Highcross Leicester - What is it? and how might it benefit the people of St Peters?

 

STPETERSNM.COM reveals the first video footage of the inside of the Highcross Leicester online.

Video Coming soon...

We are pleased to reveal to you an exclusive video insight of the inside of the Highcross Leicester.

The film seen here represents the very first online video revealing the inside of the Highcross Leicester in Leicester's Highcross Quarter as seen by a limited group of 1000 Highcross Leicester tour participants on June 1st 2008.

What is the Highcross Leicester?

Leicester's Highcross Leicester is a £350 Million expansion of the existing retail centre we know as The Shires. But it is so much more than a shopping centre.

It is classed as a multiple purpose development incorporating, residential, leisure, entertainment and retail elements into its scope.

Originally, it was to be called the Highcross Quarter but for a rather unfortunate naming mishap and domain name battle between Hammerson Plc the principal owners of the Highcross Leicester and a group of ladies who happened to be witches. :o) (For full details of the naming controversy See Highcross

What does it mean to St Peters residents?

Potentially, aside from a great place to go to shop, dine, enjoy a relaxed coffee or meet people, it also represents a staggering scope of employment opportunities.

This is recognised by Hammerson and the team and City Strategy so much so that they have participated in Jobs Fair and Employment road shows here twice in the last year with a view to registering and introducing St Peters people to the employment opportunity paths open to them as a result of the development.

New Anti Selfish and Inconsiderate Parking Initiative in St Peters and Highfields...

We have previously raised the issue of inconsiderate parking by many here in St Peters. Their seems to be a free for all where people feel they can park where ever they like whenever they like and if they get a parking ticket they then go whinging and whining to their local councillors.

Well after reading an article in the Leicester Mercury on an incident in Duffield Street in Highfields Leicester where at least one selfish resident decided to park their vehicle in such a way that it impeded and delayed the rescue of a 2 year old boy from a house fire stpetersnm.com has decided to throw down this challenge.

If you feel that you can park where you like in this neighbourhood, and it is observed by us that you have parked in any way that can have impeded the progress of the emergency services we will film and photograph you and your vehicle and put you in our new Selfish Parking Gallery where in excess 40,000 people a month will see you and that vehicle.

Furthermore you should know that posters are produced based on the web pages of this website and are routinely placed on dozens of notice boards around this neighbourhood.

This website enjoys a world wide audience of half a million hits per year. Therefore you should understand be in no doubt whatsoever that we have the capacity to make you very famous indeed for the way you selfishly park your car.

Some will feel that this publishing policy may be somewhat excessive but we feel obliged to throw the weight of this website behind our anti selfish parking initiative to make people in St Peters and Highfields think long and hard about the way they have been parking their cars. They have historically failed to listen to the Police, the traffic wardens and Leicester city council.

We feel our actions of publishing them to the world wide web are a proportionate response to this issue that will serve to concentrate minds where clearly all else fails.

Not only do their actions put at risk members of the public who depend on the speedy arrival of the emergency services but they put at risk the lives and safety of the members of the Fire Service themselves because the situations they are delayed in arriving at are invariably much more advanced and dangerous.

Seconds can count... so don't play russian roulette with the safety and lives of yourselves and others by being too lazy to park further away from your home in a considerate way.

If we put your photo on this website for inconsiderate parking, it will never come down so don't test our resolve.

Previous related articles on this site:
1) May 3rd 2007,
2) May11th 2007,
3) Inconsiderate Parking Gallery

Article Written by Albert Berer
Photography by Albert Berer
Date Written March 5th 2008
Date last Modified March 10th 2008
Status: Article in Progress

 

St Peters Neighbourhood Management Board provide funding for new trees.

We had some money (approx £700) left over in our neighbourhood management budget and decided to try to find a way to spend it in a way that would have a long term benefit to the whole community and neighbourhood here in St Peters, Leicester.

After some thought the suggestion was raised that with the loss to the community of so many trees (at least a dozen) in recent years in the vicinity of the Highfields Centre and local school that we ought to reinstate at least some of them to what extent we are able.

In recent years, in the bid to build the new Highfields Centre 4 cherry trees were removed and never reinstated in the grounds of an adjacent school along with several cherry trees in what is now the Highfields Centre car park.

This past year alone has seen the destruction and removal of significant and well established trees in the grounds of the school car park in order to make way for 2 additional parking spaces.

So although we only have the funds to put in 4 trees at this time we hope it will go some small way to give back to the community something towards what has been lost and to undo in some small way at least the erosion of our greenscaping which after all is the neighbourhoods greatest asset.

The trees chosen will be colourful for approx 3 months of the year with vibrant yellow blossom. We hope it will improve the appearance of what is a major walkway for many hundreds of people each weeks as they walk between the area of the shops, highfields Library and Highfields Centre and the centre of St Peters via Galaxy Walk and the walkway towards Pluto Close and Framland House.

Many of us hope to see more trees being planted in this area very soon also.

Article Written by Mel
Photography by Mel
Date Written March 1st 2008
Date last Modified March 1st 2008
Status: Article Complete

 

We give you Video... (More Videos here... )

Twelve months ago in January 2007 our Neighbourhood Management board was formed.

In this past 12 months Stpetersnm.com the Neighbourhood Management website for St Peters has consistently set ever increasing high standards in presentation of neighbourhood management issues. This is important as not only does a polished online presence underscore credibility but it also serves to ensure that we cannot be ignored.

It is probably true to say that no other neighbourhood or tenants group in the United Kingdom, past or present, has ever seized upon information technology to represent and present its neighbourhood from such a polished and sophisticated online presence. This site even before our latest development was truly years ahead.

• Stpetersnm.com first used high quality high resolution photography in bringing to worldwide attention the issues here in our neighbourhood. People loved this and commented on how they liked the photo's even when they were showing rubbish piled up outside apartment buildings.
• Then we used our photo gallery system to show large amounts of photo's in quickly navigable format.
• Hot on the tail of that development we launched our slideshow's that enabled us to even present large documents page by page as well as photographs.
• Autumn saw the release of our tabbed pages enabling us to present even more information on each web page whilst preventing cluttered appearance.

This site does not stand still and recognises no limits on either its content or its content delivery.

Ratcheting up the pressure...

We have constantly sought new ways to inform and apply pressure to get better services and resolve issues in St Peters Leicester. Now we have ratcheted up the level of sophistication in presentation still further by using video on this site as well as popular online video channels YouTube and Liveleak, applying keywords to those video's associated with key centre piece regeneration projects in this city so that people know that those areas do not represent the real leicester.

We promised you Video and now we give you not just standard video but high definition video right here on this website. Making it possible for us to show St Peters issues in vibrant detail much to the discomfort of many who would rather sweep them under the carpet and forget about them.

See:

http://www.youtube.com/STPETERSNM

http://www.liveleak.com/user/StPetersNM

Note: We have had a number of emails saying the footage and photography on this website is "staged". Please understand this, that no content shown is manufactured or manipulated in anyway. The integrity of the material shown is beyond question and we would be happy to give any individual or organisation a tour of the neighbourhood so you can verify this at first hand. Things here really are frequently as bad as shown.

What is the next step for us?

Well the next logical step is to deliver pre-recorded broadcasts and discussions along with documentary style excerpts on topical issues. With the NTL now providing 20MB broadband connections into St Peters there is no reason why we can not now do this. All the hardware, equipment and know how is already in our possession. Would you like to help with this by providing time to plan and organise this? Please let us know.

 

What happened to Neighbourhood Management in St Peters?

Neighbourhood Management was a new way of working to improve many neighbourhoods around the country including some across Leicester including our own here in St Peters, Leicester.

It brought together a wide range of people who were already delivering services, working for organisations such as the Police, Health, the Council or for the voluntary and community sector in order that they can work in a more cohesive and coordinated manner.

St Peters Neighbourhood Management Board were a group comprised of residents, Leicester City Council housing management staff and members of other agencies including the Leicestershire Police who had got together to improve the standard of living in St Peters, Leicester.

By holding regular local bi-monthly meetings and further local meetings for focus sub groups in enabled the sharing our aspirations, knowledge and expertise that delivered visible results for all to see in St Peters.

St Peters NMB although doing many good things spent a colossal amount of time and money producing a delivery plan that many could argue was a real distraction from resolving the real issues because it was cheaper to waste money on a plan than to invest the higher level of funding needed to to resolve the actual issues.

So what happened to it?

Basically, in one word. Politics. In two words... Labour politics... that's what many here in St Peters feel.

The Labour Cabinet at Leicester City Council saw fit to replace it with something rather oddly called "Community Meetings".

This "community meetings" arrangement in actual fact appears to do the opposite to what Neighbourhood Management did by disenfranchising the communities in Leicester through three primary inherent flaws in their design.

1. They don't take place regularly enough to really get things moving in terms of establishing the issues, working with people to design focused and credible solutions in the actually communities in which people live.
2. The people are being put out of "the loop" because most of the meetings are scattered away from the communities they are addressing making participation unlikely in all except the local community for each particular quarterly meeting. Essentially this means that residents in St Peters will only get one single meeting a year to raise issues and ask questions.
3. The arrangement brings no credible funding as was built into many neighbourhood management models to address the issues .

Earlier this year (2008) I attended a meeting held by LCC at Walkers Stadium for the purpose of launching "Community Meetings". As I sat there listening to Ross Willmot and Mary Draycott (Labour) describe with what I wondered was perhaps, conveniently, loosely with decorative rhetoric and meaningless spin their new method of consulting residents and delivering transformation in the neighbourhoods of this city.

It all sounded very good. I was seeing clean streets and walls. Litter bin on every corner being used and clean lifts and... For a while there I was almost taken in.

It was the shock and surprise from taking a gulp of neat orange squash which i had poured into my glass thinking it was freshly squeezed orange juice (having not noticed the nearby jug of water on our table) snapped me out of the trance like state the rest of the audience appeared to be under.

As i reached for the jug of water to try to dilute a glass of squash in the centimetre of space left in the glass i was aware that no one on my table had spotted my predicament with the squash.

The community meetings pied piper had their totally undivided attention as I realised their were no spare glasses on the table and I could not pour squash back into the carafe as I had drunk some from the glass.

Newly resigned to the idea that my glass of squash was now a totally lost cause, I looked around me and although everyone was still there... i got the distinct impression of great distance between them all and me for like a patient awakening during brain surgery whilst under anesthetic I realised someone was trying to play with my mind.

In an instant I thus saw them all disappearing in the distance up a rather convoluted and lengthy "participate in this and improve your neighbourhood" garden path.

Clearly, community meetings are designed not so much with getting down to dealing with issues and improving neighbourhoods and the lives of the communities within them, but rather a 'going through the motions' in a vague and unrealistic scheme that will also likely be replaced by something further whilst people lives are passing them by in second and third rate run neighbourhoods.

This website is not political, so this warning goes for any administration. "Do not be misled into believing that we are not watching your "community meetings" scheme with anything other than great interest indeed.

Because it does not matter under which heading it is that you fail to listen to us and deliver under when we tell you we need more wardens and litter bins. That we need better ground maintenance and parking enforcement. That we want our apartment buildings to have secure access and lifts that are clean and function.

It does not matter if you call it neighbourhood management or community meetings or whatever you like if at the end of the day you have still taken votes, rent and rates from the people and have don't listen to what we tell you"

This time... things are different. Not because your community meeting scheme will work. Because it won't. But because when it fails Stpetersnm.com will in as sophisticated a manner as always increasingly possible we will keep the score and tally of what you deliver and fail to deliver.

And come election time... it won't matter how loud your loud hailers are as you drive up and down our streets for days on end blighting us with your endless hollow excuses and promises. Because you cant drown out a sophisticated neighbourhood website that has been for years keeping tally and showing the truth of your record in this city.

At least I was able to stuff my pockets with the really nice quality mini packs of biscuits from the community meetings launch event. I also learned a lesson about the dilute to taste orange squash ambush at such events. The rest of the you from St Peters will, I fear, get a lot less than that from "Community Meetings".

But there's always hope... in a year or two you might get to stuff your pockets with some decent complimentary biscuits as they launch yet another useless scheme.

Article Written by Mel
Photography by Mel
Date Written April 8th 2008
Date last Modified April 8th 2008
Status: Article in Progress

 

Areas of focus for the St Peters Management Board included the following

• Community Safety and Crime
• Environment
• Health
• Housing
• Employment and Local Economy
• Education

Government backed neighbourhood management from St Peters Neighbourhood Management Board

Very few government backed schemes and initiatives could claim as much grassroots support as Neighbourhood Management.

The main reason being that many people who live in areas like St Peters in Leicester have long had a genuine and deep seated wish to see the area in which they live attain to better standards.

Neighbourhood Management in St Peters had begun to identify and deal with the issues that drive people away from wanting to live here.

Social Housing should not mean second rate or sub standard housing with poor services. And yet it invariably does. (It is our intention to create a number of websites that compare high profile multi occupancy residential developments in leicester with local authority managed housing here in St Peters.)