Building better places event – November 2024

 How can we create homes not units and somewhere not nowhere?

That was the question posed by Nicholas Boys Smith MBE, Founder of Create Streets, at our well-attended event in Caryford Community Hall.

Build, build, build: our new Government has a clear mandate to build new homes. Lots of them! This means big changes are coming for many of our villages and market towns here in Somerset.

We need to make sure that these new housing developments are designed well. We should bring nature and community spaces into the heart of new developments. No more car-centred, identikit housing estates plonked on the edge of our settlements. Let’s aim for “gentle density” places with clever layouts and with sustainability built-in.

Nicholas Boys Smith has championed these ideas for years and we were thrilled to have him as our speaker for our Building Better Places event at our 2024 AGM.  The hall was full and we had a mixed audience of CPRE members, Parish Councils, Community Groups, Housing providers, Architects and Staff and Councillors from Somerset Council.

We hope they came away inspired – it certainly felt that we could have carried on asking questions all afternoon!

If you would like to receive a copy of Nicholas’s slides, please get in touch

The event was introduced by a video message from our President, Mariella Frostrup,

We rounded off the afternoon with the CPRE Somerset charity AGM and review of the year.  Elli Moody, National CPREs’ Director of Policy and Advocacy gave us an update from national CPRE

Many thanks to everyone involved.

draft AGM minutes – 28th November 2024