an open letter to the BBc

An open letter to the BBC in response to an article by BBC East's Political Correspondent, Ben Schofield...

Dear BBC,

I am writing as a Director of Northstowe Arts CIC and as a resident of Longstanton, one of the villages neighbouring Northstowe.

I was disappointed to read and watch a recent piece in which your journalist, Ben Schofield, interviewed three (of around 3,000) residents of Northstowe and claimed that the town has “no heart”. The piece has since been picked up by national publications and run without additional investigation – which is unfortunate, as the claims within it are simply not true.

A community gets its heart from people – not buildings, not developers, not local authorities.

As a local resident, I would be the first to put my hand up and say “yes, I’ve often moaned about the lack of a café”. So I did something about it: I worked with Friends of the Wing (now Northstowe Hub) to set up a weekly community café in the former community space that Northstowe had for its first few years. This was a great opportunity for many of the young families living in Northstowe to meet up, as well as those working from home since the pandemic. 

When the primary school needed the space back for use as classrooms, yes it was disappointing that a permanent community centre was nowhere near ready, but I’ve continued to volunteer at the twice-weekly Warm Hub, run by the town council at Northstowe Secondary College and which has continued through further funding after the Warm Hub initiative finished.

The resident-led Northstowe Foodies has done an excellent job over the past couple of years, bringing food, coffee and bar trucks to the Green in Northstowe several times each week. Moreover, Foodies has generously donated over £11,000 generated through pitch fees for these trucks back into community-wide initiatives.

As Northstowe Arts (resident-led), we have coordinated the Northstowe Winter Festival and worked alongside many community groups and schools on Light Up Northstowe for two years now, bringing a large proportion of the community together to celebrate winter in an inclusive way. As a community, we celebrated the Queen’s Jubilee last year with a day of wide-ranging activities including a family ceilidh, quiz and craft activities. Members of our community have worked with a local artist to design a sculpture using shards of Roman pottery found during archaeological investigations before building work in Northstowe began – tying together our current community with people who lived here hundreds of years ago. 

Each year, the resident-led Northstowe Running Festival again brings the community together. Northstowe Youth Hive (resident-led) continues to develop activities for young people, many of them from ideas generated by the young people living in Northstowe themselves. The resident-led Sustainable Northstowe educates us all in engaging ways. The resident-led faith groups – Christian, Muslim and Hindu – actively encourage interfaith connections. The many and varied sports clubs using the fantastic facilities at Northstowe Secondary College continue to develop successfully.

Whilst Northstowe Secondary College has been a useful stopgap, we’re all now very excited that a new community space has opened on the Green, bringing community activity back to a location currently more central and easily accessible to the majority of residents. There are plans for the community café to begin again, free community events to continue, a tender opportunity for pop-up early years provision, a new home for the Foodbank and NHS community services such as health visitor clinics (by the way, there have never been plans for a GP surgery in Phase 1 of Northstowe development – there would be capacity at the Longstanton and Willingham surgeries if it were possible to recruit new GPs at the moment…), office space to enable the town council’s clerks and district council’s Community Development Officers to be more available to meet with members of the community.

I’m not a resident of Northstowe – I don’t know what was said by salespeople to persuade people to buy homes. But I’ve taken the time to find out what’s actually happening, what’s planned, and what I can do to support that. Many others have done the same, and I am disappointed that the BBC has published such an unbalanced opinion piece.

Sincerely,

Mari O’Neill

Director of Northstowe Arts CIC and resident of Longstanton, Cambridgeshire