The working group photo call at Wallbridge lock

We need to produce the press release by Saturday night which requires a picture of the working group who have done all the work. I said I would try to take the picture despite needing to be in the photo. In the end I asked my old friend John W. to come and frame the shot after I set my camera up.

It rained all day and about an hour before we were supposed t meet the sky began to clear and the rain stopped. By 6-30pm it was dry and we had all gathered at Wallbridge Lock on the canal close to the centre of town, which has been renovated as part of the canal redevelopment. I took a few test shots and asked John to stand in for me, which he is doing on the right. We are all councillors except for Hugh on the left who is a recently retired professor of sustainable planning at UWE, and Leonora on his left leaning against the gate, who has just retired from being deputy Chief Executive of the Planning Inspectorate. They have both been acting as advisors on the working group about Neighbourhood Plans, and the town council voted to accept its report and to start the process of producing such a plan for Stroud town centre and the adjacent Cheapside area where we were standing. All the others are my fellow councillors.

I have been chairing the working group and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future to oversee all the work that needs to be done over the next fifteen months. Yesterday we submitted the official letter to request the process to begin so it was an important day for us all.

We did eventually get some useable pictures of the group which the two local papers will be using in half page spreads next week. Tomorrow I have to do a few more views for the papers to illustrate the area of the plan. After that and the double checking of the press release I will have a couple of weeks of relative inactivity. which will be a relief!

I hope to go to the top of this building to take a panorama view of the town centre. Camilla has arranged for me to visit a resident who owns one of the penthouse flats. It is a wonderful former cloth factory which was saved from demolition only a decade ago by community activists! I am speaking to their AGM next week about the Neighbourhood |plan and what it will mean for their locality.