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The tenth Annual General Meeting of the Hampstead Neighbourhood Forum will be held at 7pm on Tuesday 21st March, at the Hampstead Community Centre, 78 Hampstead High Street, NW3 1RE. We hope that residents will be able to attend.
Approval will be sought for the minutes of the 2022 AGM, which are displayed on the Forum’s website. The slide presentation at that meeting can also be viewed. The annual accounts will be submitted for approval.
A committee will be elected. Nominees for election to the committee are displayed on the Forum’s website.
Following these formalities, we will present the results of our project to test levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in Hampstead’s air. This involved volunteers, including children from local schools, installing diffusion tubes in 10 locations and replacing them each month. We found that NO2 pollution was about 19% lower than it was when we conducted tests in 2015, but that the reduction was not uniform. In the busiest areas, it is still well above safe levels. Do come and hear more about the results.
We will also seek further thoughts on changes to the Hampstead Neighbourhood Plan. Our aim is to embed principles of sustainability, energy efficiency and biodiversity even more deeply into the Plan. We can do this, for example, by ensuring that new technologies can be used where possible in house improvements, while still protecting Hampstead’s important heritage.
The potential changes to the Plan provoked lively discussion when we launched our public consultation at a meeting on 31st January. At the AGM, we will present our latest ideas for revisions and seek your opinions.
Once we have held consultations on altering the Neighbourhood Plan, we will issue a new draft on which we will consult again. Then it will be subject to independent examination, approval by Camden and perhaps a public referendum.
The Forum, a group of volunteers, wrote the Plan under the Localism Act, which allowed communities a bigger say in shaping their areas. After wide consultation, it was approved in a referendum in 2018. We want to make sure that the Plan’s policies still incorporate the latest thinking and are as modern and innovative as possible.
