Forster Country Landscape Forster Country Landscape 

The Stevenage Borough Council website has added an item to its website announcing that the Temporary Holding Direction on the Local Plan has been lifted by Rt. Hon James Brokenshire, Secretary of State for Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). This addition was made on 25 Mar 2019. The Holding Direction was originally submitted as a request to Sajid Javid by the Stevenage MP Stephen McPartland in late 2017.

The website addition can be viewed at 

http://www.stevenage.gov.uk/news-and-events/press-releases/215645/

The Plan was originally submitted to the Secretary of State in 2016, setting out plans for the town over a 15 year period. The Council has said that it can now move forward to adopt the Local Plan. They said “We welcome the decision by the Secretary of State to release the holding direction on the Stevenage Local Plan. After years of public consultation and examination we have a robust plan. We are pleased that the government shares our vision of an even better Stevenage, in line with the views of the Planning Inspector and our residents.”

We believe that this is sad news for The Friends of the Forster Country as it paves the way for building 700 homes on the land that we love and have been fighting for over a period of 30 years.

The FoFC Committee will be discussing options at its next Committee Meeting on 3rd April.

 

For the literary scholars out there, there is a call for papers for a conference in Cambridge in 2020 called RE-ORIENTATING E. M. FORSTER. Details at 

https://emforster2020.home.blog/call-for-papers/

After a decade of work on the Poston papers, John Alabaster has produced a glossy book encapsulating much of the previous works. As the title suggests, it is a full list of works published or not, set in a biographical context.  Though more expensive than earlier subsidised works, it is for anyone interested in her or neglected female composers of her era. It is available at Lulu.com page http://www.lulu.com/shop/john-alabaster/elizabeth-poston-catalogue-of-works-with-biographical-context/paperback/product-23663053.html#expand_text

 

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