Perhaps it was the recollection of the Rooks Nest House 2006 downpour that decided the committee to hold the Annual General Meeting and Event indoors in 2007. Also, Councillor Simon Speller had kindly found us a smart venue in the Stevenage Borough Council offices, as well as offering to chair the meeting. On the evening of September 19th the Autun Room was comfortably crowded with a respectable turnout.

The AGM took place with the re-election of the existing committee plus the welcome addition of Mervyn Terrett and Stephen Pollock-Hill, a co-founder of CASE, reviving his participation. Whilst remaining on the committee, Marion Ohlendorf resigned as Secretary and was thanked for her efficient and helpful service over the past seven years. The financial position was regarded as sound although membership was slow in increasing and needed revitalisation.

Marion Ohlendorf

The Event, a Colloquium entitled Visionaries and Planners spent time on three main topics each of which touched upon what the Friends of the Forster Country is all about - Planning, Local Actions and finally 'What is meant by 'green'?'

Richard Javes, who works for SBC as Planning Policy Manager, had accepted the nearly impossible task of outlining the present national planning system in fifteen minutes. He did well but this writer reached the rather dispiriting conclusion (and not for the first time) that the Act in some respects verges on the incomprehensible; this in spite of the stated intentions to make Planning clearer and quicker.

A significant point that emerged was that development planning had moved from earlier eras of socially motivated intention to the present phase largely driven by consumerism and marketing. For the majority of the audience it was the first occasion on which they had seen and heard a real live professional planner and they found Richard's talk interesting.

The second speaker, Andrew Sangster of the Hertford Civic Society, represented a rather different community from Stevenage and a town with a different environment and situation:  three 'awkward' rivers, a long historic background and no great desire to expand.  The Hertford Civic Society evidently forms a dedicated, clear-thinking and committed group of activists and it was inspiring to learn what they had done to preserve and protect their town's inherited charm and attractiveness.

We had intended that the third part of the meeting would concentrate upon 'What do we mean by 'green'?' So widely and vaguely is the word used as an ill-defined aspirational epithet (like its comparable term 'sustainable') that it might crash down into envirospeak unintelligibility. It is, however,  a word now used in official documents and a rough definition might be 'open space with, or without, grass cover', embracing everything from wide verges to village greens and playing fields.

Unfortunately, time did not allow for much discussion of this subject, though there was a great deal of interest shown by Friends during the short session allotted to questions and comments after the presentations.