What we have been up to so far...

With the increasing concerns raised on Facebook for the Western Gateway Development, a public meeting was arranged at the end of May. In attendance were the Labour politicians responsible for our area. As well as listening to the views of the public, they also advised that we could have greater influence on our future if we spoke through a focused group of residents from our area and formed a “Neighbourhood Representative Committee”.

From a list of people interested, taken at the end of the meeting, we organised a temporary group to facilitate this process along with the help of a representative from DCC. This group of up to 20 volunteers came from people residing in the three main areas of West Green Park, Denhead of Gray and Dykes of Gray.

To receive greater recognition and acceptance by those we wished to petition; we had to go through a process of forming a constitution, designating the area that we would represent and organising an election to form a committee of 12 volunteers. Three months later, several meetings and a lot of effort from those involved we are now close to forming the committee at our public meeting on 3/10/19.

Although we were just a group of volunteers and not formally a committee yet, we thought it prudent to start working on the issues raised at this meeting with immediate effect. To this end, we have had continuous dialogue with the Labour councillors for our area, contacted the SNP councillors and been in discussions with Springfield. We have now established a relationship with each of these key parties and raised the profile of our concerns in two of the key areas of traffic management and education provision. Details of our progress can be seen on our minutes, attached to each meeting.

We intend to keep these issues alive by continuing to petition the parties involved up until the formation of a formal committee. We are also in the process of organising a further public meeting that will involve representatives from Springfield, DCC councillors and MSP’s for our area. Again details of these actions can be seen on our minutes contained within this website (end of meeting minutes 26/8/19).

#westerngatewaycommunity #progress