User's group response to Tenancy agreement

Barbara Peacock

Director Of Children`s Services
NCH London Regional Office
22 Lucerne rd N5 1TZ

4.10.07


Dear Barbara,

Our Users Group met today at “Memory Gardens” to discuss my most recent meeting with you and Andrew Mchardy and to look over the Tenancy agreement which Andrew had emailed me.

Members feel that there is one crucial point which is not addressed in the tenancy and which therefore makes it hard for us to agree to this document. The document gives March 31st 2008 as a leave-date from the site for our group.

However members feel that a leave date should be contingent upon active plans that NCH has secured for re-development and should not simply be a date imposed which could then leave the land vacant with no active use aranged for the forseeable future.

Members of the Users Group realise that there is a real concern with NCH concerning our group and the potential difficulties that you see in connection with us occupying the land. We want to work with you and we respect your right to reclaim this land when the time comes for an active project. We have always acknowledged your gesture of hospitality in allowing us to develop this Autistic Youth and Adult service and although we are independent from you, we acknowledge common goals and orientations with regards to User led services and an emphasis on providing opportunities for people to develop skills that link them back into the Community.

I want to emphasise that our members are very clear that we do not want to create difficulty for NCH. What we would hope for is to have a fluid and responsive relationship whereby we all have our “ear to the ground” and as practical developments come to light- in your planning and options for the site and in our options for other sites- that we might all act and adjust even if this is at short notice. This would mean that we could maintain our “Duty of Care” or “Stewardship”, towards this space until such a time as it was needed by you for another active use.

We feel that there needs to be a certain amount of trust in this arangement. We are not going to insult your hospitality by laying claim to this land indefinitely. But what members can not comprehend and find disruptive to their sense of what is right, is having to vacate a space which then turns back into a state of dereliction. I can not emphasis enough how much this disturbs and upsets our members and everything that they have come to work towards and value through their participation in this garden project.

We hope that we can all find the resources to work together and realise a common objective through this period of transition. This period could be used as a way of developing an important link across the border that at times seems to separate us.

I believe that through our on-going discussions, which I have come to value, and through the other points of exchange now in place, that this is already happening. I see this as a good thing.

Again on behalf of my group and for myself included, I would like to acknowledge NCH for providing this site for us over the years and to say simply, Thank you.


Sincerely,

Ruth Solomon
Co-ordinator “Memory Gardens” Autistic Project.


On behalf of the Members of “Memory Gardens” Users Group:

Margaret Schofield
Jamie Pike
Molly Porter
Eloina Alvarez
Adrian Whyatt
Becky Perriman
Ruth Solomon