Back off holiday and back into the fray. It was a bit of a shock coming from 33 degrees centigrade to 13!
We have been in correspondence with the trustees of the Greig Hall over a possible purchase of the hall for the town. You may remember that ATC made an offer under the Community Right to buy, that is instilled in the localism act. This allows organisations such as ours to make an offer on a facility that has special community interest and the Greig Hall certainly falls into that category. We are in open negotiations with the trustees and hope to have a resolution in the near future.
With regards to the Alimore Lane application, we are very disappointed that SDC will not be supporting the decision made by their planning committee and therefore not contesting the applications at the appeal in November. The four reasons for rejection were passed to the Regulatory Committee who decided not to take it further. This is a huge disappointment to us all after the time, effort and emotion expended. The next stage would have been the appeal meeting with the inspector in November. However this puts us in a very difficult position, wrong footing us completely and we are sure it is not what the town wants. Be assured we will take the fight as far as we can.
On a more positive point, last week I attended a planting ceremony for the millionth tree in the Heart of England forest. What is this you may ask? It is a scheme promoted by a local landowner, Felix Denis, who is buying up land and planting broad leaf trees. The vision is to create a contiguous forest of 2000 acres close to where we live. This is an ambitious long term scheme but one that will ultimately benefit the whole area. The health benefits of a walk in the wood are well known so this is really something to support.