Faversham Clt's special general meeting

Author

Tom Harding

FCLT's first public meeting was a great success.

Wednesday, 25 September saw the first public meeting of the Faversham Community Land Trust, and the general consensus is that it went really well, and got the newly formed CLT off to a positive start.

Technically, the meeting was a ‘Special General Meeting’, and the business end of things was to elect the new Board of Directors, but just as importantly the meeting was to launch the new organisation and to engage with the people of Faversham about what they thought should be it’s priorities.

Right from when it was just an idea, there has always been a strong view that a CLT had to  involve and engage with the people of Faversham in a meaningful way. By the people and for the people, to borrow a phrase!

Over 40 people attended and part of the evening was spent in small groups, with each group thinking about what they thought should be the early priorities for the Land Trust. These were all noted down on the ubiquitous flip-chart paper, to be taken away and written up afterwards. These will be issues the new Board will be working on initially.

In advance of the meeting, all members (membership is a very important part of the Land Trust, click here for Membership details) were invited to nominate potential new Board Members. Seven of us were nominated. We all said a few words about our backgrounds and why we were keen to be involved with the Land Trust, and we were duly elected.

To help get us all inspired, we were very pleased to have guests from another Community Land Trust – the Crane Valley CLT which is based in Cranbrook in Kent – who are a bit further ahead than us and who shared some of their experience and knowledge with us.
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So, that was the 1st General Meeting. Now down to business and the hard work of getting hold of some land or property and creating some truly affordable housing for Faversham. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick, but we are determined to get there. Check back to our blog page for future updates!
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