Birmingham Open Spaces Forum

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Brandwood End Cemetery
Friends of Brandwood End Cemetery, Brandwood

Chair's Report - 2008/09

The year 2008 to 2009 has seen even more growth for Birmingham Open Spaces Forum and we are all very excited to see how the next year will progress. I have very much enjoyed my year as chair of BOSF and working closely with all our committee members.

We have had many achievements to celebrate over the last year and the biggest one is our success in being awarded a grant from Esmee Fairbairn for a part time worker over two years to really expand on our achievements. I was very lucky to be successful in the application process and was offered the role, which I have gladly accepted and I have therefore stood down as chair of BOSF. I will now have the time to be able to progress our work further for all our member groups within Birmingham, increase our networks and local partners and expand to the issues of our parks and open spaces nationally.

We are currently progressing further our own position and are applying for charitable status to the Charity Commission. Once we are successful, we will be able to apply to many other locations for funding and it will help to promote our work further. We are hoping to be able to access further funding to make available to all member groups again.

Partnerships
Another main achievement for us this past year has been our strong partnership with Birmingham City Council and as a result of this we were included on to the team who assessed the tenders for the new Grounds Maintenance Contracts. We were able to have our say on how our member groups would like to work closer with their service provider, what the residents would like to see happening in their parks and open spaces and today’s conference is one of the many benefits that have resulted from this process. We at BOSF would like to thank Birmingham City Council for including us and realising the importance of working in close partnership with the local community.

We also have strong contacts and are represented on:

  • Birmingham Trees for Life – (BTfL) a joint project of the Civic Society and Birmingham City Council, has been established to plant more trees in Birmingham and promote the role trees play in improving the environment.
  • West Midlands Parks Forum – a forum made up from many councils and other interested groups from across the West Midlands, who network and share best practise. We are at present the only group representing the community voice.
  • Local Access Forum

At the end of 2008, we were also invited to present a report to the Scrutiny Committee at Birmingham City Council were we advised them on the importance of a Friends group to parks, nature reserves, allotments, cemeteries and all other open spaces within Birmingham. We stressed how the community input in to a site gave it added value and laid out three case studies showing the value of volunteer time and how groups could bring in a range of additional funds to improve an area. We also introduced to them the “Philadelphia Report” which was compiled over in America and actually calculates a value for all the social benefits that parks and open spaces give to their community, which before could not be recorded. This is a very interesting report that we would like to progress further in Birmingham.

National
We have also been working closely with Green Space this last year and Emma and I went to the Nottingham Conference to carry out a presentation about our work here in Birmingham. The other groups across the country were very interested in BOSF and what we have achieved over the last few years. We have also progressed this further by helping them start the new National Open Spaces Forum, which now meets in Birmingham and we at BOSF have become strong partners in this forum and we are hoping to spread the word nationally about community use and input in to our parks and open spaces.

Progressing Projects
One project that we have started working on this past year is looking at Sites Under Threat and what help and advice we can give to groups with this problem. Our committee member Muriel Caddy has brought her expertise to the group and we are working at bringing together help and support to all our groups.

We are still progressing further with the CAT (Comprehensive Assessment Tool) as a mechanism to assess our parks and open spaces and highlight individual needs. A number of site and desktop assessments have been completed and this tool is now being seen within Birmingham as a very useful way to evaluate open space.

We have had our usual presence at the Kings Heath Gardeners World Show last September and we are hoping to be present again this year to spread the good word. For this, we are improving and updating our displays and showing to everyone the good work of all BOSF groups across the city. The website will also be brought up to date and we would like to include more success stories from our groups, so please can everyone let us know up to date information on what you have achieved on your site and send us photographs to that we can tell the world!

I would like to close this report by thanking all my co-committee members for their hard work and commitment to BOSF. They have all given a lot of their own precious time to progress our work further and without them these conferences and all the achievements would not have happened. I look forward to carrying on working closely with them all and getting to know more of our groups in Birmingham and bringing everyone together to become a unified community voice for Birmingham’s parks and open spaces.

Thank you

Sarah Royal - Chair BOSF 2008/09

Annual Report - April 2007

1. Making Links - External

BOSF’s second year of activity has been marked by developing contacts and making links. This year we have worked with a number of agencies to develop BOSF and to support the work of member groups.

BOSF is now represented on:

  1. Birmingham Environmental Partnership - Birmingham’s key strategic body expected to deliver central government’s targets for improving the environment. BOSF aims to develop the role played by open spaces user groups in meeting these targets and to use BEP to support new groups across Birmingham.
  2. Birmingham Trees for Life – BTfL, a joint project of the Civic Society and Birmingham City Council, has been established to plant more trees in Birmingham and promote the role trees play in improving the environment. BOSF will be the route by which user and community organisations can access the funding and support that BTfL has to offer.
BOSF has been working with Birmingham City Council’s External Funding Support Unit (EFS) to identify funding to enable BOSF to recruit paid staff to take on more projects. We have submitted one major application this year which was unsuccessful, but we will be returning to the fray soon. EFS has also provided funding support to a number of BOSF member group and is the source of funding information distributed by BOSF emails and newsletters.

Birmingham Community Empowerment Network (BCEN) has continued to support the work we do and provided an enormous boost with the funding that enabled us to offer grants to member groups (see Treasurer’s Report for more details).

We have also held meetings with B:STRONG about providing management support to for BOSF member groups.

Our aims for 2007-2008 are to:

  1. identify funding that will enable BOSF to employ staff to support member groups more effectively
  2. develop a funding pool to support new groups and enable existing groups to undertake more activities

2. Making Links – Internal

BOSF other main area of activity is to provide opportunities for user groups to make links and share information about resources and good practice.

We endeavour to send out regular newsletters and emails to keep groups up-to-date about funding opportunities, conferences and networking. We have a small fund to allow group members to attend conferences and meetings so that information from further afield can be shared by BOSF

The 2 annual conferences are also an opportunity for groups to make links with other groups, but also with the politicians, policy makers and service providers.

The autumn 2006 Conference concentrated on the issues surrounding the management and delivery of site maintenance in preparation for the new service delivery contracts in 2008. Following the conference myself and Sarah Royal, BOSF Vice Chair, gave evidence to the Scrutiny Committee reviewing the current contracts emphasising the need for future contracts to include more site based staff.

The spring conference concentrates on the development needs of the BOSF member groups – looking at funding, management, volunteer recruitment and retention.

The current format of the autumn conference may have run its course. The numbers and variety of attendees may stifle discussion rather than promote it. The BOSF Committee would like to ask member groups, officers and politicians to make suggestions about the format of future conferences.

Should there be separate events at which BOSF member groups meet politicians and officers, should there be Constituency based events bringing together user groups and officers and/or politicians?

Please let us know which format you feel will lead to the most productive outcomes – giving you the opportunity to say what your open space needs, enables officers to respond and allows politicians to hear what you think can be done to improve Birmingham’s Open Spaces.

For 2007-2008 BOSF needs to broaden its membership to bring in more groups from the North and West of Birmingham. In addition the Executive Committee needs to include members from a broader spectrum of open spaces – allotments, cemeteries, non-council owned land.

I would like to take this opportunity to mark the sad death of two founding BOSF members during this year: - Tony Ward from The Fields Millennium Green and Sheila Hughes from many of Birmingham’s open spaces. Their contributions will be missed.

Many thanks must go to the very hard working committee and supporting BOSF members who make this organisation work.

Emma Woolf, Chair, 26.04.07 Friends of Cotteridge Park

Treasurer’s Report 2006-2007

We started the financial year with £4,191 in the bank and the commitment to develop BOSF to provide a range of services to the membership. In order to meet these expectations it has been necessary to secure additional grant aid and a great deal of time has been spent in exploring the availability of such funding. In February we were successful in securing an ‘Awards for All’ grant of £10,000 which will enable BOSF to meet foreseen expenditure over the coming year.

BOSF have also benefited by its involvement in the ‘Real Time Community Change’ programme and we are managing a small grants programme on behalf of RTCC. Some 16 of our affiliated groups successfully applied for the grants that totalled £7,500. We have received an administration fee to cover our own costs in running the scheme and we hope that this procedure will be the forerunner of similar exercises over the coming years. BOSF membership can now be shown to generate additional resources to allow small groups to establish themselves within their local communities.

The accounts show the costs we incurred on the two conferences held in April and November 2006 totalled £4,483. The committee made a specific effort to ensure that the costs of the November Conference at Austin Court were covered by sponsorship and by the sale of stand space. We were pleased with the outcome.

Other costs incurred were in line with our budget expectations and were at a level comparable with the previous year although they now include the costs of developing and maintaining the BOSF web site. The committee anticipate that the firm control of such costs and the continuing search for further funding will enable BOSF to develop its role in the following years. The Forum has currently £12,000 in the bank account.

Phil Evans, BOSF Treasurer, 24.04.07 Friends of Kings Norton Local Nature Reserve

Annual Report - April 2006

In the year since our first AGM in April 2005 BOSF have got involved in:

Sharing experience and knowledge

  • through newsletters and emails
  • developing a website
  • requests for information and support have been circulated by member groups and responded to by other member groups
  • the Steering Committee has met bi-monthly and identified areas of work that will be of benefit to member groups
  • the November conference attended by 120 people was a great opportunity for networking
  • attending the Gardeners’ Show to raise the BOSF profile
  • joining and attending the West Midlands Parks Forum
Assessing the state of Birmingham’s Open Spaces
  • identifying the need for a site-by-site assessment of the quantity and quality of Birmingham’s open spaces
  • working with the local authority to develop a tool that can be used to identify gaps in provision
  • identifying the monetary value of a “Friends” group to a site
Managing Birmingham’s Open Spaces
  • working to ensure that users and user groups are involved in the negotiations of open spaces maintenance contracts
  • using Parkforce to press for more maintenance staff to based on sites
  • using the new District Strategic Partnerships and theme groups to ensure that open spaces are at the top of the policy and budget agenda
  • informing District officers about the role BOSF members can play in improving Birmingham’s open spaces

The Future of BOSF

BOSF has achieved an enormous amount in its first year and should be very proud of the work undertaken by members and the Steering Committee. Our success has raised a number of questions:

Funding – our current funding runs out in December. New sources are being investigated and we hope to secure funding for at least 3 years.

Staffing - all of BOSF’s work has so far been undertaken by volunteers. BOSF has to decide what areas of work it wants to concentrate on and whether staff are needed to achieve BOSF’s aims.

Supporting New Groups and Widening BOSF Membership – currently the BOSF membership includes 147 friends/user groups from across Birmingham and 75 local authority officers and service providers. We know there are more groups out there and there are sites that need groups – our job will be to widen our membership and support new groups.

Outreach – BOSF is one of, if not, the first citywide networks of open space user groups. We need to think about how we can support other networks get started in other towns and cities.

Committee Members

This years committee were voted in at our Spring meeting in May 2009.

Emma Woolf - Chair (Friends of Cotteridge Park)

Maggie Sweet - Vice-Chair (Fields Millennium Green)

Phil Evans - Treasurer (Friends of Kings Norton Nature Reserve)

Joanna Randle - Secretary (Friends of Muntz Park & Selly Park Rec)

Muriel Caddy, Anita Corey, Tony Fox, Rupert Johnson, Darren Parkin, David Popadopoulos, Fredy Tematema - Members