Latest Minutes Plus…
Good morning all (and a beautiful sunny morning it is too). Just a couple of updates/items of news to share with you. Firstly, some minutes of recent meetings for those unable to attend: The Consort chaired budget meeting of 19th March (held in the library) HERE, and the DSRA meeting of 21st April (held in the Bootstrap building in Ashwin St.) HERE. There will be more news regarding the issues raised in these, connected, meetings soon, but for now the minutes will give you the gist of what is going on. (As always, these files are hosted over at our discussions forum. Simply click the highlighted link to save a pdf copy of the document to your computer for your perusal. If you are unable to access the links, read THIS, and, if you qualify, follow it’s instructions HERE.)
Next up, something all mums and dads may be interested in. This from The Trinity Centre:
Dear All Dalston has few public play spaces and we have been working to improve the Wards play provision for children. Not only have we been arguing for the new Dalston Square to be promoted as a place for children and families to gather, since the Beechwood Road Street party and the Council Play Street Policy we are keen for more streets to be adopted for play on a regular basis. Working with Play Out and the local play streets organizer for Hackney we are hosting a meeting next month to inform residents and parents on how to go about organizing streets for play in their area. As well as being invited to the attached event could you please be so kind as to publicize it to your residents and members.
For further details check out their poster below (click on it to see it full-size).
DSRA Meeting & Social
As many of you will know, at the disastrous meeting held by Consort in the library a few weeks back (a meeting at which Consort failed miserably to justify the latest proposed increases in our service charges), they promised to get back to us by mid April with answers to our many questions. Mid April is, but for a couple of days, now upon us and we have heard nothing (though in fairness we have also not received the latest bill which should have been with us by now). Where do we go from here? Ben Collins (DSRA Chair) has been weighing up our options and has come across a couple of very interesting organisations: The Federation of Private Residents’ Associations (FPRA – www.fpra.org.uk), and the Leasehold Advisory Service (a government funded Non Departmental Public Body – www.lease-advice.org). The former, a not-for-profit organisation who offer legal and organisational advice to it’s members (we would have to pay a membership fee to join in order to receive this advice) work very closely with the second and are very familiar with Consort and the problems we are encountering. I think you would agree it is perhaps time to take our grievances to the next level and see if this may be the way forward. In this regard then, we will like to call a meeting, open to all residents of Dalston Square, leaseholders and Tenants alike, to discuss these and other options and decide on a way forward. Hoping this will not take that long (we have scheduled 45 minutes for the meeting), we thought we could then break out the drinks and nibbles and have a bit of a Spring get-together: Nothing overly long or fancy, just a chance to have a chat and get to know each other a little better. Click on the thumbnail below for all the details. Hope to see you all there: The meeting is important and we need your input!
Holy Trinity Planning Objection Advice
Hi all, sorry for the late notice on this one. As most of you will be aware, a group of residents from the southern end of the Square have organised themselves into a group to fight several aspects of the proposed development of the Holy Trinity School site (more details can be found over at our forum in THIS thread). To this end they have arranged a meeting with a representative from Planning Aid (website HERE), who will be offering advice and answering questions. The meeting is set for today (again, sorry for the short notice), at 2pm, in Cafe Route, here on the Square in Gaumont Tower (why not arrive nice and early and have a spot of lunch first: I can testify that the food really is very good).
Dalston Square Residents' Association 