Copers Cope Area Residents' Association (CCARA) & West Beckenham Residents' Association (WBRA)
Two residents' associations working together across Beckenham on your behalf
To raise money in aid of Fight for Sight and The Carrots Nightwalk 2012 why not treat yourself to:
Cake
Neil’s Yard Remedies
Phoenix Cards
Flirty Pretty Things
Raffle prizes including hairdressing goodie bags, massage, luxury wine, jewellery.
Wednesday 12th September 2012, 9am-11am at The Neighbourhood Church, Cromwell Road.
Friends of Croydon Road Recreation Ground invite residents to an afternoon of music and entertainment from 1pm to 5pm Sunday 9 September 2012.
09 Sep 2012 1:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Beckenham County Cricket Ground
Worsley Bridge Road
Beckenham
London
BR3 1RL
Charity Family Fun Day in aid of Demelza Hospice care for children. There will be a hog roast/ BBQ, bouncy castle, Pimms tent/bar and a 5 a-side inflatable football pitch plus lots more.
Adult Ticket: From £5.00 per ticket
Child Ticket: Up to £2.50 per ticket
In April 2013 the government will reduce the grant for the current Council Tax Benefit scheme.
Under the new scheme to be implemented from April 2013, Bromley Council will receive an estimated reduction in funding of £3.1million towards the cost of council tax benefit. This means Bromley Council will have £3.1 million less to spend on council tax support. The government has also said that all current and future pensioner Council Tax benefit recipients must be fully protected from the changes. The reductions to benefit will therefore only affect working age people. Bromley Council is currently lobbying the government about this much reduced level of funding and has written to local MPs expressing concern and dissatisfaction about the financial impact on our residents.
Said Councillor Graham Arthur, Executive Councillor for Resources:
“This Council has a well-earned reputation for sound financial management. We are determined that the scheme we put in place recognises that the significant cut in the funding we receive from central government will be for the long term. The changes we are forced to make will place a financial burden on the benefit recipients of Bromley. We have a responsibility to make sure our Council Tax Support scheme is sustainable and is the best and fairest for all our residents”.
Whether the new Council Tax Support scheme affects you directly or indirectly, the Council is asking for your views on a draft Council Tax Support scheme. There is a consultation questionnaire at www.bromley.gov.uk/consultation or if you have any questions you can ring 020 8603 3478 between 9.30 am and 4.30 pm Monday to Friday. The consultation will close on 12 October 2012.
A unique experience for Beckenham residents and shoppers, next Monday 3 September between 9am and 1pm the Paralympic Torch will be at Sainsbury’s!
Customers will have the opportunity to hold the torch and have their photograph taken. There will be a backdrop, however everyone should bring with them their own cameras as there will be no official photographer.
Did you know that Sainsbury’s, official sponsor of the London 2012 Paralympic Games, was the first ever Paralympic Games-only sponsor. Sainsbury’s is utilising its network of over 875 stores to help promote the Paralympic Games and lucky for Beckenham the torch is coming here.
East (architecture, landscape and urban design practice) was hired byBromley Council to create a design concept for the regeneration of Beckenham Town Centre. East invite Beckenham residents and businesses to view the plans. Why not pop along to 181 High Street, Beckenham BR3 1AH (next to Sainsburys, Beckenham Cricket Specialists and The Soccer Shop) between 12.30 to 7.30 p.m. on Thursday 23rd August.
Saturday 18 August, 1.30pm – 6pm
Beckenham Methodist Church, entry in Bevington Road
Event organised by ‘The Hidden Teapot’
No matter the weather, come and join us for fun and frolics at our Summer Fair in Beckenham.
We will also be hosting the Beckenham Bake-off whilst supporting Breast Cancer Care.
What’s it all about? We’re a growing group of like-minded creatives and the Hidden Teapot is where we showcase our work, share our skills and eat cake! There will be taster workshops, our delicious pop-up teashop and the judging of the Beckenham Bake-off! You’ll even be able to get a mini tarot reading. Phew.
Our workshops were a massive hit at the spring event. Suitable for little teapots they will be held on the hour between 2 – 4pm but places are limited. Check the blog for more info.
Wednesday 11 July, 7pm to 9pm, Bromley Football Club, Hayes Lane, Bromley BR2 9EF
(Light refreshments and Information stands from 6.30pm)
Guest speaker will be James Cleverly, Chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. This will be an opportunity for you to hear about how the local services plan to cope during the Olympic games.
Plus presentations from the Youth Council and the Safer Bromley Partnership (including Fire Brigade, Police, Ambulance, Council, PCT)
Question/Answer session on the night, advance notification of questions requested.
All welcome to attend.
To enable me to plan seating arrangements please RSVP by email or phone.
Email: amanda.evans@bcef.org.uk
Telephone: 020 8658 7168
7 pm Saturday 7th July 2012, Penge Congregational Church, High Street, Penge.
A grand community concert by the Crystal Palace Band , Beckenham Junior Choir & Youth Voices and Royston Primary School Choir. See flyer below for further information.
Fanfare for Penge and West Beckenham
The very full programme of the concert includes, among other numbers, the following music and songs:
Marching Strings (Marshall Ross), Driving in the Park with you (Franz Lehar), Top Hat, White Ties and Tie (Irving Berlin),Downtown (Tony Hatch), Out of the Blue (Hubert Bath), Cricketers of Hambledon (Peter Warlock), Je ne sais pas (Hubert Gregg), My Heart will go on (James Horner), And this is my Beloved (Borodin), Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White(Louiguy), Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square (Manning Sherwin), Lord of the Dance (Ronan Hardiman), Palatians (Steve Walkley), Frankenstein (Carey Blyton) and begins with Fanfare of Penge (by another Beckenham composer, Gordon Carr).
Take a stroll down the High Street to see the windows and vote below. During the voting period shoppers will receive 10% off artwork at Gallery Seventeen.
Villagers Fine Sausages are having a BBQ stall outside their shop on Saturday 2nd June 2012.
Come along and enjoy a sizzling Jubilee sausage.
The BIG Jubilee Lunch is coming to Beckenham… weather permitting, a wonderful welcoming community picnic will take place in Croydon Road Recreation Ground, 1-4pm.
The Big Lunch started with a very simple idea from the Eden Project and is now nationwide. The aim is to get as many people as possible across the whole of the UK to have lunch with their neighbours in a simple act of community, friendship and fun.
And the Citygate Big Jubilee Lunch, which everyone from Beckenham is welcome to join, will achieve exactly that. The Copers Cope Residents’ Association hopes you will take up the invitation to join in, meet
your neighbours in the wider community, and have a wonderful Diamond Jubilee afternoon.
All you need is some picnic food, a blanket or chair… and hopefully some sunscreen… and let’s see you there.
What is happening on 15 May….
8 pm on Saturday 12 May at St George’s Church, Beckenham
Beckenham’s professional orchestra present:
St George’s Arts Festival SGCO Baroque Concert
Please see the flyer below for further information.
St George’s Arts Festival SGCO Baroque Concert May 2012
The St. George’s Chamber Orchestra (SGCO) was founded in 2004 as the new professional orchestra for the South East, established in order to give local music lovers the opportunity to hear orchestral concerts of the highest standard on their doorstep. All the SGCO’s members play regularly with the famous London orchestras such as the London Symphony, Philharmonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras. Further information can be found on their website:
Friday 20th April 2012 – Ride starts at 7.00 pm at Beckenham Green, Near St Georges Church.
Ride Safe, Ride Bright is a 5 mile cycling event to make people more aware of safety issues of Cycling at night, in particular encouraging all cyclists to be more contrastingly luminous and with good working and bright flashing lights on their bikes. For more information please see the flyer below.
Cyclists are all too frequently seen at night without lights or any form of luminicity about them. Organiser, Chris Hermon, lost is friend Gary Mason (the famous boxer and Djembe Drummer instructor) earlier this year. Sadly, Mr Mason was was killed in an early morning cycling accident, he was wearing dark clothes and had no lights on his bike!
We hope you can join us on the ride.
The Governor of Belmarsh Prison gave an enlightening address at Beckenham Halls, Bromley Road to the AGM of the Copers Cope Area Residents’ Association and other members of the general public, and stimulated interesting and thoughtful exchanges both during and after his talk.
Belmarsh deals with a wide cross-section of the criminal fraternity of about 925 prisoners of whom fluctuating numbers are the most serious Category “A”. To look after them requires about 1000 staff and costs the taxpayer an average of around £45,000 per annum per prisoner. Readers may not know that Belmarsh is the remand prison for the Old Bailey, many high profile case in England and Wales goes through their gates (either before court, on remand or after court if they are sentenced).
The Governor put into perspective how destabilising the prison experience is, the loss of all the norms of everyday living that the public take for granted which the prisoner suffers as soon as he enters the establishment. He will often lose his job, his home and even his wife and family – those ingredients that identify him as a member of the community and have the potential to anchor him on release. If the prisoner lives in Housing Association accommodation, it is inevitable he will lose it as well as any possessions he had left there. Therefore, a prisoner coming out of prison after just three months may find he has no home, all of his possessions are gone, he has no job, and perhaps is estranged from his family. “They should have thought about that before” people will say. That may be true, but equally, that former prisoner after losing everything may find himself on the path to reoffending.
Phil Wragg talked about work undertaken towards the prevention of offending and the training of prisoners with worthwhile activity so that they had something tangible to offer the community on release. Family Man Courses lasting 12 weeks go some way to eliminating selfishness and establishing a more rational and balanced outlook on life that will hopefully deter the criminal from reoffending. Emphasis is given to teach a trade and to injecting some learning into the prisoners’ lives to increase levels of literacy and numeracy, which better prepares them for life on the outside on release. He also referred to the mentoring and tracking of prisoners’ lives after release extending to two years, some of which involves prison officers not in uniform within the community working to help former prisoners become better citizens and to forego their former criminogenic behaviour.
Dispelling a well-established myth held by public opinion and regularly publicised in the media that drug taking is rife in Belmarsh the Governor explained that less than 5% of prisoners sampled test positive to drugs from the regular mandatory testing – remarkable considering that over 85% of new inmates are drug users on arrival.
The turnover of prisoners at Belmarsh is high, up to 85 prisoners a day. Regardless of when they arrive each new arrival goes through the same regime; a search, health check, and risk assessment. Currently England and Wales has the largest prison population in its history. Capacity problems are a constant headache and more accommodation needs to be built to cope with current demand. That is why reducing reoffending is such an important issue.
The Chairman of the Association thanked Mr Wragg for the time that he had sacrificed out of his busy schedule to address the meeting and for producing such a thought provoking and interesting talk.
7.30pm on Saturday 21st April at St George’s Church, Beckenham
St George’s Chamber Orchestra are holding a concert celebrating the wealth of English music in advance of St George’s day and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
Please see the flyer below for further information.
21 April St George’s Chamber Orchestra Concert
The St. George’s Chamber Orchestra (SGCO) was founded in 2004 as the new professional orchestra for the South East, established in order to give local music lovers the opportunity to hear orchestral concerts of the highest standard on their doorstep. All the SGCO’s members play regularly with the famous London orchestras such as the London Symphony, Philharmonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras. Further information can be found on their website:
Bromley Council are inviting couples celebrating their diamond anniversary this year and businesses celebrating 60 years of trading in the borough to join in the official celebrations on May 15 2012.
Any couples or businesses can contact Kay Coulton, Cultural Business Development Officer on 020 8461 7539 or email kay.coulton@bromley.gov.uk for further information.
Copers Cope Area Residents' Association (CCARA) & West Beckenham Residents' Association (WBRA) 