Recently in South Kilburn Partnership Trust Category

So we still seem to be hanging around waiting for the Conservatives Planning Green Paper (let alone the policy statement on regeneration) and the excellent Patrick Clift watches this for us like a hawk in the EG planning blog. 

Actually, many of us are getting a bit frantic with anxiety about it all. 

Alex Kendall has been coming onto this blog and saying rather provocative things, which I think I agree with (in an much as I understand them!) and I think we do need an honest debate here - and we'll be looking to start this at the BURA@20 debate on Tuesday 23 February. 

I suppose, as the cynics would have it, there aint many votes in planning - and this is one for Ann Skippers, the admirable new president of the RTPI, to get her teeth into (yes, Alex, they are my friends).

Nice to get feedback.

A good mate of mine, who is indeed a very fine public servant (as I've just told Veredus, if you're reading this, Blondie) contacted me with a little anecdote on the subject of ghost busters.

Her ex-husband was a housing estate manager in Hull (as it happens, in the NDC area there) way back and had to go and see a tenant one day who had been bitterly complaining about noises and creaks and problems with her house.

No one could find anything wrong. She wanted a transfer to get away, adamant there was a poltergeist in her house; a transfer to another property was the only solution she would accept.

So he makes his appointment, tramps over there to see her, gets a full blown story about all the things the poltergeist has been doing - the usual smashing of plates, noise making and throwing of water routine.

When pushed on what makes her so sure it's supernatural, she says she knows who it is. "Oh", says the ex-husband, "and who is it?" "My eight year old son" says the lady, "oh no", cries the ex-husband "I am so sorry to hear that, it's terrible", etc etc... attempting now to comfort her and gaining more understanding of why she might want to move....

I am in spear-carrying mode again (dear old Jim Barham at Rialto Homes used to refer to me as "Boadicea" in Paddington days; I do not think he intended this as a compliment).

In my role as chair at the South Kilburn Partnership (SKP), it was my pleasant duty to draft my introduction to the 2009/10 Business Plan today. Regular readers of this blog will know there has been considerable pain in South Kilburn and, from what I understand, we were not alone among the 39 New Deal for Communities (NDC) programmes (set up by the forebears of Communities and Local Government in 2000) many of whom have suffered similar dissonance.

But - as South Kilburn residents will loudly affirm - the past is another country and we must move onwards and upwards. So I am proud to be able to say that we have been one step ahead of the other NDC programmes in South Kilburn in setting up our legacy vehicles with the establishment of the over-arching South Kilburn Partnership (SKP) and its delivery arm, the South Kilburn Neighbourhood Trust (SKNT) - and I chair both bodies (there is just no limit to how many hats can I wear at once!).