About the Forum
CNCF (Central Norwich Citizens' Forum) is a company limited by guarantee, a registered charity and a Development Trust that works to promote the quality of life for those who live, work and play in the centre of Norwich. It achieves its aims by working in partnership with local businesses, Norwich City Council and other statutory and voluntary entities.
Membership of CNCF is open to all residents of the City Centre area (as defined in its Memorandum and Articles of Association) whose names are included in the Register of Local Electors and are therefore over the age of eighteen.
The object of the Company are, for the benefit of the residents of Norwich City without distinction of sex, sexual orientation, disability, age, race political or religious beliefs or other opinions, by associating together the said inhabitants and local authorities, voluntary and other organisations in a common effort to encourage and enable said residents to take an active part in civil life and to promote good citzenship, with the object of improving the quality of life and wellbeing of the community.
Development Goals
Short-term
To promote democratic involvement in civil society by supporting residents to acquire the skills and self-confidence to participate fully in local decision-making.
This will be achieved by employing, eventually, a part-time administrator to respond to day to day requests from members and to promote CNCF more actively in the local community. At present the (unpaid) Chairman of CNCF spends up to 30 hours per week dealing with routine tasks. Once an administrator is in place, the Chairman will be able to devote more time to developing the long-term strategy of CNCF, and to initiating new projects.
CNCF will seek to enhance funding from the local authority and wherever else it may be found to assist in achieving this objective.
Long-term
The Forum has a strategy being developed to create an arts centre where ex-students of the Norwich School of Arts and others may create and display their work to the public in an environment conducive to this activity and at a rental charge low enough to be viable for those with little or no capital to enable them yet to pay commercial rents. The Forum has identified a site and is in negotiations with the landlord.
The Forum has been instrumental in initiating and developing with the local residents a community garden off Rose Lane. The site has recently been lost to development and another is actively being sought
The Forum is committed to assisting with the creation of or, itself, creating a cycle centre in the heart of the commercial employment area of the city to provide cycles for sale, a repair workshop, storage facilities, clothes storage facilities, toilets and showering facilities for cyclists to enable them to change into work clothes at the beginning and store them at the end of their working day so as to encourage greater use of cycles instead of cars to commute to work. In this regard it has achieved the support and assistance of the City Centre Management Partnership and is actively seeking another business partner to sell and repair cycles and provide related services.
The overall aim of the Forum is to encourage and empower residents in the city centre to fully participate in the civil society and, to that end, it will itself do so, recruit others to join in and provide training, mentoring, experience and skills to enable them to do so.
Media Relations
CNCF is regarded as a source of valuable information for local journalists and it has positive working relationships with local media. In the past year, the Chairman (the official spokesperson for the Forum) has participated in numerous television interviews with both BBC and ITV, undertaken numerous radio interviews with Radio Norfolk, Broadland Radio and Radio 5 Live and contributed to innumerable articles in local newspapers, notably the Eastern Daily Press and the Evening News who are constantly in touch seeking residents’ views about local stories.