Housing

Vivian McPhee

The potential for housing development on the large field adjoining the copse is still of concern to us. Despite the loss of the field to cultivation- many of you will have seen the maize- we wish to continue pressure to ensure it remains available to support the copse in its entirety.

You will be aware that CDC have been obliged to reschedule the production of the Core strategy for their local development framework. Consultation will restart in November. The document which deals with large areas of land for housing development (delivering development opportunities) has also had to be rescheduled. However, it is important that we all make our views known about the damaging effect on the copse of housing in the fields next to it at every opportunity.

We will try to keep you informed, but if you are interested, you can visit the CDC web site and find out more through the LDF link on the Planning page of the web site.

Awards for the Copse

Jo Brooks and Nigel Brown receiving award from Duncan Goodhew

From the Chairman, Graham Ault

We were delighted to hear this Summer that the Copse has been recognised and commended again in the South East in Bloom Competition this year. We were visited by two sets of judges back in July, one as part of the Chichester entry for towns and cities in the South East and one as part of a special ‘Country Parks’ category.

The Award

Chichester won a silver award based on a number of parks and open spaces around the City, and Brandy Hole Copse was a significant part of that award. In the Country Parks category we fought off a strong challenge from a nature reserve in the Ouse Valley, Newhaven, to win the silver award.

I can confirm that there is a plaque for each of these awards although the District Council will not trust us to keep the Country Parks plaque (probably very wise!). However we can borrow it for special occasions.

There are times when we wonder if it can be worth all the effort that goes into preparing for this competition, but we have had great support from the District Council, who put together an excellent briefing document for the judges and supervised the whole process. My thanks in particular to Jo Brooks, our Environmental Officer at the Council.

This is all good news as it has been such a disappointing year in the Copse with the poor summer weather, the invasion of the travellers and the ever present threat of housing development.

Although I sometimes get depressed about the activities of some youngsters who vandalise the Copse and show it no respect, I must mention one young lady, Rosie Collins, who has, for the second year running, chosen to do her Duke of Edinburgh Award project in the Reserve.

Having done a wonderful job last year in recording our mature trees, she has this year carried out an excellent survey of butterflies and their nectaring plants (with some excellent guidance from Mike Perry). Thanks Rosie. It makes it all worthwhile!

Housing

Work on noticeboards

It may feel as if the housing threat to the fields south of the Reserve has gone away. IT HASN’T. As you may know, the District Council’s Local Development Framework has been thrown out by a government inspector as it did not meet the statutory requirements, something which one of our members had pointed out in one of the consultation letters last Spring. One of the reasons for this was that the plan did not specify the sites for development.

This means only that there will be another LDF produced in the not too distant future which, hopefully, will meet the requirements and will therefore be more site specific. My discussions with the District Council to date indicate that the Western development will almost certainly remain a major option, including the fields south of the Reserve. This has some benefits to us in the context of trying to negotiate the use of the fields as an extension to the reserve as a part of the overall development.

This means that all our members and supporters need to remain very alert to developments and be ready to give further active support through any future consultation period. We remain concerned about the level of expertise in the District Council in the management of this issue. We will contact you again when we need your further contribution. We all need to be active in this campaign. The threat is still very real; it is only the time scale that has changed.

Volunteering – the essence of community

From the Chairman, Graham Ault

The most fundamental aspect of our group is that we have responsibility for a wonderful local amenity and there is, in my view, an onus on the local community to make sure it remains as such. We can, alternatively look to the District Council to do it all, as long as we are all willing to pay additional council taxes to fund it, but that seems to me to defeat the whole essence of a community. We have never so far measured the extent of public use of the Reserve (because we do not have enough volunteers to do it) but we believe it to be thousands of people who use it on a regular basis – which is great. Those people can come and enjoy the place, exercise their dogs, entertain their children, but they do not contribute anything to protecting, supporting and maintaining the reserve.

If only a small percentage of those people were willing to give up a small amount of their time to help in one way or another, we would be awash with volunteers!! In practice we have a very few active members, all of whom have busy lives including demanding jobs, family commitments, other public roles etc. What they have in common is a deep concern for the Reserve and the willingness to do something practical about it, so that the other 99.9% can enjoy it.

The loss of a few of those active volunteers could see the end of the group and a threat to the Copse. Is that what we want. Are we all happy to leave the work to a few people?

I know you have heard this from me before, but I make no apology for raising it again. There are very few of our members and visitors who could not do something to help, whatever their personal skills and abilities. We can find a role for anyone. Please see the list of possible volunteer activities in this newsletter and think very seriously about giving just a very little of your time so we can all continue to enjoy our Nature Reserve.