Well this has been quite a week for a busy mum of three who used to be a child-minder! Firstly we had the Woolmer Green open evening for anyone to come along, meet us and find out about the campaign. We had said we would be there from 8 to 10pm but we were full by 7.40! It was great, although very busy evening, with lots of questions asked and some great options and points raised. A very positive evening with plenty of encouraging feedback!
Then Wednesday we had the Parish council Meeting in Knebworth – where I have lived for the past ten years. The meeting’s agenda was for the LDF to be discussed, and then the We Need a School Campaign was invited to present and the chairman would host a short question and answer session.
Things got somewhat out of hand as residents local to the proposed site had justifiably come to air their views. I was quite shocked as I would much prefer to discuss how we can adapt our plans to work together as a community to get the community benefits we all want.
Hopefully in the future there will be a more suitable forum for everyone to come together as a community and decide what they would like. If the location of the the school isn’t a problem but the location of the proposed houses is then lets look how we can change it. If some people feel we need to include other community facilities then lets see how we can make it happen.
We just need positive dialogue, so we can work it out. It must be better than just letting houses outside of our control be built and the community not benefitting!
Some very interesting points were raised at the meeting, we realise we need to check the funds required, and make sure our idea is viable and we need to look what happened in Wheathampsted. When the residents were given a new secondary school it closed 20 years later – where has that left the residents now? What really happened? We will research and the results will be published on the site!
There were also other questions: effects on public transport, the current local primary schools and more… Keep checking our website as we research these necessary points.
We know there are hurdles, but as a community, if we can discuss this project with an open, positive dialogue then maybe we can find a way to usilise the funds on offer to improve the quality of life for all of us.
I have not heard a similar opportunity to enable our society by using village profits and I hope we decide to work together and enrich our lives!
What i would like to say is that for too long now the elder generation has controlled the debate and decision making within this village. They talk about community but community is no longer what it was, it is now secular, e.g. how many people in this village can name the people who live on their street, 10-15 years ago they could. my children are now fourth generation villagers, my partner third generation. Her view is that the parish council is now a bunch of old people with too much personal agenda clouding their judgement and i as do so many i have spoken to between 18-35 agree. They are not ready for change but where would we be today without it, well I’d be writing with a feather by candle light and no one could read my views for one, unless i sat here reproducing it 1 million times to hand out and to think they are immune to the growing population of this country is delusional to say the least. My view is that you can live here two minutes or 200 years you are still the community this is the point and a democracy not the dictatorship views that reared its ugly head at the parish meeting. If the current council members who do a good job most of the time are not willing to listen to the people that matter in an appropriate, ADULT and diplomatic way and except that this village has and will continue to change and evolve no matter what they think then sad as it is to point out then maybe its time they stepped down and let someone passionate about the village, the community and more importantly is willing to listen or hold referendum on big decisions so a true reflection of views is discussed and put forward can chair the council. They will build houses !!!!we just want our say on how they do, not stand in the way, but we want somethings in return. we want to develop knebworth primary to accommodate the growth we want a new surgery and we want a secondary school. A minor request in the grander scale of things I’m sure.
Look at it this way as of next year Barnwell is closest school.
Say your 11 yr old goes there and bumps into a group of stevenage lads from the hyde shops (local to school), street wise and hardened to the brutality of life, instantly there’s prejudice as your child’s from knebworth, there’s a fight he gets hurt, but he gets 1 and a half hours detention for fighting, hes now missed the bus service to knebworth its October, its dark the nearest bus stop is the hyde shops where the residents don’t go out at night through fear of attack which is regularly reported in the local paper. now you or your daughter (his mother)are in tears next to a hospital bed, hes unconscious gash in his face and dislocated eye sockets from the repeated stamping by the gang, touch and go on a full recovery or surviving without brain damage or internal hemorrhages, all because you couldn’t get there to collect him.
Suddenly a school for this area doesn’t sound so bad.
And for those who think i laid it on a bit strong, I grew up in shephall, spent my youth at the hyde, we nicknamed it the Bronx for its roughness and in my experience its worse still today and I will sooner move far from the village i call home than see my children corrupted and destroyed by that life by going to school in that war zone they call Stevenage.
Thank you, Martin, for your frank comments. You raised some interesting points that others have been reluctant to come out and say in public for many reasons.
People against the idea of a new school have said to those who moved into the village that they knew there wasn’t a secondary school so if you want one you should move out. What they don’t see are the families who grew up in the village (such as yours, for 4 generations no less) that are progressive thinkers and realise that times change and just because there has never been a secondary school it doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be one now – or 5 years from now.
I don’t live in Stevenage so I can’t comment on your description of it, but I know the crime rate there is head and shoulders above all other districts in Hertfordshire, and the thuggery reported in local papers speaks for itself.
I understand there are elections for Knebworth Parish Council in May 2010. Have you considered standing as a parish cllr? If you or other younger people don’t then things will never change. I live in an adjacent village with a fairly good spread of ages among the cllrs and our village has remained a small village but nevertheless moves forwards.