Agenda and minutes

John Rawlings in the Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting. He explained the forum is open to anyone with an interest in diversity and communities and this normally informs the direction of discussion. Tonight’s meeting had been opened up further to host the Northampton Alive debate but sadly it had not drawn a good attendance and fewer people than usual had come along.

People introduced themselves.

The people at the meeting included Luisa Jepson (Northants Police Hate Crimes Unit), Keith Mitchell (Community Programmes Manager, Northampton Borough Council), Morcea Walker MBE, Anjona Roy (NREC and Dostiyo), Cllr Suresh Patel (Councillor Co-Chair of this forum), Cllr David Mackintosh (Leader of Northampton Borough Council), John Rawlings (Community Co-Chair of this forum), Nick Stephens (Northants Police), Mike Kitchen (Northampton Borough Council) and Lindsey Ambrose (Community Engagement and Equalities Officer, Northampton Borough Council), a representative from Stagecoach, a representative from Greyfriars Plus group and other members of the public.

Apologies had been received from Zahira Case (Pearls of Peace), Sam and Christiana Owusu-Akuffo (Divine Prayer Society), Helen Knight (Northants Police).

To approve the minutes of 13^th March 2012 attached.

Minutes of the last meeting agreed except that Chris Mistry was missed out from the list of those at the meeting.

Matters arising –  there were none.

Weblink below:-

www.northampton.gov.uk/northamptonalive

Debate time limited to 30 minutes.

Cllr David Mackintosh, the Leader of Northampton Borough Council, led a public debate about a number of regeneration projects due to happen in Northampton and which together are known as “Northampton Alive”.

More information about the projects, including a film, can be found at www.northampton.gov.uk/northamptonalive.

Cllr Mackintosh described the Enterprise Zone – the largest in the country and providing Northampton with an advantage for attracting businesses.

The development of the Grosvenor Centre should create lots more jobs.

The Fishmarket will become situated in the cultural quarter of the town, close to the museum, art gallery, Royal and Derngate theatres and the due new cinema.

St John’s development will have cafes and other facilities.

New student accommodation and the university locating closer to the town centre will help the town centre economy.

The Marina is now open. Long-term this should help with promoting culture and leisure in the town and make more of the waterside area.

Heritage was also important he said, particularly Delapre Abbey.

There was interest in car parking to meet needs of more people in the town centre. The under-usage of current car parking was noted, but it is recognised that current provision would not guarantee to meet future needs. Cllr Mackintosh said car parking would need to be kept under review as new businesses come to Northampton. The inability to use Greyfriars due to acid falling on cars should be offset by new car parking in the new Grosvenor Centre.

A Roy noted that the “cultural quarter” is brought up in meetings without specifically acknowledging black and minority ethnic presence in the town. She said it misses out geographically parts of the town where such communities live and meet. It would be nice to see a community recognition as this goes forward. The Gateway Centre for example is missed, also the Sikh community centre – key landmarks in the BME community.

In Northampton and other towns in the county, there’s a problem about faith space. A Roy said a number of incidents reflect that this is not good for communities. There may be opportunities to build in faith space within the exciting future vision for Northampton.

A Roy said the ambition here creates unique opportunities to have challenging equality targets within the development e.g. like Leicester city centre where there were targets for companies to have commitments to corporate giving and were taking on the council’s own equality duties by taking on diverse workforces and apprenticeships for young people in the town.

Cllr Mackintosh welcomed the points made by A Roy. He said he would be pleased to look at growing the cultural quarter further, for example having carnival passing through it, having it truly reflecting the town. He felt having the arts collective working with others would provide opportunities and mentioned they had already come up with ideas what they want to do.

With regard to faith places, Cllr Mackintosh said he was aware that some planning issues in the past were barriers to meeting  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Keith Mitchell attended in response to the requests from the forum that he bring the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) to the meeting. He confirmed it was quite a long document and wondered if people would prefer him to talk them through it, or if they would prefer to read it for themselves.

Agreed: the EIA be circulated electronically so people could consider it and make any comments they wish in relation to it rather than to go through it in detail in the meeting.

Note further to the meeting: the EIA can be found at http://www.northampton.gov.uk/site/scripts/download_info.php?downloadID=2188

John Rawlings asked how many parish councils do other towns like Leicester have.

John Rawlings noted that in some areas the same individuals appear to be county, borough and parish councillor. He wanted to know what national statistics there are for 3 tier councils and the same person occupying the position at every level.

Action: Keith agreed to look into what parish councils there are in surrounding counties and send a report back on these to the forum.

John Rawlings said he was worried that we’re going down the route of having parish councils and that having a unitary authority for Northampton is not part of the debate. The community, he felt, needs to understand why in his view NBC is having powers diminished and staff numbers are reducing repeatedly.

Keith explained that the second stage of the community governance review is the stage at which equalities impacts and these type of questions will be appropriate to be discussed. At that time it will be clear which areas are interested in having some kind of change to their community governance arrangements – whether that is for a new parish council or change to an existing one, for example.

A Roy asked for an update on how the petitions situation has developed since the last meeting.

Keith said that so far there are 7 petitions in all. The website is updated frequently with this information. Parklands had 160 of a required 375 validated signatures currently. Rectory Farm (most of that ward) had 111 validated signatures of target 250 signatures. Sunnyside and Obelisk wards 338 validated signatures towards a target of 667. West Hunsbury has 374 validated exceeding 355 required to reach threshold. Westone ward has 84 validated signatures target 336. Moulton Leys (about half a ward)has 4 validated signatures and needs 250. St James ward validated 373 just crossing 372 threshold.

A Roy wanted to know what would the CGR process do to help encourage people to get engaged.

Keith said that it is intended to have public briefings in the areas where petitions are validated and council agrees for them to go to the second stage which is a consultation stage. The meetings will be advertised in media and on NBC website.  This will go through to about October 2012. If the original proposal needs to be amended as a result of the consultation and listening to what people have said, for example if  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

Hate Crimes Unit and Stop and Search

On behalf of the Northants Police, Luisa Jepson and Nick Stephens attended.

Luisa updated on changes to staffing within the Hate crimes unit which have continued to date. It was noted that Detective Inspector Helen Knight has this week come into post in the Unit. Three new staff should join in May/June time.

Luisa said the Police are unsure what this forum would want as information and engagement with the Hate Crimes Unit. She suggested that there are statistics provided to hate incident review meetings which might be useful and could be shared.

Nick Stephens introduced himself as community engagement officer for the Police. He also wanted to know what the forum would find helpful in terms of his work.

It was noted that the unusually poor attendance at the particular meeting made it difficult to discuss needs in detail. It was also noted that attendance has normally filled the meeting rooms with people from lots of communities and organisations attending. It was believed that duplication of items in tonight’s agenda, which had happened for various reasons, was likely to have led to some people deciding not to attend.

It was also noted that the forum has a large circulation network with over 100 regular followers on its Facebook page where events, news and opportunities are shared day to day, an email network and the mailing list for these meetings too, which includes former members of the Community Reference Group.

With regard to engagement it was noted that the forum does operate a number of ways of holding meetings. These can include closed groups for discussing specific issues and sensitive information. They also include attending events and open meetings at the Guildhall. The forum is happy to work with organisations to look at ways of meeting their needs as to how engagement takes place.

Nick referred to the fact that tonight there is not much attendance tonight and that with low turnout it would be difficult to get staff to attend or engage with the forum, especially senior staff.

Agreed: Co-Chairs and Lindsey Ambrose to look at meeting with Detective Inspector Helen Knight

With regard to the brought forward request for stop and search information, Nick Stephens said he was the messenger and could email statistics for circulation but did not feel able to give a detailed presentation or answer any questions about them. He apologised that he had not personally been made aware of the particular information about disproportionate stop and search which the forum had requested so he could not provide any such information. Nick suggested he would forward the information he had to Lindsey Ambrose to forward to the forum and then people might contact Lindsey for her to forward questions and queries by email to him to pass on to appropriate officers to answer and reply to him for him to reply to Lindsey who in turn would then pass on the answers to the forum.

In response Morcea  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

Northampton Carnival Archive Project – since the last meeting an approach was made to the Co-Chairs by Ajaib Hussain asking if this project could come and talk to the forum. The project is looking to find out what communities would like the outcomes of the project to be and how they would like to get involved.

The next meeting of this forum is due to be on 6 June 2012 at 6.30pm at Northampton Guildhall.

Meetings after that are due to be: 18 July, 27 September and 22 November 2012.

The first few meetings in 2013 are due to be 24 January, 14 March and 23 April.

If anyone is aware of any significant clashes e.g. with religious calendar dates, please let the Co-Chairs or Lindsey Ambrose know as soon as possible in case forum dates can be changed to take account of these.