Annual Report
Climate Change Action/Environmental Action: What we used to call Agenda 21!
Penhill seems to have been ready and willing to join in the Recycling Schemes, whilst it has not been all smooth sailing, Penhill was still keen to do it and with a very few exceptions it goes ahead unaided by the Forum. It’s good to see now that it’s not just the Seven Fields Group (20 years) the Orchard Group (6 years) working towards the great outdoors. Surestart now has it’s own individual allotment plots, Val’s Garden at the Chippenham Close Centre, St. Peters Church Garden and the schools working towards Eco-school status.


Fair share: Jen Laibach, Fair Share Worker continues to work with TWIST Adventure Play ground Group, the Penhill Community Association, The Penhill Lunch Club, last year she led a group of local people in the organising of a successful Fun Day in September. Her brief also covers parts of Pinehurst. A small panel of local people meets to discuss Jen’s work and grant applications. There are several vacancies for local people on this panel.

Media: Press reports have improved, but it still seems that the good stories get shoved in the side columns and bad ones get front page. Anyone contacted by the Media seems to have to fight their way through the inevitable ‘vandalism’ slant to get to the heart of their story - which very often has absolutely nothing to do with vandalism.

Community Safety: The Penhill Neighbourhood Safety Team (Nest) continues to meet regularly. Representative of groups and local residents attend the NEST. It gives them an opportunity to meet local police, PCSO, housing officers, Neighbourhood Wardens and Councillors. It also allows for local people to keep up with changes to Policing policy etc. Recent events show that perhaps the meeting has not concentrated as much on Anti-social behaviour as it should, with some residents who suffer from this not knowing that the NeST is a place for more information exchange and essential local support.
Through the NeST we have sent representatives to the Police Community Consultative Meeting, Crime and Communities Conference in Birmingham and the Safer Swindon Day Conference. One of the issues repeatedly brought to the NeST is the inconvenience and the expense of ringing the 0845 number now provided by the Police.

Surestart – Surestart is another partnership: It should have community and well as parent representatives, we are sorry to be losing the SureStart Community Development worker Dawn Johnson, who is leaving soon when her post becomes redundant.

Neighbourhood Renewal Plans: We continue to work towards the fulfilment of our community plan, mostly centred on Communication and the @Penhill Park Plan via the Play and Youth sub group. The sub group is now under the umbrella of the Penhill Community Association so that it can help bolster up that group and make us of the charity status.

Renewal Process: A barrier to this is still the lack of understanding or it could be a deliberate misinterpretation of what it’s all about. Perhaps the biggest barrier is ‘unhelpful mindset, i.e. those who do not want to engage with this community in proper consultation or give credit to the work carried out in the local partnerships. Current Local Area Agreements written between our Council and the Government contain targets, which must be reached to release funding in years to come. Community engagement is one target they will find it hard to reach unless they start not only listening but also acting upon any consultation.

Play and Youth Group: The Penhill Play and Youth Group continues to work towards the Renewal of the Penhill Park, Playing Fields and Uplands School. During 2007, John Saunders, Church Community Worker negotiated with SBC and gained Landfill money to put towards the upgrading of the junior age playground and this was re-instated last summer. A basic youth shelter was also erected. A good example of working together with the appropriate Officers. The Water Play Group, SPLASH, has been working on plans, cost etc., to replace the old paddling pool and the next step is to build up the group to take this forward. Uplands School site, which we would like to see used for Play and Youth work, will become vacant when Seven Fields School is rebuilt, we have copies of the plans of the building and are starting work on seeing what can be achieved. Letters were sent over two year ago registering our interest in the site and a meeting has been held with Hillary Pitts, SBC Head of Education, to see if a feasibility plan can be worked upon. In 2007 we held a very successful, well attended Kids Conference which brought together all those involved in Play and Youth Work in the estate, it is remarkable that of the 40 people attending 30 were paid workers. Gavin Jones, Chief Executive gave the keynote speech and our representative was invited to meet with him shortly afterwards, with the promise of a follow up meeting with more of us. Copies of our Community Plan and @penhill park project have been sent again to most of relevant departments, they have also been included in out thisiswiltshire site so that anyone with a online PC can see them.

Penhill Primary School: The recent news that the Academy could take over Penhill Primary has caused a stir in the community. We feel that the best we can do for the school is to ensure that a proper and fair consultation takes place this time, and ensure that parent’s views are taken into consideration and to find a use for spare space in the school. The Forum has for some years been trying to get downtime use of the school playing field for the community.

Environment Group: Once more we have just not had time to resurrect the environmental sub group, but with the pressure on ALL our green spaces, it is desperately needed. With a change around in the management of the estates (Street Scene) we will have to become familiar with yet another structure. There is no doubt that we lost the battle for the Grafton Road backland and unless there is a better understanding of Community Planning we will lose more before we have a chance to plan anything ourselves. In January we saw a plan to ‘upgrade a sewage works’ in the Seven Fields Area, when we questioned this we found that there was a misprint in the document and it was in fact Seven Bridges near Cricklade!

Transport Issues: There is still much grumbling about the traffic calming, ill placed yellow lines, driveways etc., But the biggest disappointment this year has been the Thamesdown Transport announcement that they intended to cut the No 10 bus. Letters and petitions were sent to them and they have had a rethink, which we will learn about at the end of March with a view to implementing it in May. It will probably not be what we want!!

Forum Meetings: Forum Steering group Meetings have continued irregularly, but no Full Forum meetings were held during the year. This year we hope to go back to the regular three monthly slot.

Swindon Strategic Partnership: Neighbourhood Renewal Task group: We send representatives to this task Group, where we meet other people from the other Renewal areas of Parks, Walcot, Pinehurst, Central and Broad Green. Much time is taken up on checking and reviewing the Local Area Agreements. These agreements set out targets, which must be reached. Unfortunately in action, these seem to have been spread all over Swindon instead of the Neighbourhood Renewal areas that need them most. They were created under the Governments heading "No one should be seriously disadvantaged by where they live" and by ‘Bending the Spend’ SBC and partners should be bringing up and boosting our services to meet and extend beyond those in more affluent areas, giving us the edge. Our Representatives attended the Swindon Strategic Partnership Annual Conference. Our representatives as also attend the Swindon Voluntary and Community Forum where we meet others from those organisations.

Local Area Agreements: Our representatives attend the Stronger Communities Forum, an event held 3 times a year. This was set up in relation to the Safer & Stronger Communities Block of the Local Area Agreement. Through the Neighbourhood Renewal Group attempts have been made to get representation on the ‘Executive Committee’ so that Renewal areas are better represented than they are via the Voluntary and Community representatives on that group.

Penhill Archive: We lent the archive of Penhill photo’s to Artsite for a project, which did not happen. They were returned to us intact.

Land use in Penhill: Every bit of open space in Penhill remains under constant threat, despite us having taken a development the size of Salisbury on the borders of the estate. The Forum does the best it can to get sensible debate on uses of Backlands etc.

Braydon Court: Our representative has attended meetings about the redevelopment of Braydon Court and it steams ahead. It is on target to happen sometime during 2008, most people have now been re-homed.

Last residents move out May 2008
Shops become vacant June 2008
Bulldozers move in August 2008
Completion 2009

Information Exchange: Penhill News has received funding to expand and every house on Penhill now receives a copy every month. A team of deliverers and the editorial team meet regularly and a web page with blog has been created. More information can be found on the thisiswilthire site and both are linked both ways. However the email network seems to have fallen by the wayside, this will be reinstated this year. It appears that a special edition to update everyone more fully on the different aspect of the community plan and the @penhill park plan, though written and printed was never delivered. It was also supposed to help encourage people to come forward to help!

Swindon News: this useful newsletter has not been delivered regularly to Penhill, contact was made with the Borough Officer concerned and we are using the Penhill News Email group to check if it is delivered. (This sentence was copied directly from our 2005 Annual Report and the information remains the same!)

Future plans: The main thrust will be to continue with our plans for @penhill park and other play and youth activities on the estate. We will build on the success of Penhill News, continue to extend the email group, whilst as usual, keeping our eye on the other issues.

CLIP (Community & Learning In Penhill) and the Sure Start Children’s Centre have, between them, put on most of the courses that have run in Penhill this year. The Penhill Community Association and the NSPCC Family Centre have also arranged courses for their members and users. 2 hour courses such as First Aid, Healthy Cooking and Food Hygiene, Dance and Sign Language are generally between 6 – 10 weeks long. In July, about a dozen members of the Art & Social Club (a section of CLIP) successfully completed an Open College Network (OCN) Level 1, Art & Design course and have now embarked on OCN Level 2. Also during the past year, ten CLIP Crèche Workers have been working for their NVQ level 2 in Child Care. Several have now completed this and are going on to tackle Level 3.

The Learning Centre in the John Moulton Hall has been under used this year. The main provider of computer learning at the Centre pulled out at the end of November for financial reasons. During February and March two short computer courses have run successfully, under a different provider. New College have recently been recruiting students in Penhill and plan to run three sessions a week in the Penhill Learning Centre from the end of April onwards.