Baildon Community Council

A group of local residents saw that another local area had suffered a similar fate in being taken into Bradford Metropolitan District Councils and had formed its own Community Council. They decided to try to form one in Baildon. An Open Meeting was held on 7th May 1997 at Ferniehurst School attended by 28 people. As a result the Baildon Community Council came into being and had its inaugural meeting on 26th June 1997 at Ferniehurst School chaired by Rev Sarah Groves of Baildon Moravian Church. The first meeting was attended by 23 people ...

1st meeting attendance. Chair: Rev Sarah Groves

Name	Interest		Name	Interest
Marjorie Harness	Baildon Music Festival/Baildon Edwarians		Bernard Simpson	Baildon Veterans
PC Ian Hemsworth	Baildon Police		Mrs Gay Collinge
E Clark			Councillor Sam Micklem	Elected Member
Councillor Colin Charlesworth	Elected Member		D Green	Baildon Conservative Association
Mr Eddie Ward	Baildon Road Safety		Margaret Sunderland	Baildon Parents and Tots
John Pashley			Arnold Gill	Baildon Aged Person's Welfare Association
Geoff Margetson	Glenaire First School		Joan Hyde
Leslie Hardy			Richard Watson	Baildon Labour Party
Juliette Kinsey			David Brear	Bradford Countryside Service
Graham Iles			Chris Murdoch
Graham Smith	Methodist Minister		William Wyatt—Millington	Shipley Model Railway Society

Meetings

BCC members at their last meeting in the old building before disbanding. Hover over a face to see their name. Joe Ashton, Jennifer Mosley, Elliot Mosley, Wendy Shaw, Paul Marfell, Don Edbury, Derek Green, Marjorie Harness, Renee Lancaster, Sara Clarke, Mike Lawson, Brenda Mellor, Joan Hyde, Barry Harness, Roger L'amie, Paul Wooding
Hovering will not work on tablets or mobiles.

Many of the meetings were held in the later demolished Baildon Community Link building at the west end of the Cliffe Avenue playground/park. This building had been a decontamination centre and later Sandal School kitchen.

Baildon Community Council had no official powers but came to be recognised as a way of coordinating effort and helping communication. Though it acted as an important channel of communication it was also proactive. Two good examples of this are the handbook and the Design Statement. If you want to know some more please read the handbook (see below). In there the Community Council list a few of the things they had achieved.

Baildon Community Council Handbook

The Baildon Community Council identified the need for residents to have a booklet containing information related to businesses, schools, services, groups and clubs in and around Baildon. As a result they put a lot of effort into producing handbooks. I have made the second edition of the handbook available from this page - Baildon Community Council Handbook

Baildon Village Design Statement

Baildon Community Council were involved in reviewing planning application and helped in passing on information, as part of this they picked up on the use of Design Statements and so put a lot of effort into creating a Baildon Community Council Design Statement that I have scanned and made available here.

Baildon Parish Council

Soon after the formation of Baildon Parish Council in May 2007 the Community Council reviewed their role and decided that the Parish Council could now carry on with the work they had been doing. The Community Council had their wind up meeting on June 24th 2008 at Baildon Community Link, 35 Cliffe Avenue.

BCC Minutes

You can read copies of the Community Council minutes and newsletters from this page - BCC Minutes

Resume by the BCC Chair

At the last meeting the chair of the Community Council gave a resume of the council's activities:-

Baildon Community Council has been in existence for two days less then eleven years. Its inaugural meeting was held on a wet and windy night on June 26th 1997 in Ferniehurst School; the meeting place being geographically at the centre of Baildon. It was the brainchild of the Moravian minister Sarah Groves who had with others done a great deal of preliminary work before this meeting. Sarah was chair for the first year assisted by a committee of eight elected at the meeting.

The first activities were
1) Trying to find a use for Hall Cliffe playground. Suggestions were a roller blade area, a place for ball games a bowling green and a park. The first two were rejected on grounds of noise; the other two as being too expensive.
2) Producing a Baildon Handbook for which Sarah did all the typing virtually single-handed.
3)Producing a newsletter for which Sarah also did the typing.

The most successful of these ventures was the Handbook and it is from the sale of advertising for these books that we have had most of our funds. A second one was produced in 2002.

For the first handbook we got a great deal of help from Salt Grammar School both in the use of computers and the organisation of delivery. We have since had strong contacts with the School. The first two secretaries, Elizabeth Dent and Emily Duffy were pupils. Martin Spivey was a faithful member of the Committee and we all know how much has been contributed by Joe Ashton.

At first the Committee struggled a bit but we have gone from strength to strength with the co-option of new members, the introduction of a regular meeting date and a fixed meeting place. The after meeting provision of cheese and wine, for which we have to thank Wendy Shaw, has undoubtedly kept up our enthusiasm.

Looking over the Chair's report at the A.G.Ms covering the eleven years certain matters have been ongoing. For example we have been pestering about public lavatories since 1999 when we had meeting with Keith Hammerton from the Council who was then responsible for them. In 2000 he stated that there was a 3-year programme for refurbishment –Shipley Glen was in phase one and Baildon Village phase three. At least the latter are now being refurbished and we prevented Baildon Councillors from spending airport money on them. We were also responsible for getting the area outside Glendale House resurfaced.

Our most positive achievements in my view have been: ‑
1) The handbooks
2) Our representations on the latest Unitary Development Plan. Bradford Council even asked and took our advice on how information could be put across to the public,
3) The Village Design Statement
4) The suggestion made at the 2001 AGM that a petition should be started to ask for a community centre at Ferniehurst, which after many years seems to be reaching a successful conclusion.
5) Christmas decorations mainly due to Wendy
6) Baildon in Bloom-thanks to Joe and Baildon Futures Partnership
7) Working towards the creation of a Parish Council, which has now made us redundant.

There are no doubt other things, which could be added to this list.

I think, however that we can feel confident that we have done some useful things for Baildon and it is nice to know that with the Parish Council, hopefully Baildon's voice will continue to be heard.
(Joan S. Hyde 24.6.2008)