COVID-19 Corona Virus Support in your Neighbourhood

David Robison 2 Comments

Norwood Neighbourhood Association: Mutual Aid Network 

Norwoods • Clifton Place • Bargrange Av • Bradford Road • Otley Road & other nearby areas

Are you either self-isolating at home or concerned about leaving your home because of COVID-19 Coronavirus? Do you need someone to run errands – do your shopping, help with pets, cook food or pick up a prescription etc.? Or just someone to talk to if you’re feeling isolated? We can help!

We are a group of residents working with the Norwood Neighbourhood Association who are coming together to support our neighbours in these difficult and unpredictable times. 

We will support our community and neighbours to ensure that nobody is left isolated or in need. We won’t ask anything of you in return, we just believe in mutual aid and doing the right thing.

Please get in touch:

If you would like to be part of the mutual aid support network, we can add you if you drop us an e-mail to volunteer some of your time and/or join the organising group.  

Many thanks Dave Robison, Chair of NNA (57 Clifton Place, mob: 07743471764)

Corona virus safety advice

Here is some advice from doctors and health experts on how to reduce the risk of catching corona virus, and how to deal with it if you or someone you know has it.

How can I prepare?

  • Make sure you have some basic medicines paracetamol, aspirin, lemsip, or other medicine in your home in case you aren’t able to go out for a week or two.
  • Have some cleaning products that you can use to disinfect your home.
  • Keep a small stockpile of food so that you and the people in your home won’t go hungry if you have to self-isolate. 
  • Arrange with someone you know who lives nearby to look after each other in case one of you gets sick (or contact NNA – contactus@norwoodneighbourhood.org) 

What should I do to keep my home safe?

  • Clean surfaces, light switches, door handles, and taps at least once a day with household detergent.
  • Wash your hands as soon as you arrive home, and make sure people who visit you do the same. Also wash hands before eating, after using a tissue, after using the toilet, and if you need to touch another person.
  • Try to keep gatherings of people to a minimum – this might mean cancelling a birthday party, Sunday lunch, or other occasions where you would usually be in a room with other people.

What should I do when I’m out and about?

  • If you feel even mildly ill, or have been in contact recently with someone else who has become ill, avoid leaving the house, or going to public places.
  • Keep a distance of at least a metre from other people in public.
  • Always use a tissue or your sleeve to cover your mouth/nose when coughing.
  • Avoid shaking hands, hugging, kissing, or bodily contact with other people.
  • Going for a walk in Nortcliffe Park is still a safe thing to do as long as you keep the other things in mind!

What should I do if I start to feel ill?

  • Stay at home: avoid work, pubs, cinemas, gyms or other public places where large groups of people gather.
  • Maintain social distance – avoid coming closer than two metres or so from other people.
  • Self-isolate. This means staying in a separate room from other people, and avoiding any direct contact with them wherever possible.
  • If possible, use a separate bathroom to the other people in your home, and disinfect it with a bleach based cleaning product every day.
  • If your symptoms get worse, or you start to feel difficulty breathing, contact a doctor.

“Pocket Park” Meeting/Action – Sunday 20th from 11am

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Howdy Neighbours,

Clifton Place / Back of Bargrange and Norwoods all invited

We’ve recently won a £500 bursary to improve the back streets of Clifton Place, this is on top of a grant for a community garden space behind Chicken Cottage/Norwood Ave

You might have seen our initial community day where we make an excellent start clearing up a few areas. And our next “day of action” is this Sunday (20th) where we will be out and about from about 11 (meeting back Clifton Place).

We’ve got a few ideas on how the spend the money but need your input… so please pop out and see us, give us your ideas and if you have time lend a hand.

If you can’t make it, there will be lots of other ways to help coming soon…..

E-mail us or get us through Facebook if you want to – if you want to be added to our ‘action’ WhatsApp group, send your mobile number too.

Sunday 6th October – Work Party – Back Clifton Place/Bargrange

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Sunday is a “work party” starting at 11am and carrying on through the afternoon. Do pop along and join us at any point even if you can’t make the start. It’s primarily being driven by residents of Clifton Place but others are welcome to join us and find out what’s going on/join in with ideas about what could improve our neighbourhood.

We’ve recently received a small grant of £500 to improve the back street of Clifton Place where it borders on Bargrange Av. with the help of local councillor Vick Jenkins.

Fellow resident Alex has illustrated some awesome ideas that we can all help with.

Sample of Alex’s notes on OS Map of our street

It’s a day of action with a range of tasks for all. The main aim is to clear back certain bits and see what we’ve got. In the afternoon – We’ve got some maps to help with getting ideas down about what it could be like.

Oh and did we mention CAKE and maybe samosas?!

Bk Clifton Place – Let’s Dream!

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Let’s dream and build collective ideas for the use of the back of Clifton Place!

Wouldn’t it be wonderful for it to be a place of beauty for our community?

Come and join the discussion on Sunday 8th September.

  • Bring a chair and a mug
  • Tea and scones provided!

Looking forward to seeing you,

Jennie, Barb, Cath and Dave, with support from Cllr Vick Jenkins

Site Visit – 29th August 3:15pm

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Hi Norwood folks!

There will be a site visit by Catherine Roberts of Shipley College to look at the cleared area behind Chicken Cottage (off Clifton Place), which is ready for construction of a community garden.  The college will hopefully be constructing some raised beds there.  We’re meeting there on the 29th August at 3:15 pm.

What it looks like AFTER clean up work

If any of you are available please do come along and forward this to anyone who you might think will be interested to input/see what’s going on.
Many thanks!

What it looked like BEFORE we started our work

Litterpick – Community Pitch In!

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Meet up – have a chat with neighbours then do some tidying!

Sunday March 17th, 2pm-4pm

If there’s an area of your neighbourhood or street you want to see tackled, we’ll do it together, and make an assessment of other areas to see what further action can be taken.

We’re particularly interested to hear ideas about what should happen with the land behind Chicken Cottage which has been repeatedly fly-tipped.

Hope to see you there!

Meet at the top of Norwood Place. We have litter-pickers and some bags but yard brushes and tools are welcome if you want to bring some. We also have a bag of gloves, but don’t wear your best clothes and feel free to bring your own gloves if you have them!

Give me a bell on 07743471764 if you want to chat about it – Dave (Clifton Place) – Add yourself on Facebook as well: https://www.facebook.com/events/2105228199571678/

Take a good look at these bollards!

David Robison 2 Comments

We’ve recently been successful in gaining £350 of funding from a Community Chest Application.  Many thanks to the Shipley Area Committee for this.

Have your say – fill out the survey here!

Our neighbourhood association has been inspired by seeing street art in other cities and online, including Brighton, where otherwise functional and ugly street furniture is turned into an artwork through the use of painted imagery.  Some jolly examples can be seen here:

www.pinterest.co.uk/sandiofoz/street-bollards

There are approximately 30 particularly ugly looking and dirty concrete bollards at the top of the Norwood Neighbourhood, along Bradford Road/A650.  They are designed to prevent pavement parking and act as a slight safety barrier for pedestrians. They are increasingly an eyesore as they get dirtier and the surfaces around them are degrading.  They are next to a couple of rows of shops, and the row is in a way, the ‘frontpiece’ of the Norwood Neighbourhood area.

You can see the bollards in Google Streetview here: https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8261194,-1.7796037,3a,75y,85.18h,88.99t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1suEiFMvBbVGynUt-ghFz3FA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 although they are even more degraded since this imagery was captured.

The pavement surfaces by some of the shops are also degraded and need some thought and attention.  We’d like to review these two things as a community group, come up with some proposals for future work and directly act to beautify the bollards using paint and colour with the help of a local artist.

We would like this to be a consultative process with a survey being produced for residents to seek their views and for an artist to facilitate a public workshop to produce some designs with input from residents and local businesses.

Have your say – fill out the survey here!

Thanks to Jackie Fawthorpe and Cllr David Heseltine of the Shipley Area Committee for the award and to Cllr Vick Jenkins for suggesting we apply.

 

Have your say – fill out the a complete bollards survey

Progress on rear of Chicken Cottage area

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We’ve had progress on the mess round the back of Chicken Cottage. The Council has done a one-off clearance of the area next to the Garage.

We need to thank a great new street warden called Nicola who is totally on it and wants to help do clearance of the vegetation too. Paula Truman, area warden who is always helpful and helped push and in the end Damian, the Area Coordinator just said they guys had to take the stuff.

Also would like to thank our Cllrs Kevin Warnes and Vick Jenkins for their continued persistence on this issue.

With Vick’s help, we’ve also put a bid in for some funding to turn the area into a more pleasant green space. Hopefully this will be a longer term solution.

We’re planning a neighbourhood clean-up for Sunday 17th of March as well, so get your sleeves rolled up and put that in the calendar 

If anyone knows people in the businesses that front the still rather messy yard, or can help by clearing up the bin-bags and building waste by the side of Number 12 – please talk to them.

Road and Junction Widening – More trucks and cars could be coming your way

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A consultation has been launched by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) and Bradford Council, concerning the Bradford-Shipley Road “Improvement” Scheme.   The Norwoods and surrounding streets as well as Shipley C of E School are right in the middle of it.

The scheme includes the A650 Manningham Lane / Keighley Road / Bradford Road; A6037 Canal Road / Valley Road; and A6038 Otley Road. Some possible options have been published, and there are to be public consultation sessions on the following dates:

-Monday, 21st January
-Thursday, 24th January
-Monday, 28th January
-Saturday, 2nd February

We are obviously concerned to see the best outcome for residents from this scheme. Increased capacity for private motor vehicles and HGVs from out of town seems to be the priority of the Otley Road and Valley Road parts of the scheme rather than the needs  and well-being of local residents however.

NoX particles, mainly from diesel engines – shown to be particularly harmful to young lungs – are already at illegal levels at the roadside and we approximate this is also the case within the Shipley C of E school’s playground. Improving air quality is being used as a questionable justification for road widening.  We’d like to see some of the vast amounts of money to be spent on this scheme to be spent on better and safer streets for residents, and local children who walk to school.  The walking environment is not very nice at the former Branch Junction at the moment, and widening this junction won’t be likely to improve that.

Otley Road near the train station – is this what a widened road would look like for pedestrians?

See the WYCA website for the official description of the scheme:
https://www.yourvoice.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/bradfordshipley

Road widening isn’t automatically road improvement from residents’ point of view and it may not fix congestion in the longer term either – the old joke being – fixing congestion by widening roads is like tackling obesity with bigger trousers. Past road widening schemes in Bradford have not always led to a good outcome for the communities they have bisected.

Nonetheless, you will have your own views (maybe less anxious than us!)  As the a Neighbourhood Association we wish to remain balanced and constructive in the way we engage with this process and are keen to talk to neighbours about what they think.

It may interest some people that Bradford Council have been ordered by DEFRA to produce an urgent plan to accelerate the reduction in Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) emissions.

Additionally, a new coalition of people and campaigns is just building momentum at the moment. It is called ‘Clean Air Bradford’. Clean Air Bradford has a Facebook page, if you are interested in keeping in touch. Some members of Norwood Neighbourhood Association are involved with this.

Here is a link to the DEFRA report. Bradford Council is one of a number of local Councils asked to take urgent action to improve air quality:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/746100/air-quality-no2-plan-supplement.pdf

and see:

https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/library/assets/documents/no2ten/Bradford_FINAL.pdf

Thanks for reading.

Dr Bike and Imagining/Mapping!

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Imagine a Seamless Link between canal and traffic free route into Bradford.

Shipley Re-imagined (Sun 9th Sept) Victoria Quays, 12-3pm. 

(Outside Incommunities on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, Shipley)

  • Dr Bike and Info Stall.
  • Free minor bike repairs and assessments.

Info about the New Shipley Greenway and a visualisation exercise – imagine if there was a tunnel directly under Leeds road which you could seamlessly walk and cycle onto the Shipley Greenway without having to cross the horrifically busy road!

Could it really be made safe for a child to cycle all the way from Shipley/Saltaire to Bradford, without having to navigate busy roads?  Sound impossible?  It’s not!

Supported Community Grant from CityConnect as part of the Shipley Re-imagined Project