WinACC update
Local Development Framework - help create a low carbon future for Winchester
If you live in Winchester District there is still time to get involved in the consultation exercise on the Local Development Framework (LDF). The LDF is the strategic planning framework for the future of Winchester District up to 2026, and is therefore of great importance in creating a low carbon future for Winchester. Please have a look at the City Council website http://www.winchester.gov.uk/ complete the online questionnaire, and encourage your friends and colleagues to do so. Responses to the LDF Core Strategy Options and Issues document must be submitted by 15 February.
Close those doors!
Following a survey by Bob Whitmarsh a letter was sent to 46 shops on the High Street and Broadway asking them to keep their doors closed on cold days and thereby stop wasting energy. The response has been limited, though the Head Office of Signet group, ‘the world’s largest speciality retail jeweller’, of which the Ernest Jones shop in the High Street is part, has written to say ‘you are quite correct that Ernest Jones in Winchester should not have been trading with the door open on a cold December day. We have used this opportunity to review our policy and will this week be issuing clear guidelines to all our stores’. This ’shop doors’ initiative - which has a clear national dimension - is to become part of Winchester Friends of the Earth’s ‘Greening the High Street’ campaign, Winchester FOE’s main campaign in 2008. Bob Whitmarsh’s letter - which was published in the Hampshire Chronicle last Thursday - is here.
WinACC Open Meeting: 2 February
There will be three principal items on the agenda for the Open Meeting from 1030-1200 on the morning of Saturday 2 February at the Friends’ Meeting House:
- A brief presentation by Rebecca Chivers, an energy advisor at the Environment Centre (tEC), Southampton, of a proposed joint tEC/WinACC/City Council rural communities initiative designed to promote energy conservation initially in two villages in Winchester District;
- Progress reports on WinACC Action Groups;
- Discussion of WinACC’s priorities for the next three years - a short paper will be circulated in advance of the meeting.
Please let Robert Hutchison, drd.hutchison@btinternet.com know if you intend to be present.
Two further dates in February
Wednesday 6 February at 1930 at the United Church, Jewry Street : Terena Plowright of the Sustainability Centre in East Meon will be talking about the Greening Campaign which she has initiated in Petersfield and in various villages in East Hampshire and Winchester Districts.
Thursday 7 February at 1930 at the St Peter’s Parish Centre, Jewry Street: Katharine Talbot, network development officer of the World Development Movement, will be answering the question ‘ Is Corporate Power cooking the planet? The world is waking up to the reality of climate change and its impact on the poor. But methods to deal with it like carbon trading, carbon offsetting and biofuels are really about satisfying corporate interests and maintaining narrowly defined ‘growth’. Hear how corporate globalisation is preventing us tackling climate change’. This meeting is organised by Winchester WDM.