Up to date on Black Patch Park

"The conundrum of the Black Patch" Cllr Steve Eling, Sandwell Council Leader, 23rd Feb 2017 

I am hoping that these are significant dates in the restoration of Black Patch Park - useful to us, The Friends of Black Patch Park (FoBPP), and to anyone new to our campaign, begun 14 years ago, to stop the decommissioning of the park in favour of light industry, and bring people back to the park and its surroundings.

A facebook Messenger letter to me from Cllr Darren Cooper in late July 2015

Hi Simon it was good to see Michael Chaplin in Black patch, I'm just sorry I was not aware of this until it appeared in the news. I have made many attempts in the past to get a solution to the area including the historical Soho foundry. I'm still keen to look at options. However this just seems to hit a brick wall. I had extensive meeting with the Lunar society all to know end. I'd be happy to meet with you to look at options if you contact my office on 01215695666. In any case finding a solution with Council money alone is a non runner given the cuts we have to make. B'ham are in a worse place than Sandwell so can't see that making a difference.’

My reply on behalf of the Friends:  'Thanks Darren. It is such a tricky wicked problem - one you clearly understand. I will indeed be in touch. You know at the moment that Hayley Insley, your senior regeneration officer, is looking at Eastside's offer but which involved losing a third of the Patch. We are bound by our constitution and belief in the park to resist this while ready to be participate in all attempts to find a way through in these horrible times for local government! Kindest regards, S'
[Note: On 16th June 2014 FoBPP had an interesting meeting in the Soho Foundry Pub with Tony Deep MBE of Eastside Foods who expressed interest in seeking permission for a company called Smart Waste to construct an autoclaving plant on part of Black Patch Park]

The notes are from a facebook timeline:

Cllr Darren Cooper 1964-2016

A meeting with Cllr Darren Cooper, Leader of Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council

On 16th March 2016 - yesterday - Ron Collins, our chair, Phil Crumpton and Simon Baddeley, met with the Leader of Sandwell MBC, Cllr Darren Cooper at the Council House in Oldbury. We talked for over half an hour. The best that came from the meeting was Cllr Cooper's view that the area surrounding Black Patch Park could be rezoned for housing, instead of, as it is and has been for over a decade, for light industry. [Darren Cooper died 10 days after our meeting]

The circulation of a report on rezoning by FoBPP

Our report 'Bringing People Back to Black Patch' was approved at The Friends of Black Patch Park's last Committee Meeting on 1 December at the Soho Foundry Tavern.

First meeting with Cllr Steve Eling, new Leader of Sandwell

At the meeting between Cllr Steve Eling and the FoBPP on 23 Feb 2017, Cllr Eling said he was impressed at the comprehensiveness of the report that the Friends had produced, recommending that people be brought back to Black Patch Park as the only solution to its neglect and blighting. His Cabinet had walked around the park a few weeks earlier. He had followed our case. He agreed with our plan and its arguments for rezoning the area for new housing around the park and beyond. This, the Leader agreed, was the only way to resolve what he described as the ‘conundrum of the Black Patch’ - a problem created by a prolonged series of failed piece-meal measures; in particular, a repetitive cycle of forced illegal entry, consequent trashing, expensive clearance, inadequate boundary securing and monitoring. “Black Patch” he declared “has been historically disadvantaged by its lack of connectivity. But there’s a new connectivity which changes the fortunes of the Black Patch”. There would be no solution to the ‘Black Patch conundrum’ without a restorative strategy for this part of the Borough.

March/April 2017 - The Temporary Transit Site laid out between Avery and Boulton Roads

To find a solution to a borough-wide problem of travellers trespass on public green space Sandwell MBC permits the laying out of a secure temporary site for travellers so that within 24 hours, the authority can, under public order legislation, transfer trespassers on its parks to that site. FoBPP expressed concern, objecting, in a letter from our Hon Sec, that placing a Temporary Traveller's Transit site next to the last remaining homes near Black Patch and in the centre of an area that a month before the Council Leader had described as the 'sustainable housing area',  blocked plans to restore Black Patch Park as a 'community of place'. Cllr Steve Eling responded with a 3-page letter.

August 2017 Sandwell MBC Cabinet agree on rezoning the Black Patch area for housing

Cllr Steve Eling, Leader of Sandwell MBC, spoke with four of the Friends of Black Patch Park, in the gallery of the Council Chamber, just before chairing Cabinet - 3.20 pm 30th Aug. The question in our minds and on our lips and in the paper we submitted to the Council last year, is "Will the Council adopt what FoBPP have proposed for the Black Patch - the return of houses and therefore people to the land around the park?" Steve Eling says - I wrote down his words - "it's in hand. it will take time. A schematic will go out to consultation in October."

In the Visitors' Gallery at Sandwell Council House 

Second meeting with Cllr Steve Eling

On 7th Sept FoBPP met the Council Leader to seek his reassurance that plans for the restoration of the area were going ahead despite Friends' concerns about the obstacle posed by the temporary transit site sitting right opposite the park

A brief about where things stood for the Black Patch at the end of Summer 2017

‘In the last 18 months things have changed for the Black Patch – not only for the park but for its surrounding streets and small edging areas of land. In mid-2016 the Leader of Sandwell Council said that previous bets – few and far between - on the future of the Black Patch were off. Something serious needed doing for this area at the eastern end of the borough - neglected 30 years; blighted by the dispersal of all but a few of its surrounding residents; by a pragmatic council decision to decommission the park and rezone it for light industry, and by its spreading repute as an expedient place for flytipping. Councillor Darren Cooper declared to us, in his office on 16th March 2016, that things were going to change.

Diana Bancroft's long demolished childhood home off Foundry Lane overlooking Black Patch (with permission) 

His sudden death, within days of our meeting, did not interrupt that aspiration. Rather, a decision to restore Black Patch Park became part of Darren Cooper’s eulogy, repeated, with detail, at a meeting, on 23rd February 2017, with Sandwell’s new leader, Cllr Steve Eling. “The whole area” he declared from his predecessor’s chair “has been blighted by decades of piecemeal decisions”. Council strategies, having nothing to do with this area of the borough, have nudged the ‘Patch’ into an urban limbo – reminiscent of its status 150 years earlier, when none but the Romany would make a home on 10 feet of industrial embers threaded by two oily brooks beside barren rail embankments.’

Full Council Meeting on 16th Jan 2018 endorsed the decision of Sandwell's Cabinet

Well what do we think - after attending Full Council at Sandwell tonight? Throughout the proceedings we heard no mention of Black Patch. All rose to leave after near 2 hours.  "So what's happened?" we asked one another. It felt like an anti-climax, but then we met up with the Leader and colleagues in the Council Chamber lobby...The Rev Ash Barker of Winson Green asked Cllr Eling to help us understand why there'd been no mention of the Black Patch during the Council meeting. Cllr Eling replied "It's done! Council endorsed Cabinet's recommendation/ No-one objected" Our mood shifted upwards as other councillors came up to us to confirm our best hopes. We had actually not quite grasped that - but see the letter below from Suki Suthi-Nagra copied to our member, Phil Crumpton.

The Leader reassures the Rev Ash Barker on 16th Jan 2018

So what has been so far decided?

This is an email from Sandwell's manager of Democratic Services, officially copied to one of our members, Phil Crumpton, shortly before Sandwell MBC Full Council met on 16th Jan 2018 to endorse a proposition for the future of the Black Patch Area that had been put forward at a Sandwell MBC Cabinet meeting on 18th Oct 2017:

From: Suky Suthi-Nagra
Sent: 11 January 2018 09:32
To: Jan Britton CEO Sandwell MBC; Phil Crumpton FoBPP
Subject: RE: [The Friends of Black Patch Park] Perrott Street, Winson Green viewed from beneath... [IL0: UNCLASSIFIED]

Phil. Thank you for your email. I can confirm that the Council at its meeting to be held on 16 January 2018, will be receiving the minutes of the Cabinet held on 18 October 2017. You will recall that at this meeting in October, the Cabinet considered the Proposed Masterplan for Residential Development at Black Patch, Smethwick and resolved:- 

(1) that the proposals for a land use change to the sites in the Black Patch area, Smethwick to that of residential be noted;

(2) that a masterplan and Interim Planning Statement be prepared as the way forward for the Black Patch, Smethwick area;

(3) that in connection with Resolution (2) above, a further report be submitted to the Cabinet on the draft masterplan and Interim Planning Statement prior to public consultation being undertaken;

(4) that consultation be undertaken with Merry Hill Allotment plot holders to consider relocation to an alternative allotment site and the results of the consultation be submitted to Cabinet in due course. 

The Council will note these minutes. A further detailed report on the draft masterplan will be presented in due course to Cabinet to which you will be invited to attend 

Kind Regards
Suky Suthi-Nagra
Democratic Services Manager
Sandwell Council, Oldbury, B69 3DE

Us lot - Friends of Black Patch Park, Stacey, Harj, Ash, Phil, Ron, Simon at Newbigin House on 30th Jan 2018

'A fortnight ago things changed...'

A summer meet of the Friends of Black Patch Park outside the Soho Foundry Tavern

.... for Black Patch Park and its friends. It was not as if The Friends haven't left a lobbying trail since we founded ourselves 13 years ago. But last year - 16th March 2016 - we met the late Darren Cooper when he was the Leader of Sandwell MBC. Unofficially he assured us that things must change. We had prepared a draft report on the case for bringing back housing along the edges of the Black Patch, arguing that only by having people who opened their windows and doors onto the park was there a hope of restoring and maintaining it.

In the meantime the park became more and more ravaged by fly-tipping - with the worst we'd ever seen hitting even the national press at the end of February. Given the amplifying repetitiousness of these problems I didn't hold out much hope for the meeting we'd sought with the new Leader of the Council several weeks earlier. Phil Crumpton and I had sat in the middle of a wrecked space venting - feeling our hopes were futile, wasted.

Three years ago we'd designed a visitor's trail for the Black Patch - 'striving to renew a place' 

In February last year we'd written about 'bringing people back to the Black Patch'

Leader's Office - Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council 23 Feb 2017
L-R Simon B, Andrew Simon, Phil Crumpton (FoBPP), Cllr Richard Marshall, Cabinet member for Leisure, Cllr Steve Eling, Leader of Sandwell MBC, Ajman Ali, Interim Director, Neighbourhood Strategy, Sandwell, Ash Barker and Harjinder Jheet (FoBPP)  (photo: Max Cookson, Transport & Waste Operations Manager)

At the meeting between Cllr Steve Eling, Leader of Sandwell MBC and the Friends of Black Patch Park on 23 Feb 2017, Cllr Eling said he was impressed at the comprehensiveness of the report that the Friends had produced, recommending that people be brought back to Black Patch Park as the only solution to its neglect and blighting. His Cabinet had walked around the park a few weeks earlier. He had followed our case. He agreed with our plan and its arguments for rezoning the area for new housing around the park and beyond. This, the Leader agreed, was the only way to resolve what he described as the ‘conundrum of the Black Patch’ - a problem created by a prolonged series of failed piece-meal measures; in particular, a repetitive cycle of forced illegal entry, consequent trashing, expensive clearance, inadequate boundary securing and monitoring. “Black Patch” he declared “has been historically disadvantaged by its lack of connectivity. But there’s a new connectivity which changes the fortunes of the Black Patch”. There would be no solution to the ‘Black Patch conundrum’ without a restorative strategy for this part of the Borough.

- Such a strategy must not be implemented piecemeal, since piecemeal actions have brought about the notorious problems of the Black Patch,

- The strategy must reconfigure ‘a new space’ that visibly and physically breaks out of the ‘isolation’ of the park created by transport and former industrial infrastructure – such as railway embankments and the ‘tunnel’ of Queenshead bridge,

- This new space is an answer to the challenge of how to create a sustainable community in the area; bringing new tenants and residents in affordable housing, not only to the borders of the park, but to a wider area, via additional housing along a new hub-walkway linking Black Patch to the Metro station on Handsworth New Road and the neighbourhood of Birmingham’s Soho district.

Note: These are the views of the FoBPP following their meeting at Sandwell Council offices but I received this email y'day:

'Good Afternoon Simon. Both the Leader, Cllr Steve Eling and Cabinet Member for Leisure, Cllr Richard Marshall have agreed that your draft notes are an acceptable account of the meeting and are happy for them to be in the public domain. If I can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me. Many Thanks, Jane Perham, PA to The Leader'

The Friends of Black Patch Park - "We can't go on meeting like this!"

Back to the future - 30 March 2017 - and I'm writing on Facebook:

The Friends of Black Patch Park have been allowed a few weeks of optimism, believing after our meeting on 23 Feb 2017 (current group photo on the top of this blog entry) with the Leader of the Council, one of his Cabinet colleagues and officers, that the area around the Park would be rezoned for housing - and the future of the park assured by restoring it as the green centre of 'a community of place'. The words of Cllr Steve Eling, Leader of Sandwell MBC, had been that there must be an end to 'piece-meal' decisions in this area of Smethwick, and a recognition that 'the conditions now exist for a sustainable community of park users in the area; that would finally 'offer a solution' to what he called 'the Black Patch conundrum'. But Sandwell's Cabinet have now referred, to planning committee, a plan for a transit site for Travellers next to the park (Ref: DC/17/60410), and, in so doing, have driven a wedge through Cllr Eling's vision of a sustainable housing plan for the area - one that offered a solution to the decades-long neglect of this area. Neither despair nor resignation are in the vocabulary of the Friends of Black Patch Park. We shall continue to make a case that we, mistakenly, understood had been accepted by the leadership of Sandwell Council. The speed with which the transit site (see map below) between Boulton Road and Foundry Lane has been cleared, suggests that despite the reference in past weeks to alternative sites in the borough, these were, in actuality, given no serious consideration. Now we are being asked to believe that a transit site on a vital part of what ought to be zoned for housing in Cllr Eling's vision, as he shared it with us on 23 Feb, will actually be paid for and used by Travellers, when the tempting space of Black Patch Park, whose security Sandwell MBC and the police have been unable - even unwilling - to protect, is just across the road. The placing of this site, intended as a means by which the council can trigger eviction procedures under Section 62 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, is more likely to ensure continuation of the 'piece-meal' problems of occupation, trashing and expensive eviction and clearance that have long blighted the Black Patch area.

Plan for a Transit Site next to the Black Patch

Transit site next to Black Patch Park - in the heart of what should be new housing around the park

This is Cllr Steve Eling's 3-page letter to FoBBP member Phil Crumpton seeking to allay fears about the current decision to place a temporary Traveller's Transit site next to the last remaining homes near Black Patch and in the centre of an area that a month before he'd described as the 'sustainable housing area' that would recreate Black Patch Park as a 'community of place'.

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Andrew Simons (Hon Sec FoBPP) draft letter of objection to application DC/17/60410:

Dear 

I am writing on behalf of the Friends of Black Patch Park in relation to the planning application (DC/17/60410) for a temporary traveller transit site at the corner of Boulton Road and Foundry Lane, Black Patch, Smethwick B66 2LS. The Friends wish to object to the planning application on several grounds. 

1. The planning application is in contravention of planning policy guidance for traveller sites as set out by the Department for Communities and Local Government in 2015 (Planning policy for traveller sites, DCLG, August 2015). In particular, we wish to draw your attention to the following:

a) There has been no community engagement with either the settled or traveller communities with regards to the proposed transit site. For example, there has been no consultation with residents of Murdock and Avery Roads which are immediately next to the proposed site, or the residents on other adjoining streets such as Perrott Street, Eva Road, Foundry Road, Queens Head Road etc.
b) There is little or no evidence of SMBC having worked collaboratively with neighbouring local planning authorities – even though the proposed site is immediately adjacent to the border with Birmingham – to ensure that the site is sustainable economically, socially and environmentally. Indeed, the proposal appears to be designed with the aim of forcing travellers into neighbouring boroughs.
c) The proposed development takes no account of the existing Local Plans for the Black Patch area, for example, the Smethwick Area Action Plan (2008). It is the view of the Friends that such a transit site would undermine the priority for housing development in the area surrounding Black Patch Park and therefore contribute further to a piecemeal approach that is not sustainable in the long term.
d) There is no evidence that other alternative sites within the borough have been given due consideration to ensure that the best site is chosen. This would include a consideration of the needs of the traveller community as well as the resident community adjacent to such sites and embrace such matters as the access of travellers to adequate education, health and welfare services.

2. The proposed transit site will have a detrimental impact on local amenities and environment for residents living next to the site. This includes resident living immediately adjacent to the site on Murdock and Avery Roads and residents living in the wider area who use Black Patch Park. 

The presumption made by SMBC is that the site will not be used owing to the up-front fee and weekly rent. However, this does not exempt SMBC from following relevant planning law or guidance, and is based on an assumption that may prove incorrect. What if some or all the proposed 34 pitches are taken and there is no plan for managing the development as required by DCLG?  How will this proposal help with the development of a long term sustainable plan for the Black Patch area?

We would request that the Council take our objections into consideration when deciding this application. We would be happy to meet with representatives of SMBC on site to discuss our objections in person.  Yours sincerely etc FoBPP

**** **** ****

Last May I got an email from Gill, the apiarist, who keeps bees on Plot 14.

I now have a nucleus colony which can go to your allotment. They are Buckfast bees, specially bred to be both docile and prolific.

So they were - a source of quiet satisfaction through the seasons, a presence on the plot, peered at carefully now and then; seen individually in flowers on the allotment and beyond. Sometimes I imagined them before I went to sleep.

In September 2016 we had our first honey off the plot. For winter Gill insulated the hive. This February I emailed her

Dear Gill. Do you have any idea how the colony on Plot 14 has weathered the winter? Last year was such a good surprise.  X Simon 

28th Feb: Simon. Unfortunately, it has not survived. Varroa depleted the colony and the cold weather put paid to the rest. I shall be getting another colony in the spring, though. Gill

Winnie and I wonder if the siting of the hive backing onto the to park fence, next to the plot shed, trees and brambles, confines the bees to a space that holds damp. We wonder about moving it to a different place on the plot - possibly a chamber inside the fruit cage open to the sky - placing any new colony in the centre of the plot. Now looking at the hive what I thought was sleep and winter quiet, is an emptied hive. Oliver has been curious about the malign work of the Varroa mite. We sat in the kitchen and I called up an animated youtube clip...

I guess fear adds to my feelings. I hate this 'thing' whose reproductive cycle parallels the bee's; that east its way into the bee's young, sucks their blood, breeds in their chambers, excretes on them, uses the bees to spread - vampires. It's not the insect that does the harm, but the diseases it carries in its parasitic life. I know that Buddhism could calm me, show how all is part of the great cycle, and even Christianity would strive to teach me that 'they know not what they do'. A test of love. Before he went to sleep - staying our house tonight - I said "Sleep tight, don't..." He completed "...let the Varroa bugs bite". 

Varroa destructor on its honeybee host

Departure - Arrival

Last Monday afternoon, a bright autumn day, Linda and I were among many - it seemed like the whole village - attending the funeral service for Andreas Metallinos, son of the laic sculptor Aristeidis Metallinos, at St Athanasius Church in Ano Korakiana, Corfu. Of course I took no photo but the church for Christmas carols gives an idea of the beauty of the setting...

The close family waited as we came out of the church, including, Anna - wife, Aristia, and Angeliki - daughters, Maria - sister to Andreas and her son Anastasios - nephew. Andreas was taken in burial procession to the church of Paraskevi accompanied by the solemn and beautiful music of the Spyros Samaras Philharmonic of Korakiana. He will lie by the graves of his father, Aristeidis, and mother, Angeliki.
** **
I half expected Stamati with his joinery on the Ano-Kato road to turn his nose up at so small an order. I cycled down from the village with the old window frame.
He looked at it. Understood without words what I wanted
“Come back tomorrow to collect”
Lin and I walked up the next day. There was our window amid other projects, new transoms cut; inserted as on the original. We were very pleased. Stamati rested the old frame on a bench, noting how an old scarf was warping the frame; an obstacle to glazing. In seconds he’d clamped it against a hardwood splint, brushing glue into the opened seam.

Stamati in his workshop below the village

“This window may be 200 years old. Bring the clamps back tomorrow”
We carried the window home.

Taking the clamped window home

Next morning I cycled with it to Pyrgi, where in no time a bus arrived and carried us with bike and frame to a glazier on the outskirts of town.
“You don’t want to try bringing it back on the bus” said Lin “On Friday when we have a car we’ll collect it on the way home”
I went home via Sokraki, over an hour on the Green Bus, shedding school children on the way up to Spartillas, in Sgourades and Zygos, where the bus misses building by centimetres. I treated myself to a garlicky dried sausage and a chunk of fresh bread on the journey. As he took my bike from the hold, the bus-driver scolded me for my crumbs on his floor. He swept them up with a brush and dustpan. Lesson. His bus. I think I might have done this inconsiderately before. Descending from Sokraki I got a puncture. I inserted another inner tube, checking the inside of the tyre for thorns or glass. It went flat again in hardly 50 metres. Knowing it was shot, I drifted the rest of the way on the flat and once home fitted a new tyre and tube.
So we have nearly finished the cupboard and shelves - our latest bricolage; from discarded wood to something useful again...

Recovered from beside wheelie bins

Cupboard, shelves, drawer on Lin's side of the bed

There's some fine tuning when we come back to Greece, hinges and other edges. Fillings and getting the drawer to go in and out smoothly.
*** *** ***

October morning '...to ease my regret' 

To ease my regret at returning to England soon I think of things I enjoy - treating myself to a pinch of lemon and red pepper with each of half a dozen oysters at Pearces...

...in the Bull Ring food market, tasting the fresh sea water first;

or...having a baked potato salted with lots of butter from the stall at the entrance to the Rag Market; cycling along the canal towpath in and out of town; being on our allotment next to Handsworth Park tended by Winnie, perhaps getting some honey from the bees this year; seeing the grandchildren; going to Rock Cottage where there’s a lot of wood to cut and split for the stoves and walking in the forest of Dean in autumn; a pint with Dave and Pete in the Old Joint Stock; ...

The Old Joint Stock

...to London by train and cycling there, to have supper with Ziggi and keep up with the digitisation and editing of my stepfather’s ‘Out of Town’ 16mm films and sound tapes; sleeping in our big Brittany bed with the softer mattress than ours here;

...having a flu jab at the GP’s; giving blood at the Donor Centre in New Street; taking part in the latest 1000 Elders study of protein intake - an influence on muscle mass and function, which lessen and weaken with age. Despite popular attention to ‘dieting’, science still knows relatively little about people’s protein intake. So mine – based on keeping a three day diary of what I eat - will be compared with that of younger groups. A second invite asks me to be the subject of a study into the effects of Nicotinamide Riboside, a vitamin supplement supposed to boost the mitochondrial functioning of old muscles - two tests over three weeks, with one using the vitamin and the other a placebo; double-blind where, until the testing is over, neither researcher nor subject knows whether a placebo or the NR is being used. As I age I’m supposed to become frailer, more susceptible to disease because the ‘power houses’ of my cells – mitochondria – that give energy to my body become weaker because molecule called Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD) drops with age. The hypothesis – but perhaps hype - is that taking the NR vitamin supplement makes up for this. I wonder.
“Hm! I’d like some of that” said Lin
“Yes but suppose it works on me and I go in for the Tour de France couldn’t I be in trouble like Bradley Wiggins?”
“No he was taking a TUE. A drug. This NR is a vitamin supplement”
“It gets a lot of publicity on the internet. It’s what I like about the 1000 Elders project. You get to see if things do or don’t work by going through procedures in controlled conditions. There are so many ways we fool ourselves without intention.”
We see others getting old and know that barring accident the running down to being bed-ridden may await us, worse - senility, dementia and decrepitude – the seventh age. I can either pretend to ignore my fate or have at least some understanding of the process.
A second invite comes from the 1000 Elders project; to keep a diary over three days to study my protein intake - its influence on muscle mass and function, which lessen and weaken as I get old. Despite popular attention to ‘dieting’, science appears to know relatively little about people’s actual protein intake. Mine will be compared with that of younger groups.
A third invite come via my blood donating where I’ve just completed the ‘Intervals Study’ testing – in a sample of 50,000 people - the safety of giving blood more frequently. Will I take part in the CARRIAGE study? This is run by researchers at Cambridge to investigate why some people carry the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) in their nose while other people never do. S. aureus is a common bacterium carried by one in three people, in their nose or elsewhere on the skin. For most people carrying S. aureus is harmless, but it causes life-threatening infections in hospitals in patients with serious underlying medical conditions and weakened immune systems. Understanding why some people are carriers while others are not will help design new treatments to prevent such infections. I’m asked to take three nasal swabs – a week apart - and complete a short online questionnaire at the start and end of the study. My pack of swabs, labels and envelopes arrived at home just now.
I have also been involved in the PROTECT study led by Kings College, London. This goes on for a decade, gathering data from 20,000 volunteers on the ageing brain and how and why some people get dementia. I will provide a DNA sample, and information about my habits – drinking for instance - also, my exercising and blood pressure (measured by my GP) as these could affect my risk of developing dementia. I also do online assessments to measure such abilities as memory and reasoning. These assessments are repeated annually so that the study can check how I change over 10 years. And I'm one of 500,000 people registered with the UK Biobank.
**** *** ****
 Amy, who’s looking after Oscar dog while we’re in Greece, says she thinks he’s getting senile – born 14th June 2002, he’s coming up over the average age for Jack Russells; spends time sitting in the middle of the room staring.
There’s the continuing campaigning in Sandwell to get housing back around Black Patch Park. Phil Crumpton’s been keeping me briefed, including his and Andrew Simon’s meeting with Cllr Steve Eling, Leader of the Council...a brief from Phil who I'll see next Friday...

PDF Friends of Black Patch Park meeting with Steve Eling and Richard Marshall on Tuesday October 4th. at Oldbury 
Andrew and I were delighted to be joined by ‘Matt,’ (surname not recalled as I type this/Borough Chief of Park maintenance and services - site manager). He was invited to take part as the support for making the hands-on case for the work being undertaken in Black Patch Park.
Our meeting with Steve was much longer than the one we had with Darren Cooper. In contrast to that starter meeting, in April, no-one was sitting in the take minutes. This was an enormous relief as it demonstrated that Steve wants it clear, he had got people submitting evidence and materials to help him carry on from where Darren started. It was the case that he had to acknowledge, too, he ‘..has been handed many tasks’. Another plus point. Richard did have many points to make about how he sees the current state of the park. Councillor Marshall (my councillor) wants it made clear to our group, how much he understands about the untness of the park - even though he confesses to not being a regular visitor. Give Richard the benet of our faith in him as he is clearly tired of seeing things just delegated and deferred over a number of years. We have made that case. We clearly have a coherent councillor, working in the interests of one of many, many Sandwell Parks and, in our case, a distinctive heritage site to boot. Richard also had a good grasp of one of the most inescapable circumstances that the ‘Patch’ still suffers from and as Steve mentioned on many, many occasions; “..Black Patch is isolated as a neighbourhood”. Few councillors have ever taken the time to put detail on this, in making the case for this inalienably-protected green space. All our work and lobbying since 2002 has seen to that remaining the same. But it was most interesting in how much SMBC’s policy message has moved on from the old, ‘institutionalised pre-2016 prognosis.’ Instead, now making the community of place ready for a Place of Community.
Matt made the effort to commit his SMBC department to pledge: ‘No More Disruption’ to the park’s badly needed upgrade to ‘Fit for Purpose’ status. Matt went on to state how this would be carried on, with the help of a break from so many illegal actions following on from the travellers’ regular abuses of the Park. He stressed how the newer obstacles to travellers - like the newer anti-lift or tamper-proof concrete bollards have made the difference to the opportunism that we have become so fed up with accommodating. Richard and Matt are to visit in the coming days to do a further check on the means by which they can demonstrate further action to check the cameras’ alignments plus inspect the old school gates site. This is because I showed them the photographic evidence of the newer fly-tipping hotspot, on the bend in Foundry Lane and where Richard is locating the heavy duty sunken bollards to block off the recess. Another outcome for the Friends’ campaigning..!
Councillor Eling did execute his right to say, on several occasions, “..Black Patch issues are not all about the Park”. He is right and I agree. He went on to use that word “isolated,” and he was still right; as much as the boundaries of three former counties met at the bridge over the brook(s); as much as the area has become a place where industrial expansion choked off access to the small residential area - it does not mean that it will stay that way. He did emphasise: “..we need to follow-up this meeting when we have your ‘Community Housing Project Proposal and Re-Zoning Plan’ as he is looking closer at the walkway along the brook-side - to the end of the allotment but he acknowledged the ‘whole allotment was as prime for redeveloping for housing as it is for closure’ ...! Another breakthrough..... See you all on November 1st. W

I must also draft the final report of Handsworth Helping Hands’ on our ‘Three Avenues Project’. Our next committee is at the start of November. We've more work yet with residents in Brackley, Putney and Crompton Avenues, focusing on their small green spaces and the continued challenge of services for ‘unadopted’ streets.
Then there’s Christmas in the city