Proposed New Development – Longstrops

Whilst the Kesgrave Good Neighbour Scheme is not a lobby group, we do take a keen interest in our neighbourhood so, after an eagle eyed volunteer spotted the above announcement in the local paper, two of us went along to the presentation last night to find out a little more about it. We had a good long chat with the consultants and duly filled in the feedback forms expressing our own, personal opinions.

This posting is simply designed to alert our neighbours to the proposal if they have not already heard about it. You can find the outline plans by following this link Suffolk Coastal JDI Consult - Kesgrave Development Proposal . Briefly, the proposal is for 300 new house by Longstrops with an access road cutting through the existing footpath/walking area to Millennium Way and other access to eg Dobb’s Lane. The presentation last night is a first “foray” to assess local views and get some input into possible changes required to the plans before a formal application for planning permission is made to Suffolk Coastal. A presentation was made to Kesgrave Town Council just before the display opened to the public yesterday. As we understand it, Kesgrave Town Council will have influence on Suffolk Coastal’s decision but are not decision makers.

There is a very short timescale for initial feedback – deadline 13th February – and presumably the better the initial feedback, and the higher the volume, the more influence we can have on this proposal. The address given at the bottom of our feedback form for postal returns is:

Mr Will Lusty, Savills, Unex House, 132-134 Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 8PA

Looking For A Local Tradesperson?

Our Good Neighbour Scheme can’t offer any “professional” or skilled trades but we can help out on eg changing a light bulb, a one off front garden clear up, helping to move things, etc. And we have to be a little careful about recommending people and organisations. That being said, the best advice we can normally offer is to have a good look at your monthly Kesgrave News. Most of the advertisers in there have been around for a long time and are therefore tried and tested.

The other organisation we have come across lately is Checkatrade. One of our volunteers has a chimney sweep who registered with them last year. They are one of the more expensive Trade Organisations (for the organisation that registers with them), which is probably a good thing, and they also follow up, on a random basis, on feedback forms completed by customers to make sure they are genuine. Our volunteer had a call a couple of months after the chimney was swept.

The website is free to use for the customer, very easy to navigate around and carries some really useful information. Try it for yourselves by using the link that follows! Checkatrade

2013 Starting With A Bang!

After an action packed volunteers meeting at the community centre on 19th January, we had another great turn out for our volunteers monthly social meeting this week – normally the 4th Wednesday of every month, 7 30pm till 9 pm at Kesgrave Social Club on Edmonton Road.

In the photo you can see the early birds in deep conversation over the price of beer -

very reasonable at this venue

There was plenty of news to catch up on – calls are on the increase as people get to know about us, we have three new volunteers in the pipeline who should be ready to join the team next month, we have made contact with Kesgrave WI – see below, our cards are ready to go to print so that we can drop one through every letter box in Kesgrave over the next few months (kindly funded by The Suffolk Foundation) and our volunteers are itching to get busy so please help them out by calling us if you need a helping hand.

We’d also like to say a big THANK YOU to SPARK, a local charity who have given us a very generous grant towards our annual modest operating costs. So that means we can concentrate on helping our neighbours rather than scrabbling around for funding! We’ve now added them to our useful links on the right hand side of the blog.

Kesgrave WI “At Home” 8th April

Kesgrave WI are holding an “At Home” – an afternoon tea and entertainment for house bound residents on 8th April. They will pick up and drop back anyone who is interested so, volunteers, if you think any of our neighbours might be interested, please ask them and, if they are, let Jane have their details which she will forward onto the Secretary of Kesgrave WI and she will send them an invitation. More details on page 16 of your February edition of Kesgrave News which, incidentally, celebrates its 20th birthday this month.

Staying In Touch With News

After a nudge from one of our IT savvy volunteers, we have added a “Follow By Email” box on the top right hand corner of our blog. If you enter your email address (which you will be asked to verify) you will automatically be notified each time a new post goes up. Blogger assures us that this will not lead to any additional spam and even the blog “owner” can’t see who has subscribed.

Next Meeting

We have a very special guest coming to our next quarterly volunteers meeting on April 20th. More news soon!

Volunteers Meeting 19th January & Kesgrave Market

This weekend proves what a hardy, loyal and good hearted bunch of volunteers we have. What a brilliant turnout to our first volunteers meeting of 2013, despite the weather! Our four new volunteers met our founder volunteers and we had an action packed meeting. First a talk from Garry and Catherine about the Warm Homes, Healthy People Scheme being promoted by the Rural Coffee Caravan Information Project; then twenty minutes of role playing a neighbour’s telephone enquiry, for the benefit of our new volunteers, and finally a round up of news and some discussion on fund raising, gritting and the year ahead.

Carry and Catherine had a table at Kesgrave Market, earlier on in the morning and did a roaring trade giving away mugs, slippers, rubber bottoms for walking sticks, kindling and a host of other things. They also took plenty of bookings for a Warm Homes survey – free advice from trained consultants on how to keep warm at minimum cost. And, even better, they also managed to recruit a new volunteer for the Kesgrave Good Neighbour Scheme!

Warm Homes, Healthy People have a sizeable budget to spend before the end of March to help those who need it most to keep warm this winter. They’re doing Road Shows all over Suffolk and often share venues with a number of other helpful organisations. If you can make it, they’re well worth a visit. Below are some useful links:

Warm Homes, Healthy People 

Rural Coffee Caravan Information Project

BBC Radio Suffolk Promotes Good Neighbours

Many thanks to the lovely Mark Murphy (even lovelier in the flesh!) for inviting us onto his show to talk about the Kesgrave Good Neighbour Scheme, alongside Nat Bocking from Suffolk ACRE who told Mark about Suffolk Good Neighbour Schemes in general.

Here’s Jane, our Chairman waiting for the call and following in the golden footsteps of Len Goodman, the Strictly Come Dancing chief of judges, who spoke passionately on Mark’s show earlier about looking after our neighbours. We all used to do it well but we’re not so good at it now so we hope our scheme will help everyone in Kesgrave to do this a bit better. Well done to Nat, who took Jane’s photo, for angling it so that her head obscured the word in green on the poster behind. Jane wasn’t quite so diligent with Nat’s photo and the whole word is revealed next to his head shot. The poster is about one of BBC Radio Suffolk’s many successful campaigns – “Don’t be a Tosser”!  Guess which is the big word in green?!

If you listened to more of Mark’s show afterwards you will have heard about a really successful volunteer gritting scheme already happening in Stowmarket and Sudbury and that’s our next piece of research. If you listen regularly to BBC Radio Suffolk you’ll find out that there’s a lot more going on in the community than you might have thought!

You can listen again to our chat on Mark’s show by following this link: Kesgrave Good Neighbour Scheme on Mark Murphy Radio Show It starts at 2 hours 28 mins 50 seconds. You can only listen again for seven days from the broadcast but if you’re reading this afterwards, Suffolk Acre have put the audio up on their website. Click on this link http://www.suffolkacre.org.uk/main.php/news/269

Volunteer Meeting 19th January 2013

Warm Homes, Healthy People are coming to talk to us at our volunteer meeting at 12 noon in the Pavilion, Kesgrave Community Centre, opposite the tennis courts. We’ve also got them a table at Kesgrave Market from 9am to 12 the same day so that more Kesgrave residents can find out about what they can offer to keep our homes warm. Anyone interested in finding out more about the Kesgrave Good Neighbour Scheme is very welcome to come along to the first 15 minutes of our meeting. Volunteers can find out what’s in store for 2013, hear some good news about funding and future visitors, and help shape our plans for the year.

Volunteer Meeting Saturday 19th January 2013

We hope to get newsletters round to all volunteers before Christmas and there’s plenty of news to report. However here’s advance warning of an important get together in January. Amongst other things…..

1) we have four new volunteers who are looking forward to meeting our founder volunteers and learning more about helping their neighbours

2) we need the input of all volunteers to plan our first fund raising event

3) we’d like to get some provisional meeting dates in our diaries for the whole of 2013 so we have a plan for the year

4) we have some good news on funding – we’re 25% of the way to funding our operational costs for 2013 thanks to Kesgrave Town Council and The Suffolk Foundation has very kindly awarded us a grant for a specific project which will help us get better known in Kesgrave and reach more neighbours needing help

5) we’ve come across some exciting new organisations that will also help our community and assist us in signposting Kesgrave residents to other sources of help

The meeting starts at 12 noon and, this time, is in The Bowl’s Pavilion, next to the main Community Centre buildings. The entrance is opposite the tennis courts and you can park right next to it on the Grange Farm side of the Community Centre, or just a short walk away on the Bell Lane side of KWMCC. We expect to be finished by 1 30, latest.

Any Kesgrave resident who’d like to consider joining up as a volunteer is welcome to come along for the first fifteen minutes of the meeting. We’ll give you a volunteer card to take away which allows you to choose what sort of help you want to give and roughly when you might be available, we’ll tell you a little more about the scheme and, if you like what you hear, we can explain the very simple next steps.

Remember that it’s also the third Saturday of the month so you can drop into Kesgrave monthly market on your way to the meeting!