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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Thanks to everyone who helped get it to happen - the GLSG meeting minutes now appear to be getting put up on the council GLSG page.

Hopefully we can get the agenda there too before the meetings happen.

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I am a bit concerned. This is the second time I've heard problems with enough staff at the council actually knowing how to update the council website and the ease with which they can do it. Presumably there is a cost to the council for running the site paid to some private company. If hardly anyone out of the dozens of people who work at the council actually know how to update it, it's worse than useless.  

FYI, i've added some recent, and some not so recent, minutes to the HoL GLSG wiki page.

I'm trying to OCR these to convert them back into text (they're not real PDFs, they're printed out from Word or something and then scanned into PDFs so just a massive file of vectors, no text) and the quality is so poor it is struggling. Hugh's name gets well and truly mangled.

I'll keep going but if anyone else wants to have a go we could do some proper analysis.

Just scanning through the last three years (including one I was at and remember well for one of the traders kicking off at me) makes you realise why they make fun of us for ranting on here.

Interesting to see the genesis of how the membership was made up. It started off as councillors and officers only. A few years after it started it was minuted that residents, other groups and business reps might be invited on an ad hoc basis. This then seemed  to happen but there is no procedure nor criteria agreed for who those people were, nor minuting of who was invited, why they were invited and the role they were to play. Within a few more years a certain group of locals appeared to be a permeant fixture. I know of at least one occasion when one of those group members took it on themselves to decide who else should be allowed to attend.

The group has done good work, but for me it's about time it was put on a more regularised footing. I'd like to see a revisiting of status, scope, objectives, membership etc. 

Well done to Ant for surfacing these minutes, even though they only tell a part of the story.

I'm told these are the current members:

Ward councillors from St. Ann's and Harringay (Zena, Nilgun, David B, David S, Karen and Gina)
2 reps from LCSP - Ian Sygrave and Elieen O'Dwyer
2 reps from GRA - Andy Newman and Sue Green
1 rep from Woodlands Park RA - Geoff Amabilino
1 Rep  from Friends of Fairlands Park - Adam Coffman
1 Rep from Friends of Chestnuts Park - Ceri Williams
2 Reps Green Lanes Traders - Rob Tao and Shef Mehmet
Rep from the SNT - Sgt Kneebone attended last meeting

John Bevan as Lead member for Environment is also invited to attend.

That can be compared to the member list from last year.

Interesting also to note that despite protestations to the contrary, there were discussions headed 'Renaming the Area" from many years back (2004/5, I think). No decision on the issue is recorded earlier on. However Nilgun Canver is on record as stating that a decision was made. So it may be that the minute taker missed a detail?

Ran out of sense-of-humour powder today, Hugh?

Apologies to Ant for delay in my sending him the current minutes and agendas. Also to John McMullan for the format. I have always argued that minutes and agendas should be public and when the group was serviced by Council officers I nagged till that happened.

Since Nilgun was removed there has been no officer servicing of the group and although it retains the status of a consultative body to the Council it doesn't get any administrative support. Right now I have been sending stuff out myself and Ian Sygrave has kindly acted as minute taker. 

Given all the turbulence around local ward politics here there are serious issues about how the group will continue, and I can only say people who have worked hard for the area for the last 10+ years are doing their best to ensure Harringay/Green Lanes/the Gardens and other affected areas are still high on the political agenda.

Zena Brabazon

Cllr, St. Ann's Ward

Chair St. Ann's and Harringay Area Forum and Committee

Acting Chair, Green Lanes Strategy Group

I think I have seen Alan complain about the format that the council stores information in on here a few years ago so there's no need to apologise.

To recap, they record the minutes in plain text, searchable and a matter of a few kilobytes. But to store them they are printed out and then scanned back in to be megabytes and not text at all so not searchable. Another way the council hides information from us.

The comments below have been moved from this thread.

Reply by Phil K 5 hours ago

Hi Rob

Is there any chance that the recent GLSG minutes might be published?

Further, could you ask your GLSG colleagues to enlighten us as to their plans for governance of the GLSG?

As a resident, I find the persistent delays in providing information and the general recalcitrance of the Group to be unnecessary and insulting.

Reply by matt 3 hours ago

Phil, Zena (the councillor, for a couple more months anyway) is the current chair of GLSG I believe. You need to deal with her, as Ant has been doing. But then you probably know that :)

Reply by Phil K 2 hours ago

Matt, all representatives of the GLSG have a responsibility to behave in a manner befitting the (self-appointed) power they hold. Sadly, they choose not to.

I can't say if this is an institutional disregard for democracy and transparency or simply individual choice.

Zena has only been Chair since Nilgun was unable to hold the position. Given the GLSG's desire to write a sitting Counsellor out of the group's chairmanship (wagon circling due to Ali Ozbek's arrival) , I wouldn't be entirely sure that Zena could provide the answers.

Ant has done a fine job of chasing the group up, but why should he do this?

They suggest that they 'represent' the residents of the area? What representation have they offered on the most significant development of the area in over a century? None.

As I have said before, neither the GLSG nor the Area Forum is fit for purpose.

They need to start answering some fundamental questions or be cast aside.

Reply by ant 2 hours ago

FYI, I continue to pester about this, and had an email from Zena just yesterday which amongst other things said ...

"I have no problem with anyone from GLSG passing the minutes to any members they represent"

...so there is now no reason any of our GLSG reps can't give us the latest minutes. Your current GLSG reps are listed here.

That email from Zena unfortunately did not mention passing on the agenda's, so i'll continue to ask for that.

Zena did tell me there was a meeting yesterday and that on the agenda was - "We are then discussing the future of the group since given the chain of events locally."

Reply by Phil K 2 hours ago

Thanks for the information, Ant.

Yesterday's meeting certainly wasn't the first on that issue... a draft of the new constitution was available in early Feb.

The strategy for the future of Green Lanes appears to be in the hands of a High School social committee.

What gives these people the right to behave in such a shoddy manner? Apathy.

Reply by Rob Tao 1 hour ago

Hi Phil,

As far as I am aware, the minutes of the previous GLSG meeting will normally be written up and read for accuracy at the following meeting to be agreed by all before being released. We meet on average once a month but sometimes upto 6 weeks depending on how the dates fall.

As for governance, I am the trader rep, maybe you should ask one of the RA reps.

Reply by Phil K 1 hour ago

Rob,

You are a member of the Group. Why would you not disclose the very basic information that is being asked for?

Where are the Agendas? Where is the disclosure of meetings relating to your constitution? Why the secrecy?

The reply above does little but confirm the disdain members of the Group shows toward members of the community.

As I understand it, the GLSG is a committee of the Council. As such anyone is allowed to attend to watch/listen (except for any police related issues dealt with in "Part 2"). This means that meetings must be advertised sufficiently in advance. That should be done in the Council committee pages. You'd have to check to see if it's happening.

I don't think Rob is the right person to berate. I think you need to turn to the chair or at least our elected representatives for that. 

There is actually a part of the Haringey website for publishing GLSG minutes and agenda but nada since April 2013

http://www.minutes.haringey.gov.uk/ieListMeetings.aspx?CommitteeId=436

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