Things are picking up a little bit at the Broadfield Forum. This time round we actually had some new faces and ten members of the public turned up, actually outnumbering the council officers/police/councillors for a change.

The new faces were even from Broadfield South, which can only be a good thing.

Although most topics for discussion were general or about areas of Broadfield North, the South did get some attention albeit mostly the Northern fringes.

One thing which was discussed was how the forum should develop. I made the point that it really needs to grow. I think a lot of it is down to the advertising. If you put up posters which just say, in effect, “public meeting to discuss stuff” it is not going to motivate anyone to come along. I think you would get a much better attendance if the meeting was advertised as being about one specific thing (the state of the shops, the bus service, parking, whatever)

I think the message got across this time, and maybe next time round it might sound more tempting.

We were very pleased to see a reporter from the Crawley News turn up. He might have a hard job turning it into a usable story, but he got to make a few connections, and it was certainly useful for me (as the party press officer) to make contact with a new reporter to the area. If nothing else, we made him aware of the Easter Egg hunt being organised in Broadfield at the weekend to raise funds for the community centre, so maybe that will get covered.

Anyway, it looks like the next Forum will concentrate on anti-social behaviour and be billed as such. At one point the conversation was turning into an us-and-them complaint-fest about gangs of kids hanging around the shops. I suggested that somebody try and persuade some of those kids to come along.

That was not just to try and set up a volatile evening. The Forum is supposed to be improving communications within the community and these youngsters are part of the community, which often gets forgotten. I think it would help some people to talk with these young people instead of just talking about them. Instead of asking the rhetorical question “why do they hang about there?” the public can just ask them out straight. Who knows where that could lead?

Hopefully it would not lead to violence, but I’ll take my camera just in case.

What helped us enormously, was that Jayne has been getting a good response from questionnaires sent back over the last year, which really helped her to be able to say what is most concerning residents.