Successful Campaigns

21/09/21 We won! I am delighted to announce the fantastic news that the club is safe for the time being after agreeing a new 5 year lease with the owners yesterday. We will continue to work with a view to acquiring long term security, but for now the threat of immediate closure has gone. Thank you all for your support, and for showing such love for our fabulous local Cricket and Bowls Club. Very best wishes Everyone at Aigburth Cricket and Bowls Club.

On 4 November we handed in our petition to NSDC's Castle House, along with an envelope of the Sycamore trees' seeds and a letter from the trees asking for their legacy to continue. We had a huge crowd chanting 'FREE THE TREES' as local children handed in our total 6,081 signatures. It was a real magical community moment. Just twenty minutes after handing in the petition, NSDC formally voted to preserve the trees and Library Garden for good at an Extraordinary Council Meeting. Newark residents and visitors are in huge relief from the outcome. It's been such an emotional rollercoaster for our community, but team spirit, love and passion prevailed.

10/11/21 It gives us great pleasure to announce that the RNLI has announced their decision to station a new Shannon class all-weather lifeboat in New Quay. This is the news we've been waiting for and we could't have done it without your support. Thank you! You can read more about here: https://www.facebook.com/CeredigionLifeboatCampaign Newyddion bendigedig i Gei Newydd ac i Fae Ceredigion. Diolch yn fawr iawn am eich cefnogaeth dros y 4 blynedd diwethaf. Diolch / Thank you from us all at the CLC

28/01/22 We won! London Borough of Waltham Forest did not rezone the large swathe of green open space around The WaterWorks Centre for housing, and has committed to protecting the borough’s Metropolitan Open Land in its draft local plan. That’s not to say that the Waterworks Meadow is safe from development. The Lee Valley Regional Park Authority still has plans to knock down the WaterWorks Centre and build something on the site of the Centre and its car park, but their original plan to build housing has been scuppered and it will be harder because the site hasn’t been rezoned. If you want to keep an eye on the story as it unfolds, follow Save Lea Marshes on Twitter (@SaveLeaMarshes) or online (www.saveleamarshes.org.uk).

STOP PRESS - DECEMBER 2024 GALBA (Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport) is STILL fighting LBA's attempts to expand. So far, we’ve been incredibly successful in our five-year l battle. We have managed to block LBA at every stage of their expansion plans. But now LBA’s bosses have asked the government’s Planning Inspectors to overturn restrictions on night flights, at a Public Inquiry to be held in Leeds in March 2025. If LBA win they will be able to fly an UNLIMITED number of planes at night. Increasing night time flying is central to the airport's expansion plans. The reason is simple: unlimited night flying allows airlines to fly more of their planes round the clock, which means they can dramatically increase the number of flights at the airport. That’s what LBA’s appeal to the Planning Inspectors is all about. More night flights would mean more greenhouse gases from jet engines, polluting our fragile climate, when everyone knows we have to cut emissions as fast and as much as possible. The Climate Change Committee has repeatedly said that airports should not be allowed to expand because there are no large scale alternatives to the fossil fuels used to fly aircraft. OUR ORIGINAL CAMPAIGN We have successfully petitioned the Secretary of State to hold a public inquiry into the expansion of Leeds Bradford airport so that the full national impact of airport expansion can be assessed. The Public Inquiry was due to start on September 13th 2022. But Leeds Bradford Airport pulled out. Since then GALBA has been fighting expansion on many fronts. Here are some of the things we have achieved: We succeeded in calling for a public inquiry into the original planning application – causing LBA to withdraw its application. We achieved this win by using every tactic available to us, including the very best legal advice, an enormous public petition and a letter-writing campaign. We exposed hundreds of unlawful night flights at LBA over the past three summers. We were only able to do this because our dedicated and expert team literally logged every single arrival and departure at the airport – an extremely time-consuming and laborious process. Our hard work paid off because we were able to prove that the airport was not telling Leeds City Council the truth about night flight numbers and the Council was not independently monitoring them. We persuaded Leeds City Council to turn down the airport’s attempts to rewrite the rules that limit the number of night flights. This was a huge blow to the airport and we believe it only came about because Leeds City Council was not able to argue with our relentless monitoring and the detailed legal arguments that we presented to them. During this time we have kept our campaign at the top of the agenda. We’ve made politicians and the public take notice with a series of high profile demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, petitions, fundraisers and media appearances. Why is this important? As we stand on the brink of climate and ecological breakdown, airports throughout the UK are trying to expand. Leeds Bradford, Bristol, Stansted, Manston, Southampton, Luton and Gatwick are pressing ahead with expansion plans. Supporters of each expansion claim that the increase in carbon emissions is small in a national context. However, the cumulative impact would be a huge increase in emissions at precisely the time we should be doing everything in our power to reduce them. Leeds Bradford Airport expansion is a test case. The local authority has approved expansion, claiming that carbon emissions from international flights is not a matter for local authorities to consider! So we have called on the Secretary of State, Robert Jenrick, to order a public inquiry so that the climate impact of expansion can be assessed in a national context. This is not just about Leeds-Bradford. Approval of this application would open the floodgates of expansion at other regional airports. The government must intervene to stop the planned expansion of regional airports if it is to meet legally binding environmental targets and avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. You can hear it from the experts. Over 200 Leeds Uni Academics already agree. https://www.galba.uk/post/press-release-246-uni-of-leeds-staff-and-researchers-ask-robert-jenrick-to-call-in-lba-decision Most importantly please share with your friends and family. Tell them why this matters so much to you. Thank you from GALBA - Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport

Birmingham City Council approved the plans for Improved parking and entrance to Boldmere Gate despite Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council's Conservative Councillors objections. Thanks for all your support

Time to deliver it!!

We did it! We got supermarkets to do the right thing and hand back their business rates relief back to the government. In total, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Lidl, Asda, Morrisons, and Aldi, are returning £2bn in relief money. Though this money should never have been given to them in the first place, our win proves that by piling on the pressure, we can hold these big businesses to account. And that's not all: we've also influenced how other big retailers handle their relief money. This is huge. By showing support for this campaign, you've played an important role in how we recover from this crisis. Now that we've had £2bn handed back, we need to see this money distributed to the right causes. When we clapped for carers and other essential workers, we weren’t thinking of supermarket CEOs or shareholders, but the thousands of people working on shop floors around the country who took the greatest risks to keep the rest of us safe and well-supplied.

25/03/21 We are delighted to share breaking news that the Millstone Point salmon battery farm application has been REJECTED! The North Ayrshire Council Planning Committee has just concluded their discussion of the application by the "Scottish" Salmon Company; the councillors voted unanimously to refuse the proposal. Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who has supported on this long journey. There may yet be more chapters to this saga if the decision is appealed by the applicant; but for now we celebrate this momentous decision which rightly acknowledges the special qualities of this area and the vital importance of Arran's natural environment to our wellbeing and economy. With very best wishes, Russ Cheshire on behalf of all the Friends of Millstone Point.

The closing of the petition was preempted by the decision of OfCom to not humour the complainants by punishing or admonishing ITV for the broadcasting of the performance by Diversity. The petition was submitted to OfCom, nonetheless, and I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who signed I have no doubt that the existence of of these various petitions will have influenced OfCom to come to the right decision