Report of the Committee Chair for AGM, November 2022

Old Meadows Tenants and Residents Association.

Report of the Committee Chair, November 2022.

Thank you for taking the time to read this summary of what we at OMTRA have been doing over the last year, to support the Meadows community.

Recently, we have been unable to organise the usual number of public meetings due to the prevalence of the corona virus and our summer meeting in July had to be cancelled because of the very extreme weather we were experiencing at the time. It was therefore encouraging that we were able to host our AGM at the library, in November.

Nevertheless, we have had another busy year, when we have had significant changes of Committee members with several people standing down. These were long-standing members who had given much of their time, and we thank them all for their effort and involvement.

As a consequence of this, we are recruiting for new Committee members, we have received some enquiries and those residents have been invited to attend a Committee Meeting as a 'taster session'. If you think you might be interested in taking part, we would be very pleased to hear from you

We continue to focus on issues which are important to local people, including

· Fly Tipping. There continue to be local hot-spots where fly tipping is taking place. We have been liaising with the relevant staff from NCC and have achieved some progress in having cameras installed so that the perpetrators can be identified.

· Liaising with local Councillors. We continue to meet with Councillors when necessary, to ensure we are appropriately informed of relevant issues and so that we can have some input into the decision making processes in the City

· In particular, we attended at a Planning Meeting with developers of the student accommodation on Traffic Street, where the proposed very tall building that is still at the planning stage was being discussed.

· We have maintained our Facebook Page, which we used to publicise the consultation on the repairs to the paddling pool on the Embankment. We have also used our social media page to update people on changes to bus services, the recent sale of the site at the Old Toll Bridge pub, and parking permits for relevant stakeholders.

· A successful application was made to Dragon’s Den (Your Choice, Your Voice) in November 2021 for funding for plants for the cottage garden on Wilford Crescent West. A gardening event was held recently, in conjunction with Arkwright Meadows Community Gardens and other local residents where we cleared litter and weeds from the garden, ready for a further planting session which has now taken place. We hope local people will enjoy the garden as it gradually grows into fruition, and will respect the considerable time given by volunteers to weed and plant the area.

· Funding from Meadows councillors' budgets resulted in the purchase an installation of notice boards for 3 of the terraces off Glapton Road; we hope the households who live nearby find them useful and informative

· Earlier this year, a garden centre application was made to NCC by a private contractor, to use an empty site on Gritley Mews. We were advised rather late in the day that the proposed garden centre was in fact a company which sells fencing. Their proposals apparently included the siting of 6 shipping containers and very tall steel racking. We concluded that the proposal was not suitable for a quiet residential area as there would likely to be vans and lorries constantly up and down to the site. Working with our partners at NEMTRA (particularly Pat Thomas), we picked up on this and sent in an objection immediately. We now understand that the application has been refused

· And finally- as part of our publicity for the July Meeting, we devised a Consultation on what you, as residents, would like OMTRA to concentrate on.

OMTRA was originally formed to promote tenants and residents’ interests, and campaign for improvements to housing, local services and the environment. We hope to go forward successfully, listening to the concerns that you may have, and representing you, when we can, to the best of our ability.