Following the successful workshop meeting in July with the Civic Forum and Chamber of Commerce, a number of good ideas were generated.  One which seems to have caught our imagination is the idea of developing a new community hall / centre in Arthur Road.  There is, of course, an existing council owned hall in Arthur Road which is presently under-utilised; we will consider ways in which we might be able to replace that building altogether with an attractive, modern multipurpose building. We have already formed a subcommittee and started the process of a feasibility study, but we would like to have a broad spectrum of residents' views on this project.  If you turn to page 8 of this newsletter there is an article inviting suggestions and ideas.  Please do take the opportunity to give your views - whatever they are!  Also, if you have been involved with such a project in the past and / or have experience of fund raising we would be pleased to hear from you.

Also, following on the theme of 'regeneration' and ideas generated at the Civic Forum meeting 'workshops', we are going to investigate the possibility of obtaining "urban village" designation for Wimbledon Park.

Finally, we have recently had the offer of some professional help to further develop our website : www.wimbledonpark.com, at no cost to ourselves.  This kind offer came from a new resident to the area who responded to our plea for help in the last newsletter. This sort of help is invaluable to us and we are quite excited about the prospect of progress in this important area.  So keep an eye on the site for general information and, of course, you can e-mail us whenever you feel the need.

As you can see, there are a number of projects on the agenda so we envisage 2000/2001 being a busy period.  The Community Hall project is an ambitious one which, apart from a great deal of money, will require imagination, tenacity and a great deal of personal effort on the part of the committee and residents to make it happen.  But I believe, together, we can make it happen.

By the time you receive this newsletter, Christmas will almost be upon us, so I will take the opportunity to send you all the compliments of the season and to wish you all a healthy and prosperous new year.

Iain C. Simpson