13 April 2017 | Report: 2nd AGM, March 2017

The second meeting of the Pimlico Neighbourhood Forum took place on Tuesday 21 March 2017 at St Saviour’s Hall, Pimlico.

Present were the Steering Group as well as Councillors: Nickie Aiken, Christabel Flight, Jacqui Wilkinson, Angela Harvey, Shamim Talukder and Murad Gassanly and 67 Pimlico residents.

The meeting approved Andrew McCarthy, a retired solicitor living in Pimlico, as an additional member of the Steering Group. It also agreed that the Forum should be incorporated as a Company Limited by Guarantee, a corporate form that limits the liability of members to £1 and the necessary changes to the Constitution will be put to the next meeting for formal approval.

The Committee has been asking local residents groups what they like about Pimlico, as well as what would make it better and what the priorities should be for the Neighbourhood Plan. It has also been finding out from the most recent Census data the characteristics of the households in Pimlico:

  • There are about seventeen and a half thousand residents in Pimlico, living in nine and a half thousand households, almost all of them flats.
  • 30% own their own homes, 30% live in council or housing association homes and 36% rent privately.
  • There has been a 21% increase in the number of residents living in Pimlico between the census of 2001 and 2011 and a 64% increase in people living in private rented homes.

Without much new build, this huge increase in population has happened without any major increase in street frontage or indeed increase in infrastructure provided.

We have also been asking the local residents associations:

  • What did they like about the area,
  • What would make it better,
  • What buildings or services were needed in the next 20 years
  • And what policy areas should be given priority.

In the light of the responses the meeting agreed with the Committee’s view that the “Vision” for developing the Neighbourhood Plan at this stage should be:

  • Continue to maintain the quiet village atmosphere and its largely residential nature
  • Improve the quality of life of current and future residents by bringing about a more vibrant retail and commercial sector and enhancing leisure and cultural facilities
  • Development that respects and enhances the form and setting of the conservation areas
  • Protecting the squares and green spaces and where possible add more of them
  • Improve the local environmental quality by continuing to limit and if possible reduce the harmful effects of traffic

PNF Steering Group

Peter Ruback (Chairman)
James Ingham (Vice Chairman)
Edward Reeve (Treasurer)
Clive Aslet
Mair Garside
Andrew McCarthy