CHAIRMAN'S MESSAGE SPRING 2011

THE BIG SOCIETY - I feel that in the present climate I am honour bound to make it the subject of my message. First of all - what is it? As I understand it the government in general and David Cameron in particular want the initiative and drive to provide many services to come, not from our elected representatives delegating the execution of central legislation to government departments and local councils, but from grass-roots local interested groups. At present, what tends to happen is the interested societies react to central and local initiatives. Council tenants react when it is proposed their tenancies be transferred to a housing association; local parents react when there is a possibility that a faith group might gain control of a new school. The government (this is strangely ironic) is trying to legislate to make it easier for local groups to run services and above all take the initiative. I was recntly asked by a leading member of a neighbouring civic society what expanded role our society envisaged for itself under the new regime. True to "l'esprit de l'escalier" i only thought of my response when it was too late. Here it is.
Firstly, I have pointed out before how the Society undertakes tasks that hitherto could be considered more properly to be the Councils. Let me list them again. We have paid the production costs of two neighbourhood destination panels which were designed free of charge by a member. They are now in Kingston and Surbiton Stations. We co-ordinate the borough's programme for Heritage Open Days which takes nine months of hard effort to marshall the 30 sites to the starting line. We are unable to pay for printing the programme as we have run at a loss for two years and are dependent on a small grant from the Council to cover this. A member designs the programme and the Society helps distribute the 2000 copies printed. We do not know whether our bid for a grant for this year's Heritage Open Days will be successful or not. One of the oldest buildings in the borough is the Coombe Conduit House, under the guardianship of English Heritage. It is open to the public in the summer months, courtesy not of the Council who refused English Heritage's request for help, but of the Kingston Society. With the exception of the two destination panels these initiatives have been reactive. The Society has stepped in when the Council's efforts for HOD were inadequate or where they refused to get involved at all.
The question remains, should we take the initiative more. We were puzzled by many aspects of the original proposals for something Hammersons called the Eden Quarter. Should we have tried to do something better? Would we have made a better fist of New Malden High Street? With our limited membership, financial resources and time I am extremely doubtful of our ability to become more proactive. The Mill Street Residents, after a sustained campaign over many years, got a piece of land designated "Village Green", thus protecting it from development. It would be much more difficult for the Society to find such a focus and to mount a similar sustained campaign. In the meantime our resources are stretched to the limit doing what we do already. Unless more members come flocking in, unless our finances improve and unless, most imprtantly of all, we find more people to do the committee work, we could only take on a more proactive role by sacrificing some of our present activities.
What do people think? Our aims are set out on the website in our constitution. We tend to prosecute them by commenting, favourably or otherwise on proposals put forward by others. Which of our present activities should be abandoned to enable us to be more proactive. Let me know.
 

JENNIFER BUTTERWORTH

Chairman