Terry’s Clock Tower forum, January 2015
The report on the forum at St.Chad’s church on 2st January is now available here.
Are you attached to your neighbourhood?
Catherine Turton is a student at the University of Surrey and she would appreciate your input towards her research project investigating how Yorkshire residents feel about their neighbourhoods, participation in community activities and sustainable behaviour. If you have 10 minutes to spare, she would be very grateful if you could fill in a survey. Please click on the link below.
https://surreyfahs.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0lKcPFxdVwvfNpX
Catherine Turton
PhD Student
Department of Psychology
Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences
University of Surrey
22AD04
Guildford GU2 7XH
December 2015 minutes added
Minutes of the meeting held on 9th December 2014 have been added to the document library – link below.
What should be done with Terry’s Clock Tower?
York Environment Forum is hosting an Open Forum at 7:00pm on Wednesday 21st January 2015. The venue is St.Chad’s Church, Campleshon Road, South Bank, and the aim is to find out what people think the tower should be used for in future. Whatever your interest in the building, come along and give us your thoughts.
If you fancy printing/displaying a poster or emailing it to friends, there’s one here…
Housing Density proposals presented to Local Plan Working Group
Philip Crowe spoke at the Local Plan Working Group meeting on 17th December, presenting a paper setting out proposals – discussed at the previous YEF meeting – regarding increased density for urban housing and the benefits this could bring, including sparing proposed Green Belt housing sites. Please follow the link to Crowe-Housing Proposal
YEF Chair Kate stands down
Kate Lock, Chair of York Environment Forum, has announced her intention to stand down from the position in order to pursue a new career in academia.
Kate, who took over as Chair of the Forum from Jonathan Tyler in December 2010, has overseen substantial changes in the organisation, increasing its presence as the voice for the environment in York, improving its communications and online status, increasing its partnership work with City of York Council and other groups and steering the Forum to becoming a constituted body.
Environmental campaigner, writer and researcher Kate, 53, will be commencing full-time study doing an MSc in Sustainability specialising in Environmental Politics and Policy at the University of Leeds in September 2014.
Kate Lock on a stall for York is ENGAGEd, with fellow YEF member Christian Vassie
A new Chair will be elected at the forthcoming meeting on Tuesday 12 August. Applicants for the postion must be members of York Environment Forum (or prepared to join).
Keep York frack-free: YEF adds its voice
York Environment Forum added its support to Frack-Free York’s petition to City of York Council calling for York to remain frack-free at a meeting of the full council last Thursday, 17 July.
The Forum had previously issued its own fracking statement to Council Leader Cllr James Alexander and Executive Member for Environment and Planning, Cllr Dave Merrett.
YEF Chair Kate Lock was one of five public speakers that were each granted three minutes to speak to the petition; the other speakers were Richard Lane of York and Ryedale Friends of the Earth, Sue Lister for York Greenpeace, John Cossham for Frack-Free York and Christopher Rainger, Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers. You can view their speeches here (from 24.35 mins in) and read the text of Kate Lock’s speech .
The council debate that followed was automatically triggered by Frack-Free York collecting over 1,000 signatures on the petition. Speeches last 30 minutes and can be viewed here. There was no vote on the issue, but most councillors spoke in favour of the petition, to varying degrees, with the exception of Cllr Joe Watt (Con) and Cllr Dafydd Williams (Lab). Chair Cllr Julie Gunnell, the Deputy Lord Mayor, thanked the public for their participation and said that the speakers and the petition had given councillors a lot of areas to think about and to research.
A full transcript of the debate by councillors can be read here: CYC debate 17 July
Prior to the meeting a demonstration against fracking organised by Frack-Free York was held in St Helen’s Square, in front of the Mansion House. Other members of York Environment Forum joined in with the demonstration and subsequently packed the public gallery of the Guildhall’s main chamber to hear the council debate.
YEF flies its colours with community banner
The York Environment Forum was proud to join with the many community and other groups in the city to make its own banner for the City of York Council’s Dress to Impress initiative for the Grand Depart of the Tour de France.
The banner project was organised by YEF’s treasurer Penny Bainbridge with help from members Ron Healy, Adrian Lovett and Bootham School teacher Harriet Ennis and the pupils from BEAST, the school’s environmental group, working with a community artist using the materials provided by the council for the community banners.
The colourful banners were displayed on York’s bar walls, adding a vibrant and attractive element to the Tour de France street decorations and demonstrating the huge range of voluntary groups and organisations that are active in the city.
Our banner was hung in a prominent position on the archway through the walls from Lendal Bridge leading to York Station, and was next to a Greenpeace banner, which we thoroughly approved of!
York Environment Forum would like to thank City of York Council for this great initiative and for taking such care to present the banners to the public. The banners have been taken down now, but will be available for public viewing an another location – check our Facebook page for an update on this.
The community banner for York Environment Forum, made jointly with BEAST from Bootham School, as part of the Dress to Impress initiative for the Tour de France
YEF goes from strength to strength!
The 8 April 2014 meeting of York Environment Forum was a landmark one as it incorporated our inaugural AGM.
This may not sound sexy or momentous, but after more than ten years of running on a structured but essentially informal basis, with no funding whatsoever, the Forum is now a fully constituted body and has a bank account, officers and a management committee.
It all strengthens the hand of our organisation, which has been powered by a great deal of hard work, energy, commitment and goodwill over its decade-long existence. Being constituted will allow us to apply for funding to do more of the things we would like to do – hold public meetings (and maybe even filmed talks), arrange conferences, organise campaigns, perhaps produce publications – the possibilities are endless, and exciting.
The journey to this point commenced in August 2013, when a special ‘visioning workshop’ was held to discuss where we were headed as an organisation, and what kind of organisation we felt it would be most appropriate for us to adopt. All members were invited to participate in a survey to feed back their comments and this was followed up by a subsequent presentation by Natasha Almond of York CVS to advise us on the types of organisation we could seek to become (ie limited company, charity, CIO, etc).
We decided that an unincorporated association was the best structure for us as an organisation and formed a working group to put together a constitution, based on a model constitution supplied by York CVS and governance documents that the Forum had produced previously. The constitution has been revised several times at YEF meetings since, and was agreed at our meeting in February 2014. It was formally signed by all attending members of the AGM on 8 April 2014.
York Environment Forum is keen to maintain the good working relationship it has as an ‘outside body’ working in partnership with City of York Council, and all felt it was important to find a format that continued to maintain that. We value the input from Council members that have a (non-voting) seat on the Forum and appreciate greatly the use of a council room for our meetings, which helps facilitate the attendance of Members.
The constitution is available to read here YEF Constituition
YEF response to Minerals and Waste Joint Plan
York Environment Forum has responded to the Minerals and Waste Joint Plan Issues and Options consultation, calling for the local authorities concerned to reject fracking, to embrace a circular economy model and to pursue a zero waste policy.
To read our response to the consultation, click MWJP York Environment Forum response
The Forum’s statement to the City of York Council was also included in the response. To read the full statement, click Fracking statement from York Environment Forum.
York Environment Forum 