Notes of Action from Risborough Area Business Group Meeting held at Princes Risborough School on 15^th September 2005 at 1900 Hrs

Attendees

Lance Adlam – Hon Chairman

Bill Bendyshe-Brown – Hon Sec & Treasurer

+ 15 other members

Item		Topic	Action
1		Chairman’s Opening Remarks The Chairman opened the meeting by welcoming everybody to the meeting of the RABG.
2		Apologies for Absence Apologies had been received from Barry Clark, John Mason, Dave Robertson, John Hughes, Liz Wager, Edward Tadros, Peter Keen, Olivia Finucane , Chris Shields, Ian & Jacqui Mackinson , Dawn Curry, Paul Leat.
3		Minutes of the meeting held on 13^th July 2005 (previously circulated) The Minutes were agreed as a true record.
4		Matters arising from Minutes not already covered by the Agenda Item 4 – Links to Other External Organisations. The Hon Sec was still in discussion with external organisations to assess their reaction to joining the RABG. Action ongoing Item 4 – CCTV. The Hon Sec advised the meeting that a meeting had been held on 28^th July between PR Town Council and WDC and that WDC were now looking to secure joint external funding from the Thames Valley Police towards introduction of the CCTV cameras to PR. A further meeting was planned for October. Action ongoing Item 4 – Electricity Supplies. The Chairman had made an approach the local power supplier to improve the robustness of the power supplies to the town and was still awaiting a response. Action ongoing Item 7 – August Social Event. The August social event was a great success and a vote of thanks was recorded for Liz Wager for organising it and Bill Bendyshe-Brown for the use of his garden and house.	Sec Sec Chairman
5		Business Update The Hon Sec/Treasurer advised the meeting that a meeting had been held on 28^th July with local stakeholders to agree draft Terms of Reference for the Town Master Plan Study (now called Risborough 2035) for Princes Risborough and the surrounding areas. These had been agreed and a tender document had gone out to 3 companies for their bid for the task. Timescales were for the study to be completed by March 2006 with interim reports before the end of 2005. A need for input from the business community and a representative from the group would be sought shortly. The questionnaire for the forthcoming Tourism South East audit of the Risborough Area had gone out to those companies/individuals who had been identified as best able to give an input, including 11 from the RABG, and the first part of the audit was planned for 5^th October 2005. The meeting was asked to agree their input and details were filled in by general consensus. The Secretary would forward this to WDC. The RACA Annual General Meeting was planned to be held on 19^th October where WDC would also be presenting their Imagine The Future review as part of the agenda, and a short presentation would be made by the Risborough 2035 consultants. All members of the RABG were encouraged to attend where future developments of the Risborough area would be discussed and feedback sought.	Sec All
6	RACA Action Group Reports: Economic. The first meeting had yet to be held. Transport. Graham Wiles advised the meeting that much of the discussions to date had been held to clarify what actions would be required in the future. He was aiming to get a more structured approach to the discussions at future meetings. However, he would be contacting all RABG members shortly to gauge their reactions to specific topics raised. Community & Housing. The first meeting was planned for 16^th September. Heather would give feedback at the next meeting. Environment. Youssef Safir was not at the meeting so no feedback was provided.
7	Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway Briefing on Progress Richard Floyd, the Chairman of the C&PR Railway Association gave a very interesting briefing on the background to the Heritage Railway based in Chinnor, and of the recent discussions it had had with Network Rail to extend the line into Princes Risborough. The Association was a registered charity which owned all the railway line which was unusual. The plan was to have a 99 year lease with Network Rail for the line into Risborough which would allow them to rebuild the platform. They have set up provisional agreements with Chiltern Railway to allow passengers to buy tickets and travel from London or Birmingham and the use the C&PR Railway link to Chinnor. They were still working on how to undertake promotional activities to attract people to visit the railway. However, there were other points which they thought RABG and the Town Council needed to address such as how to get people into the town from the station and to make the town an attraction zone. Currently, C&PR Railway receive some 2,500 people over special attraction weekends, such as Christmas and Thomas the Tank Engine, and 200-400 every other weekend. This meant that there was a great opportunity for Princes Risborough to capture this new market. The Chairman thanked Richard for his excellent presentation and promised full support from the RABG in helping them achieve their desired aim of meeting the timescale of end 2006 to launch the extended railway line.		All
8	Web Page Update The new web page was live and Mike and Pam Pitcher asked members to complete their pages for input of their details onto the site.
9	Presentations by 2 local businesses Presentations were made by the following businesses. Each business was asked to give no more than a 5 minute presentation and to bring one local issue to the table at the end. · Business Link Julie Murdoch gave an outline of how Business Link had developed from the original concept by Michael Heseltine of making the organisation a one-stop-shop for businesses into a much bigger organisation which provides help to any size company. The Milton Keynes/Oxford/Bucks branch HQ was based in Thame and Julie was the Account Manager to work alongside organisations such as the RABG. The Business Link web site was excellent and had an event section, help on business plans etc. She was always available to assist anybody who required help or advice. They had a variety of issues presented to them from help required to organising events. · International Fire Consultants Graham Wiles gave a briefing on the origins of IFC and how they had established a niche market by providing expert fire safety advice to companies and architects as a non aligned organisation rather than being part of a much larger company of which fire expertise was just a small segment. IFC is a major force in the field of quality fire safety consultancy and consists of a team of qualified engineers with experience in almost every aspect of fire safety, including structural and material matters and employs design engineers who are specialists in fire safety engineering. He gave illustrations of fire tests on particular materials and how planning had to be taken account of fire requirements at the outset of a project rather than later on when often it was too late to accommodate the full requirements and they had to be tailored to meet project constraints. He also gave illustrations of the type of projects they had been involved in such as GCHQ at Cheltenham. They were an expanding company with overseas offices in Europe and the Middle East. The Chairman thanked members for their presentations and looked forward to those at future meetings.
10	Preparations for AGM – 13^th October The Chairman outlined what he thought would be the structure for the RABG Committee for the coming year and proposed the following members: President Chairman Secretary Treasurer RACA members Social Secretary PR Manager This list was unanimously agreed and nomination forms would be sent out shortly for nominations for each post.		Sec
11	Any Other Business The Secretary announced that he had arranged for the November meeting a presentation of recycling policy and requirements for businesses in the Risborough area. WDC officers would be in attendance as would a member from the Corporate Environmental Advisory Centre (CEAC) based in High Wycombe, and Grundon’s the refuse collection company who was a leading company in recycling.
12	Date for Next Meeting The next meeting would, therefore take place on Thursday, 13^th October at Princes Risborough School at 7 pm. This will be the RABG AGM and all members were asked to make a note in their diary and encouraged to attend.		All

30 September 2005

W J Bendyshe-Brown

Hon Membership Sec & Treasurer RABG