website: www.fobw.org.uk

N.B. A map of the proposed tree planting (mentioned below) can be viewed by clicking here (pdf file)- Webmaster.

Present: Alan Aburrow, Siân Parry, David Parke, Jerry Cole (Bristol Parks), Brian Tommy, Maureen Keen, Bill Rudge, Sylvia Kelly, Hazel Willmott, Geoff Perrett, Gordon Holmes, Hilary Long, Jon Tanner

Alan Aburrow chaired the Meeting and, Siân Parry took the Notes.

1. Apologies: Tanya Saker (nee Darch, Bristol Living Rivers), Oli Roberts (Bristol Parks), Alistair Mackintosh, Rowena Kenny, Eileen Faulkner, Rosemary Burton, Vic Walton, Rex Harding, Marion Baynes (Greenway Community Practice), Frances Robertson, Peter Insole, Christine Callanan, Jill Maguire

2. Notes of the Meeting on 8 September 2009. Circulated previously and taken as read.

3. Matters Arising. None that would not be covered on tonight’s Agenda.

4. Feedback from Bristol City Council

Jerry updated the group about relevant issues:

·         Redevelopment at 81 Doncaster Road: the developer had reinstated the boundary fence adjacent to the    Doncaster Road entrance.

·         Grounds Maintenance: Mark the Park Keeper has been continuing to do odd jobs in the Wood and the tumulus had received a grass cut. The Group welcomed these actions.

·         Waste dumped by the stile at Clover Ground: BCC has cleared the accumulated rubbish and the enforcement team will become involved if dumping continues.

·         Parks and Green Space Strategy: Alan reported that a conference was taking place in January about the Area Green Space Plans for each area. However, the Council recently announced that these will now be delayed until June 2010.

·         Meeting between Alan and Jerry to move projects forward, e.g. Next Generation Outfall, tree planting on the football pitch site.

·         The Phase 2 bid for enhancing the Doncaster Road entrance (”Northern Gateway Project“) will be submitted to Community Spaces (for Lottery Funding) this week.

Tanya Saker had tendered her apologies for this evening but had submitted the following Report:

Operation Streamclean continue to work in the Badock’s Wood area on an ad hoc basis. Routine water quality monitoring continues as normal and any high bacterial levels or pollution will be passed onto the team to investigate.

The Environment Agency has been monitoring the peaks in conductivity in the Henleaze Trym following the identification of peaks in the water between 12pm and 5pm. The monitoring kit continues to be steadily moved upstream to eliminate drainage areas and will continue to do so until they have identified the source of the pollution.

A Pollution Prevention campaign took place in May this year. The Environment Agency, Operation Streamclean and I visited commercial premises along Southmead Road and up Wellington Hill West. Investigations found several premises with drainage misconnections and were advised on making improvements to protect the River from future pollution incidents. I’m pleased to report all these misconnections have now been corrected. The Pollution Prevention campaign did not find the source of the high peaks in conductivity; therefore another campaign is scheduled before the end of the year looking further up the catchment at other possible sources of the pollution.

In response to David’s enquiry about the water level monitoring in the River Trym, I have spoken to the Environment Agency and they confirmed that the flow level equipment was removed some years ago and therefore there is no data available for recent flows.

Thank you to Rex for reporting a pollution incident in November to the Environment Agency and also to me. In response, Operation Streamclean attended and met Wessex Water on site who had already successfully resolved an infrastructure issue.

If you witness a serious pollution incident, please continue to report it immediately to the Environment Agency Pollution Hotline 0800 807060.

Action: David to chase up previous flow meter records from EA.

5. Feedback from the Police

No representative from the Police was available this evening. Alan reported that PCs and PCSOs were still patrolling the site regularly but there were no major problems reported. Any incidents of anti-social behaviour should be reported to the Police immediately (tel: 0845 4567000).

6. Feedback from Grounds4Change (G4C)

No representative from G4C was present this evening.

7. Feedback from FOBW

Projects:

·         Northern Gateway (Doncaster Road entrance, see also Item 4 above): we should hear the outcome of our bid in February/March and hope to start work on site soon after. Ground works will be done first with tree planting next Autumn.

·         Events: Local Nature Reserve Officer post at BCC - still waiting to hear outcome of funding application. The FOBW Bat Walk in late September was very successful, with 16-18 people attending and bats detected, e.g. pipistrelles. Another walk to be planned for next Spring. Hilary suggested that Neighbourhood Partnership grants might be available for arranging events of up to £1000. A bridge over the Next Generation outfall and walks, plays and nature activities could potentially be funded from this source.

Action: Jerry to pursue costings for bridge and let Alan know the results.

Hazel asked what had happened to liaison with BTCV which used to support Community Groups. Siân said she’d find out as she and Alan thought that their role had changed since previous BTCV staff had been in post.

Action: Siân to contact BTCV to find out the possibility of any support for the Group.

Mr Rudge asked what could be done about dog walkers slamming their car doors outside the Willow Bank flats in Lakewood Road early in the morning.

Football Field: An organisation called E-forests (www.eforests.co.uk) was currently offering free trees to Community Groups. Jerry has spoken to Richard Ennion about planting some native trees in the football field at the Holmwood Gardens end. The possibility of tree planting in this area had been reviewed by a small sub-group of FOBW Members earlier this year and their findings reported to the FOBW Meeting last May. (For an update, please see the Addendum to these Notes).

Siân said that the Group needs advice about what should be done to enable the field to become part of the LNR designation. Hilary added that it should be used as open space. Also, the space needs more publicity as there are no signs pointing it out to people from Westbury, for example. Hilary suggested that it needs to be ‘named’ to give it more significance e.g. ”Badock’s Meadow“. Hazel said that Manor Road reserve reinstated wildflower meadows at their reserve and it was very successful, however, our current mowing regime would need changing.

Action: Alan and David to meet Jerry and Richard Ennion on site to discuss tree planting; Jerry to speak to Helen Hall in Nature Conservation Team re management of  the field.

Jerry said that undergrowth in Dark Lane needed to be trimmed back to improve access and he would organise this.

Alan mentioned that Nick Brittan (previously identified as the owner of a brown collie) had been successfully tracked down (thanks to Rex) in order to chat about his knowledge of local history.

Website: The website was being tidied up by Alistair and he was open to suggestions about any improvements. He would also welcome any photos to be sent to him to update the site. Geoff mentioned that the domain name was more expensive than first thought - it had cost £60 rather than £6.88.

Funds: Geoff reported that the Group had £900 in the Deposit account and £300 in the Current account at present. Annual Accounts would need to be prepared for the forthcoming February year-end. Following an audit request from Breathing Places, the requisite receipts had been submitted for the 2008/09 Breathing Places Award. This was followed-up by a site visit from Breathing Places (Mick Simpson) on 16 November.

Hilary suggested that the Group could raise money by charging a small sum for membership; this leads to more ownership - this could be discussed at the AGM.

Action: Alan to put Member Subscriptions on agenda for AGM

Publicity: Alan reported that he’d written articles for ”The Mead“ and the Westbury-on-Trym Society’s Newsletter to publicise the Wood. Alan had also submitted a request to ”The Bristol Nine“ community magazine to include a plea for pictures of Bowness Gardens when it was a prefab site. These pictures could be reproduced for inclusion in the Interpretation Board to be installed as part of the ”Northern Gateway Project“.

Local History update: Peter Insole is redrafting new text and map and John Bryant is completing the archaeology section for their booklet on the Archaeological History of the Badock’s Wood area. Siân suggested that it would be good if they could lead a walk based on their booklet.

Action: Alan/David to chase them up to see if this would be possible.

8. AOB

Hilary (?) asked about the location of bird and bat boxes in the Wood. Siân and David said there were several which really needed to be monitored to see if they were being used.

Hazel asked if there were dormice in the Wood and Siân said she thought not from surveys that had been done, but she’d check. Hazel also suggested that the Group could cut hedges themselves rather than flail them.

A query was raised about the steel benches promised by Parks and Jerry said that they were still available but, as yet, there was no money to install them. Could the Northern Gateway bid fund their installation?

AGM 23rd March – Please note that David is not seeking re-election as Secretary so anyone who would like to take on this role is very welcome. The duties are not onerous and include circulating the Agenda and Notes for each Meeting, plus the maintenance of the email and snail-mail address databases.

Hilary and Hazel suggested that the AGM could start or finish with food and drink to encourage people to come along. Everyone agreed this was a good idea!

Action: Committee Members to consider/organise.

Alan proposed that Meeting dates for the next year (2010/11) should be 18 May, 7 September, 7 December and the AGM on 22 March 2011.

The Meeting closed at 9.10pm

Date of the next Meeting:

Tuesday 23 March 2010, preceded by the AGM, at the Greenway Centre, commencing at 7.30pm.

ADDENDUM

In early 2009, a FOBW sub-group met to consider the future of the Badock’s Wood playing field area, as this area was no longer to be maintained by the City Council for regular amateur football activities. The findings of the sub-group were as follows:

Badock's Wood Local Nature Reserve and The Playing Field

Several members of FOBW recently met to consider the changes likely to be needed to enable the LNR status of the Wood to be extended to include the Playing Field.

The Playing Field has been close mown for many years and is now widely used by families and dog walkers. It is considered important that this amenity continues and that any change in the mowing regime must not harm this.

However it is also considered that a certain amount of 'Softening' of the Holmwood gardens boundary and subsequently the woodland edge would give the open space a more natural look and encourage wildlife into the area.

The area is large and it was decided that the work should be tackled in phases.

Phase One would be to plant mid-sized native trees and sub-shrubs in copses along the boundary of the field between the fences at the rear of the Holmwood Garden houses and the Next Generation pipeline.

This planting of middle sized local and native trees and shrubs could include such species as field maple, rowan, silver birch, holly, dogwood, hawthorn, wych hazel, hazel and spindle.

It would not affect the general use of the open space, or the mowing of the field in anyway.

The above is the result of the deliberations of just a few but all agreed that the matter should be put to FOBW for a broader and more detailed consideration.

At the May 2009 FOBW Meeting, an Action was placed on the Chairman to pursue the Phase One recommendations with Bristol City Parks.

During these deliberations, an offer was received from eforests, in November 2009, to supply some free saplings. It would certainly be advantageous for FOBW/Parks to take advantage of this generous offer.

Subsequently, Parks and FOBW drew up a small Planting Plan which took account of the sub-group’s overall objectives on increasing the number of trees in the field. However, rather than a series of small copses along the Holmwood Gardens boundary, the suggestion of Bristol Parks’ Natural Environment Manager was to establish a single copse as a ”woodland extension“ in one corner of the field. The Proposed Tree Planting Plan is appended and would include native species of ash, field maple, oak and hazel. The remainder of the field would continue to be close mown on a regular basis, as presently undertaken by Parks.

This does not in any way preclude FOBW and Parks from revisiting the Phase One proposals, as and when adequate funding is available.

The homeowners in Holmwood Gardens, whose outlook could be adversely affected, have been consulted and have raised no objections to Parks’ proposed planting plan.

Before proceeding with the proposed Planting Plan, the views of FOBW Members (and the populous at large) would be most welcome.