Monday 21st February 2011, 7:30 for 8:00pm

Don’t miss what will be an important key note speech from Andrea Leadsom MP

Feelings are running high once more following the release of the Joint Planning Unit’s revised strategy for 50,000 new homes to be built in Northamptonshire within the next 15 years.  

Once again communities at the periphery of Northampton West, North and South East are threatened with massive expansion, based upon a very weak, woolly, under-funded and unfeasible plan.  These plans also threaten the quality of life for all residents who either live or work in the town centre, by increasing pollution in air quality management areas, spreading essential resources too thinly and creating traffic chaos.

This meeting is hosted by Northants Residents’ Alliance to provide an opportunity for strong community leaders, both political and non-political, to come together to discuss, exchange ideas and coordinate protest activities, to make them at the very least as effective as those  we delivered in the summer of 2009, which brought about the collapse of the original ‘Emergent Core strategy’.  

The event is a chance to meet like-minded leaders from all the affected areas.  If your group is of a mind to make a protest, then you can discuss tactics and opportunities with others to make sure that your community is as effective as its neighbours in making its position clear.  

NRA wishes you to know that there is no intention of attempting to control how individual groups approach their protests, but from experience it will be much more effective if all threatened communities work in a coordinated way and culminate their protests with a mass march once more. NRA will simply provide inter-group communications, media contacts and other materials to make your protests most effective and to improve the chance of residents’ voices being effective against those elected Councillors who are not listening and the Joint Planning Unit who have ignored most of our earlier protests in their revised plans.

The above leaflet launches the NRA campaign against the Joint Core Strategy.  It depicts the derelict St Crispin clock tower, one of Northampton’s most visible landmarks, that has been left to decay for nearly ten years, whilst our Planners have allowed new developments on green field sites to spring up all around it.  This image is iconic because it demonstrates how Planners have failed us and how our local government is incapable of standing up to the greed of developers.  The failure of joined-up planning in Northamptonshire is destroying the pride we take in our local communities.  Strategic planning should be confined to essential infrastructure provision; local housing expansion should be identified and managed locally with the full engagement of those who live in the area.  (as promised by the Coalition Government). There is no place for a JPU.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
If you have a passion for the healthy future of your local community and are already engaged in some form of community leadership, you should attend.  You may be running a local action group, you may be Parish Councillor.  You may be a Local, District or County Councillor.  You may represent the Media.  All will be welcomed.  Of course if you are a member of the WNJPU committee and/or you serve the WNDC, you should probably NOT attend, unless you are prepared to relinquish these posts - in public.

HOW DO I RESERVE A PLACE?
The size of the room we have available is limited to a maximum of 50 people.  To guarantee a seat, you can notify us of your intention to attend in advance by sending an email to us with your contact details, or phoning Roger Kingston on 07872 064080.

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Play videos of the demonstrations that defeated the WNJPU in 2009

Hear a recording of a recent news interview by the NRA on Inspiration FM