Dec 2021
It’s been a busy couple of months and we have some really exciting news to share.
We finally got the money for a defibrillator, planned for Mousehold Avenue on the outside of the Mousehold Hub. This is thanks to Ed Roy from Roys. He really kindly offered us £700 and Jayne Biggs who runs a charity for community defibs matched it. Our local councillor Gary Champion is in the final stages of ordering this and getting it installed.
On the 4th December 2021, we had a successful community day. 103 people filed in an online survey which was only live for 2 days sharing their thoughts. 63 people ticked they would be happy to get involved and help. If you missed this and have an idea please comment on the blog or email us. Equally, if you commented saying due to age or health you aren’t able to help please come along to volunteer days and help with the little jobs handing out litter pickers etc. All these jobs are important.
We are now working with Richard Green, who is the Parks and Green Space officer for Norwich City Council. Norwich has two of these officers Richard and Suzanne Parkinsons. We need to be patient and kind to these guys as according to wiki “as of 2011, Norwich has 23 parks, 95 open spaces and 59 natural areas in the care of the local authority”. They are very busy and demanding jobs!!
Emma Penfold is still our main contact for the council. Emma is a community enabling officer for community groups. Norwich City Council has a few of these all with their own patch! Emma in North Norwich.
Richard Green has successfully got some of the dangerous wire chain-linked fences removed at Kett’s cave. This has really given us an idea of how good the park will look with those bottom fences gone. It’s going to massively improve the area for wildlife, no more boxed in hedgehogs and muntjac, the local dog walkers don’t need to worry about their dog’s paws getting trapped in the wire and the kids are now able to go into that area to climb trees. Sadly due to the way Norwich City Council works and Government cuts he was only able to get the broken ones removed. However, they are enabling us to be able to remove the rest ourselves as a community.
We did a litter pick on Wed 29th 2021 to pick up the litter which was trapped in these fences and the surrounding area.
The AGM is booked for 11th Jan. We can discuss a date and plan together for removing the rest of the fences. Elect committee. Create a list of volunteers for fence removal days. Please email us if you have time to get involved. It will probably be a Saturday in early February 2022. Tony Moore (Pockthorpe’s secretary) is going to lead this meeting.
Next on the plan is to get insurance for volunteers to work in Kett’s cave park, apply for grants and quotes for installation of some nice steps. Thankfully Tony is on all this!
Richard Green has arranged five free spaces for the Pockthorpe group to have TCV training, this will enable us to work independently. Rob Bakewell has already done this training course. So he is able to lead a group of volunteers to do tasks such as scrub management and fence removal. He will start each volunteer task with a health and safety talk and how to use the tools correctly.
Norfolk record office gave us Pockthorpe map, so we have a clear boundary now of what was Pockthorpe. We love the history of this area so please share anything you find out with us.
I think that is it. Hope you had an awesome Christmas and maybe see some of you at the AGM meeting.
Liz
Pockthorpe Community Group.
