Local initiative in St Albans

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34026, 15 December 1975, Page 16

Local initiative in St Albans

Once people tended to be more interested than they are today in the physical condition and social life of the areas of the city in which they lived. Greater personal mobility has diminished the importance in most people’s lives of the suburb in which they live. Today many people scarcely know even their nextdoor neighbours. But many residents of many areas do still feel they have interests and concerns in common with their neighbours. The latest evidence of this, in Christchurch, is the formation of a Residents’ and Community Association in St Albans. The stimulus for the formation of the association was provided by two very practical issues — flooding and the northern motorway. But the members of the association, at the inaugural meeting, showed a commendable concern to foster the intangible but important sense of “belonging” to a particular part of the city among the residents of St Albans and a commendable eagerness to act together to meet the social needs of the area’s residents without relying on “ the powers that be ” to take the initiative or provide the money. For many people a residents’ or community association could never take the place of the variety of organisations and clubs to which they belong which draw members from all over the city. But if the association provides those who find it difficult to participate in city-wide activities with a means of channelling their energies to improve life in their suburb, it will be doing a good job.

Some of the association s time will, inevitably, be taken up with making representations on such matters as drainage and road construction to local bodies. But the members of the association seem eager to make constructive suggestions rather than simply to lodge complaints. The association will have no formal status on the local body scene, not even the limited powers that community councils would have enjoyed under the local government scheme of the outgoing government. But the members of local bodies would be wise to heed the association, for if it proves to be as active a force in the life of St Albans as its inaugural meeting suggested it will become, its political clout will be considerable.