping out hate crime, encouraging people to report hate crime etc were suggested as possible steps within action that might be taken to do this.

As in past years the community and Northampton LGBTQ People’s Forum had agreed to organise a ceremony at 11am in the courtyard of Northampton Guildhall to mark this event, including making one minute’s noise on Thursday 17 May 2012.

FAN Northants will be taking a lead in this ceremony.

It’s hoped as many people as possible will attend.

If anyone would like to speak at the ceremony please contact Lindsey Ambrose.

There is limited space for community displays. If any organisation would like to have a stand please contact Lindsey Ambrose.

Lindsey: tel/text: 0779 53 33 687 or email: lambrose@northampton.gov.uk

Northampton Carnival Archive Project – exhibition now on at the People’s Gallery in Northampton Museum and Art Gallery. Anyone with any stories or objects or photos from past carnivals please share them with the project team.

Community Centres
The forum was advised that progress had been in handing community centres over to the local community to run. To date 9 had been transferred to be run by the community. Another 6 were due to go through before end of March, then another 6 over the coming months.

Governance Review

Keith outlined the opportunity for all electors to have a say whether they want a local council to be set up. He explained that this might be called a “parish council” or “community” or “neighbourhood” council – all these terms describe similar things but “parish” may be perceived as overly Christian or old-fashioned by some people who would prefer the other terminology.

If people would like to see a local council created they need to do so using a petition. Any individual can set up a petition. There’s help e.g. petition forms. People in the community can get other people to sign it. The signatures need to be from registered electros in the local area for which the council is requested. They can’t be on several different petitions.

Once handed in to the Northampton Borough Council the petitions will be validated against electoral role. If they are found at 27 April 2012 to exceed the threshold of that area – generally 10% - they go forward as valid petition – which means they go to the full Council.

There’s then a second stage which is a referendum, due for 15 November 2012, the same day as the Police Commissioner’s referendum. So all electors can vote in each area – a simple “yes” or “no” to having the proposed local council established. If there’s a majority in favour on the day the proposal will go forward to have approval for the local council being set up. Individuals then stand as parish councillors in May 2013. The parish precept will be set by Northampton Borough Council for the first 10 months or thereabouts. The new local council will then set its own precept for 2014-15.

There is a web address www.northampton.gov.uk/cgr . Information there includes the proposed timetable, petition forms, information about possible parish council powers. E-petitions for people to sign electronically and the possibility for people to set up e-petitions online themselves. There are ward maps available. Petitions may seek parish councils for part of a ward, a whole ward or going across more than one ward – all the petitions so far have been set up by NBC and/or NCC Councillors and they often have close links to local residents associations.

There a 7 parish councils already in Northampton, mostly in the south of the Borough and on the outskirts of Northampton. They offer a range of services, often currently just a few of what they could potentially do.

On the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

There was none.

The first half hour of the next meeting would be a public debate about “Northampton Alive” and led by the Leader of Northampton Borough Council.

There would be a further discussion about the Governance Review, to include looking at the equality impacts of parish councils in a town and regard had to this within the Governance Review.

The Police would be invited again to send someone to update on hate crime and an officer to talk about their stop and search practices (in particular to update on progress made in disproportionate stop and search of ethnic minority people compared to the picture 4 years ago).

Meetings currently booked for 17April, 6June,18 July 2012.

The next meeting of the forum is 17 April 2012 at 6.30pm at the Guildhall.

The next meeting after that is 6 June 2012.

Dates of meetings can be found at www.northampton.gov.uk/meetings