The New Catherine Arms

Back in the early nineties many in the Burngreave community reeled in disgust at the activity around the Catherine Arms Public House, Catherine Street. This had become a drugs centre and was closed down in the mid-nineties.
Since then the building has been left to ruin along with the memories of what it had been. Now as Burngreave becomes an area of regeneration, we focus on the reopening of the Catherine Arms.

This is Rob Smith reporting on
THE TRADITIONAL BAKERY
Presenting
AL- NUR FOODS

Officially opening on Monday 15th January. I went along to Catherine Street with a colleague to speak to the new proprietor of this establishment.

Immediately knowing the fresh smell of Asian traditional breads my mouth was watering. As we entered the main doorway and approached the counter, expecting our arrival Mr Mohammed Afzal was there to greet us.

Not wasting much time, I got round to asking questions.

Guiding me towards a large metal machine situated in a freshly decorated kitchen Mohammed explained.

"We will be doing traditional Asian, Indian and Pakistani breads, we have a specially designed machine, which will cook six hundred Nan in one hour. We can cater for functions, weddings and parties."

"Six hundred Nan in one hour !" I was amazed and wanted to see this machine working. Mohammed keen to oblige only smiled when I told him, I had an hour to spare and wanted to see six hundred Nan.

This is the first traditional Asian Bakery to be set up in South Yorkshire explained Mohammed.

The potential for expansion in retail and eventually wholesale Asian bread will no doubt help this business thrive. I believe turning the bad image promoted around the old Catherine Arms, can only help promote the good image of Burngreave.

Mohammed is from Tinsley and picked this area not only because of the cheap value of the property, but Burngreave's diverse multicultural community.

This is Rob Smith reporting on what is one of many positive initiatives in business now happening around Burngreave.

Election fever set to grip Burngreave?

"What already?" I hear you ask, "it is only February and the election isn't supposed to be until May." Not the General Election - the Burngreave New Deal Election.

After many months of preparations decision day is only a few weeks away as local residents choose their five representatives on the New Deal Board. The Board has a vital role in deciding how the money awarded to the Burngreave area is spent over the next ten years.

Nominations closed at the end of January with no fewer than ten candidates entering the race. Residents will have a chance to meet the candidates at a special 'Hustings' meeting on 17 February.

The rules of the election are different from 'normal' elections because anyone over the age of 15 has the chance to vote, including people who would not normally be allowed to vote in Local Council and General Elections. Staff from Burngreave New Deal have been contacting people in the area who do not appear on the register to encourage them to get on it. Pupils from years 10 and 11 at Firth Park and Fir Vale School have been registering - the first time they have an opportunity to exercise their democratic rights.

If you want to be added to the list of people who can vote please contact the New Deal Office on 2796932 or Electoral Reform Services' help line on 020 8889 9203 and they will send you a form. The forms are very easy to complete - all you need to do is fill in your name, the address where you live in the New Deal area and a contact telephone number. Completed forms must be returned by 12 February.

Voters do not even have to go to a polling station to cast their vote. Ballot packs will be sent to every voter by post at the end of the second week in February. Each pack will contain a ballot paper, information about each of the candidates and a pre-paid envelope to return your ballot paper direct to the Independent Returning Officer from Electoral Reform Services. The deadline for receiving ballot papers will be about two weeks after the packs are sent out.

The results will be announced at the end of February and it will be straight down to hard work for the new Board Members, with many big decisions to be taken over the next few months.

Tony Slater - Electoral Reform Services

A Boost For Burngreave Football

Ahmed Jama has, for some time, been fighting hard for youth football in Burngreave and now it's paid off.
Money from New Deal is to be used to start a major project on Verdon Street. Verdon Street Recreation Centre are planning to transform Pye Bank School's playing fields into a top class football pitch to be used by the school, local youth and our own Burngreave United.
Over £9000 will be spent creating a training pitch on the land behind the recreation centre and Mr Jama will be coaching local youth.

Abbeyfield Park Multicultural Festival
Sunday July 8th
1pm - 8pm
Green City Action is very pleased to announce that it will be holding the Abbeyfield Park Multicultural Festival for the third year running on Sunday July 8th 2001, to celebrate the rich diversity of Burngreave in the beautiful environment of the Park.

The Festival will again be organised by Panni Poh Yoke Loh with the support of the following Festival Planning Committee members: Lee Furness, Tina Smith, Steve Cooke, Betty Smalley, David Peck, Jackie Field, Andrew Phillips, Sarah Nickson, Isilda Lang, Elaine Hamilton, Isaac Heywood, Mark Lankshear, Ann Allen, Matloub Hussayn-Ali-Kahn, Jatinder Pal Singh and Asra Nasreen.

We look forward to a vibrant festival and invite you to book stalls, workshops, entertainment and to offer staffing for First Aid and Security-training and expenses available.

Festival Photographic exhibition now on.
At the Mappin Café Gallery in Western Park Tue-Sat 10-4 Sun 11-4 until March 11th 2001 reprints available order before Mach 16 2001

Rotivator for Hire
Cheap Rates
Ideal for allotments or gardens. Must have van/ trailer to collect.
Instruction provided.

Swap Shop
Do you have unwanted items to get rid of? Ring us. Currently all the following items are available free.

Wire mini garden
fencing x 4 rolls
High chairs x 3
Garden plant pots - loads
Colour TV x 2 (£5 for PAT test)

Green City Action Abbeyfield Park House, Abbeyfield Road, Sheffield
Tel: 244 0353
E-mail: enquires@greencityaction.co.uk

Is Play The Answer?

A better deal for young people is a call coming through strong and clear from discussions around the New Deal. Those looking at improving young people's health and schools results are all calling for more support for young people. Others, including Matt Charles, worker at Verdon Street and Kate Housden from the Out of School Network, are leading the call for an integrated approach to play provision, particularly for 4 to 14 year olds.

The call for a co-ordinated approach to supporting play is nothing short of an emergency. The Ellesmere out of school club continues to struggle for funding and to keep a management committee together; the Toy Library at Byron Wood School is about to close after long years of service to Burngreave kids as nobody can be found to work on the measly wages provided by the Grant aid from Social Services; and we all know about the struggles to maintain funding and develop the Adventure Playground.

As these three services are within a few hundred yards of each other it's no wonder local people have difficulty in keeping all these community managed organisations going.

Yet evidence shows that these are the very services which can contribute to improving the health and achievement of young people. Present play provision in Pitsmoor is miles away from what we might want and need, but there is now mounting evidence that, informal provision, especially where properly developed, can be highly effective in improving young people's health, levels of achievement and helping young people develop the skills to make decisions which will avoid them getting into trouble.

Ian Clifford

How to Love Big Brother

Is this what New Deal for the Burngreave community is about - persuading us to love Tony Blair and his New Britain? Read on - and see what you think…

At a Theme Group Co-ordinators' meeting on 17 January, we heard about the timetable and conditions for the completion of the current stage of New Deal. Each of the theme groups - health, crime, education, environment, employment, housing - reported on their proposals to tackle problems. The groups had taken note of the results of all the community consultations, and come up with practical proposals in response.
Next came the consultants employed to assemble all this into a framework within which actual proposals would fit and which would be accepted by the Government (leading to the shelling out of the £50 million). They spelt out the Government's terms and the timetable.

Last orders

29 January - the theme groups must submit their reports, so that the Interim Partnership Board can make final decisions about the 'big outcomes' for each theme.
10 February - at a one-day workshop, the consultants hope to show their 'product', the draft plan which brings all the proposals together in the 'coherent whole' that the Government wants. Community activists can join with employees of the state in a day of 'editing' this draft.
17 February - the Plan will be published for all to see and celebrate: the terms of our own New Deal.

What can we have?

We can have anything we want, as long as it contributes to one of the five or six 'big outcomes' determined by this process. The outcomes must be measurable (such as numbers of burglaries and robberies, numbers of GCSE passes obtained at certain grades, numbers of people who smoke, etc.). Measures which are already in the baseline survey.
Any project which proposes to spend New Deal cash must be justified in terms of how it contributes to the big outcomes (see 'The Bottom Line', page 7).

The usual

So what was all that community consultation for, if what we get must fit in with a pre-determined framework? The theme groups are forced to come up with outcome measures which everyone already knows because they are the ones the Government has already broadcast as its own. Surely the Government could have just told us what it wants to achieve and asked for ideas about how to do it?

And why always the last minute rushes, the submissions hastily cobbled together because of the lack of time, the lack of expertise, the lack of clear guidance about what to do (at least until it's virtually done)?
Not only is the end result always pre-determined, always the same, but so is the process by which it's put together. New Deal is offering us ten years of last-minute rushes to produce what's already known (and it's not the only Government project operating in the same way).

Community consultation is reduced to a token by last minute rushes and the withholding of key information. When this has happened so many times, it becomes obvious that this is the technique by which the outcome of consultation is controlled: it can't be an accident, or the result of incompetence.

The effect of New Deal community consultations, Partnership Boards, Theme Groups, workshops and so on is not to 'put the community in the driving seat' or to come up with anything new: the effect is to commit us to what the Government wants to achieve. Anyone struggling to achieve anything in the community can't ignore what New Deal offers and so is drawn in to its unending series of meetings, its bureaucracy, and its artificial crises. We are drawn in to a commitment to what Big Brother Tony wants.

Our round

Why are they doing this to us? It's not as if Burngreave and Pitsmoor are troublesome. We don't riot or protest.
But we do fail. One statistic after another tells us we don't keep ourselves healthy; our children fail at school; our houses are in a poor state of repair; our youth fail to entertain themselves; not enough of us find jobs; we resort to drugs and crime. We don't spend much. By failing, we exclude ourselves from Blairite Britain.

New Deal aims to bring us back in. But why? Just because the Government cares about us? Or do we and our community have something that's of value to the Government? What could that be? Our votes, our labour, the skills needed by the industry of New Britain, our spending power, the land and buildings we occupy, our docile behaviour? Quite a lot, really. We ought to be able to strike a bargain.

News from the New Deal Office

Election fever
The rules of the election are different from 'normal' elections because anyone over the age of 15 has the chance to vote, including people who would not normally be allowed to vote in Local Council and General Elections. Staff from Burngreave New Deal have been contacting people in the area who do not appear on the register to encourage them to get on it. Pupils from years 10 and 11 at Firth Park and Fir Vale School have been registering - the first time they have an opportunity to exercise their democratic rights.

If you want to be added to the list of people who can vote please contact the New Deal Office on 2796932 or Electoral Reform Services' help line on 020 8889 9203 and they will send you a form. The forms are very easy to complete - all you need to do is fill in your name, the address where you live in the New Deal area and a contact telephone number. Completed forms must be returned by 12 February.

Voters do not even have to go to a polling station to cast their vote. Ballot packs will be sent to every voter by post at the end of the second week in February. Each pack will contain a ballot paper, information about each of the candidates and a pre-paid envelope to return your ballot paper direct to the Independent Returning Officer from Electoral Reform Services. The deadline for receiving ballot papers will be about two weeks after the packs are sent out.

The results will be announced at the end of February and it will be straight down to hard work for the new Board Members, with many big decisions to be taken over the next few months.

Tony Slater - Electoral Reform Services

"Check-it-out"
For Burngreave to get the £50m from Government, a delivery plan has to be written showing how the money will be spent effectively.

The plan has to show the key changes that people want to make to Burngreave and give details of some of the project ideas that people are working on which will help to bring about the desired changes.

'Theme' groups are working hard to develop good ideas for activity. The delivery plan has to bring all this work together into a readable, understandable and linked programme that will work.

The first draft of the plan will be completed by the middle of February. At this point it will be important for people to "check-it-out". Copies will be sent to Government so they can see the progress which has been made - they will give (hopefully) constructive feedback. It is essential that we also get feedback from people in Burngreave. To allow people to do this, an exhibition / feedback process has been arranged as follows:

Tuesday 27 February to Friday 2 March - "Check-it-out" Breathing Space - 14 Burngreave Road - 10.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.

Saturday 3 March - "Check-it-out" - Big Tent - Spital Hill Green

Those writing the delivery plan will be present at these times to
listen to your feedback and ensure that people have a chance to shape the final delivery plan.
Ian Smith - Delivery Plan Writer - iansmith@easynet.co.uk

The Bottom Line

In the last two weeks members of Sheffield Hallam's research department have visited 450 households in the "New Deal Area", they wanted to know what people thought of Burngreave. This was the New Deal Baseline Survey. They didn't visit my house but I've seen the questions and spoken to some of those quizzed, so what's it all for?

The process by which we get our £50 million has been a long and complex story and this is no less intricate. The idea is that the information gathered is turned in to numbers so the government can plot on graphs how bad things are now so it can say how much New Deal has improved Burngreave. Its significance does not end there, however, it will be included in the all important delivery plan. Apparently the over all out comes of the plan, into which all our desires must fit, must be measurable against questions asked in the survey. But as usual things have happened the wrong way round, and far too quickly, so we are now in a position where we must make our plan fit into what has been asked in the survey.

It certainly asked a lot of questions about crime and wealth, but questions on play facilities, leisure facilities and the environment were a little thin on the ground. So it seems we may have to work hard to get money for things outside the government agenda.

This survey seemed to me like a missed opportunity. New Deal hinges on consultation with the community, yet while helping people focus on all that is wrong in Burngreave this survey offers no outlet for opinions on how things should change. There they are, in your house, pen ready, but opinion cannot come into this, its market research, real opinion does not fit neatly into a table of numbers.

Back in the days of early wins applications I recall advice along the lines of "You need to publicise your project so that people will mention it come the household survey". At the time the survey was to be consultation, of course it was no such thing. This kind of misinformation seems to be a running theme in this New Deal process along with the notion things can be done properly on a ridiculous time scale.

It seems we will have take to the streets to get what we want. In the mean time "Check it Out" at BCAF 27th Feb - 2nd March or on the green Spital Hill on 3rd March, and make sure they know what you think and want.
Lisa Swift

£½ Million Police Squad?
At present there is a proposal to spend £500 000 on a squad of uniformed bobbies to walk the beat around Burngreave. Information gathered at the New Deal Roadshows back in May seemed to indicate people wanted to see more bobbies on the beat.

People have said things like: "We want to see the police unafraid to walk amongst us, not buzzing round in helicopters keeping us awake or zooming round in cars knocking over our children". So surely this is about improving levels of trust between the police and the community, rather than a call to spend half a million of precious regeneration money on a strategy which doesn't seem to work.

Civil servants in charge of New Deal recognise that uniformed police patrolling the street have no effect on rates of crime (though people may feel more safe). Patrolling policeman stumble across crime only once every seven or eight years.

All the Government guidance for New Deal so far has said that proposals for spending need to be based on evidence that plans will be effective. Suddenly the advice on the issue of bobbies on the beat is "what people want" takes priority over the need for evidence.

Of course it could be that the civil servants are coming under political pressure to show that regeneration initiatives like New Deal produce a tough response to "yob culture" as reason flies aside in the face of an election campaign.

In Manchester New Deal money was used to pay for more police patrols, but some of those who wanted this are now saying that it's the new youth club which is leading to a reduction in youth crime.

Julie Tasker, Sheffield City Council Community Safety Officer has warned of the examples of other communities who have supported uniformed patrols as the strategy to tackle crime. When the policeman start patrolling, they don't stumble upon the sorts of crimes that people want sorting out, such as burglary, often committed by people outside the area. Instead they end up detecting a whole load of trivial offences.

Fireside Housing Co-op owns 4 terraced houses with a large shared garden, with ponds, greenhouses and veg patches. At present we have 6 adults and 5 children and 2 cats, all busy doing their own thing (even the cats who poo on the veg patches!).

Our outside interests range from gardening to speaking Spanish to wind and solar energy projects to having big meals together to having fires out in the garden.

We offer secure housing to people on benefits, students and working people. Everyone who is a member of the co-op has a say in how the co-op is run, so unlike having a private landlord, we are in control of our housing situation. This means that we have to work together communally on the houses and we each take a share of the running of the business side of the co-op.

We are looking for new members at present, so if you'd like to know more please get in touch.
Tel: 275 9701