Apologies for Absence:

Because of holidays and the lack of specific task to oversee, there had been no Working Party Meeting since July 7^th. The main item on the agenda for this meeting was Di Parkin's review of the output of the 'Big Event' - the Post-It notes, the community planning sessions and the questionnaires - which she had collated. Before that review a number of other items were briefly discussed:

1. Dates for subsequent Working Party meetings. After some consultation of diaries it was agreed that the next meeting should be on September 1^st and the following meeting on 15^th September (both to be held in the Project Office).
2. Finance. Dave reported that so far DOS had received £4580 from SHDC in two tranches. Most of the outstanding bills had been paid and there were sufficient funds in the DOS account to pay the rest. It was anticipated that a further £1500 pounds would be claimed (to pay for bills which had not yet been received and to pay the expenses associated with the forthcoming September meeting and exhibition. This would mean that the architects (Peter Sutton and Bill Brown) could receive around £4000 each towards their expenses if DOS were to keep within the £15000 ear-marked for the project by SHDC.
3. Status if the "Brochure". Dave asked about the status of the brochure (an A3 document that recorded much of the material on display at the Big Event). It was believed that colour copies had now been produced at Follaton, but Alan agreed to check up on this.
4. Architect's Brainstorming Sessions. So far there had been three of these. Run by Peter Sutton and Bill Brown, these had mainly involved members of their respective practices, but Dave, Shirley and Susie had been invited to attend as observers (because of holidays only Dave had managed to attend all three). Dave and Susie reported that the architects seemed to be progressing their designs with sketches of proposed layouts and elevations. Although the three schemes so far being worked on were very different in detail (and in total number of houses) there was considerable commonality. For example, all of them located the main area of public open space in the bungalow garden, all of them increased the number of pedestrian routes through the area and all had a relatively dense urban form (at least in the areas closest to central Totnes). Alan requested that the Council’s key objectives remained a parameter for the development of options, and he urged early consultation with key staff at SHDC on the emerging schemes before work progressed too far. Di stressed that what was being presented to SHDC was a worked up scheme in response to "What the Community Said it wanted" (which itself had been constructed within South Hams’ parameters.
5. Plans for a Public Meeting and Exhibition. Dave and Susie outlined the current DOS plan for the final 'event'. This would consist of a 'kick-off' meeting in a public hall in Totnes around the middle of September followed by an exhibition that would be open for about a week. The community would be invited to comment on the various schemes (probably at least 3) on display and vote for features they liked and disliked. Unfortunately the Civic Hall is not available at all during this period, nor is Birdwood House. It was agreed that the Free Church and Methodist Halls should be investigated for the Meeting and that the exhibition could be held in the Project Office.

Following the last item, Pruw suggested that DOS should present to the Totnes Town Council meeting on 6^th September. Although this would be before the exhibition was open it should be possible to outline the main features of the schemes. Following this suggestion, Alan noted that we should also plan to address the SHDC Southern Area Working Group again immediately after the exhibition had closed. A date of Thursday 24^th September was suggested (Dave noted that he would be in London that day).

The meeting them moved on to Di's presentation, a more complete version of the one she had presented to the first Architect's Brainstorming Session on 20^th July. Essentially what Di was presenting was the 'brief' that should guide the architects' designs. Di had sent the reports and PowerPoint presentation to the working party before the meeting (these documents are available on this website here).

After Di's presentation the meeting went on to discuss some of the implications of the 'brief'. The main items were:

1. Alan expressed a worry that if we were to move away from SHDC's original idea of having one developer taking overall responsibility for the whole scheme there was a danger that the sheer difficulty of coordinating several separate projects would lead to confusion and chaos. Dave also pointed out that it could lead to 'cherry-picking' of the best plots and leave the difficult or 'expensive' ones undeveloped. It was agreed that there had to be a single project management organisation running the show.
2. There was some discussion of the importance of ensuring a significant proportion of the housing was in the form of rental and shared ownership/equity units to prevent 'affordable' houses being sold off at market values within a few years. The idea of Community Land Trusts was briefly mentioned.
3. Quite a few of the respondents had mentioned issues (such as the Grove School) which were the responsibility of Devon County Council rather than SHDC and Di suggested that perhaps she should try to extract these so that DCC could be informed of them.
4. In a similar way, it was agreed that there were significant comments about Totnes issues outside the Southern Area (the Civic Hall, Castle Meadow, etc). Again it was suggested that these could be extracted so they could be followed up (perhaps by a re-formed Totnes Strategy Group).
5. Dave asked Alan about the revenue SHDC received from the car parks (around £80k per annum). This was a significant figure that was used by SHDC to offset the Council Tax (since parking was largely a tax on visitors). He was concerned that some of the schemes the architects might come up with could reduce this income and that they were unaware of the importance of the income to SHDC. This led on to a discussion of the provision of 'Bob-the-Bus' type park-and-ride schemes, which had featured in the questionnaire responses and planning sessions. Pruw noted that 'Bob-the-Bus' met its day-to-day running costs through operational income.

The meeting closed at 3.40pm. The next meeting will be held on September 1^st at 10am in the Project Office