Latest News - June 2008

17 June 2008  - On the morning of Saturday 14th June, 24 people came to the Village hall to take part in a workshop, which included a session of photographing all areas of the village. The workshop was led by Jan Cole from the Rural Community Council of Essex (field officer for Braintree District). Our first task was to identify what we thought were the positive & negative features of Bulmer, not surprisingly there were many more positives than negative items. These have been recorded and will be used, when drafting the statement.

After this exercise all attendees were split into five groups, each led by a steering group member on a photographic tour of a specific area of Bulmer to take photos of the various streets/lanes, buildings to capture the different styles, materials used in their construction and the many landscape views & open spaces, highlighting both those positive and negative points raised earlier. These will be analysed and used in the character assessments of each area within the statement. On returning to the hall, there were many comments regarding how surprised people were to find properties, gardens and features they had never seen before, despite having lived in the area for some time. A further exercise was completed, each group being asked to give a short presentation that would be suitable for a ‘blind man' to enable him to imagine the area visited (useful for people outside the village, such as the planning office) illustrating how the statement should be written. There is still much to do, including putting together a questionnaire to enable the views and opinions of all residents of the parish to be reflected in the Village Design Statement.  The final document will include guidelines that will be used by Braintree District Council as a material consideration in the determination of planning applications. There will now be many tasks to complete over the coming months that can be achieved with or without attending meetings. So if you have a flare for designing questionnaires, organising exhibitions, drafting text (from prompts and your local knowledge, computer skills would be an advantage but not essential), or if you just have some spare time to deliver and collect survey forms, then please contact either Irene Dickinson (370016), Jeff Wright (376083) or Mike Crome (378155 or email mike@mcrome.fsnet.co.uk) for further details on how you can become involved in this village project.

June 2008 - The Photo activity workshop is to take place on the 14th June, it is hoped many residents will come & join the Steering Group for an enjoyable morning of discovery & interesting facts and views of Bulmer. If you have a digital camera then bring it with you. The Agenda is now available, and if you wanted to know more of what a VDS is then read here.

May 2008 - In preperation for the 14th June, several members of the Steering Group carried out a photographic survey of Upper & Lower Houses and Hedingham Rd (10th May), to test the proceedures & completion of various forms. This proved to be a very worthwhile exercise.

Leaflets advertising the 14th are now ready for distribution to every household in the Parish by the end of this month. Please come & join us and discover the hidden secrets & vistas in & around Bulmer.

April 2008 - The first meeting of the Steering Group was held on the 10th April, the main purpose was to start planning for the photographic Survey of the village scheduled for the 14th June 2008. The notes of the meeting can be read here.

February 2008 - Since the leaflet was distributed to every household in the village, a number presentations have been made at village hall functions during the winter months of 2007/08. To view the presentation display click here.

Also during February, grant funding has been obtained for various activities in producing the Design Statement.

The next step is to hold a village open meeting for residents to start to gather all the necessary information for the design statement by taking many photographs around the village and ensuring we have all the skills to then produce a questionnaire. This will hopefully involve all the family including children, after all its their future & heritage we are hoping to preserve. This meeting is likely to be held on a Saturday in April/May.

One of the issues that arose from these presentations during the winter months was that some residents felt a VDS would not be worthwhile as nothing ever came from the Village Appraisal carried out 5 years ago. This is very far from reality and by reading the following list of achievement's the time and effort by many volunteers was not wasted.

What did the Appraisal Achieve?

The VDS differs fundamentally from an Appraisal in that it is not about changing things in the village, it is about preserving what we have and influencing how it is developed in the future.