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This week, Bradford Council approved the application submitted by Harden Council for Goit Stock Wood to be registered as an Asset of Community Value. This will give the community a period of six months to put together a bid to buy the wood, during which time it can’t be sold to another bidder (though the vendor is under no obligation to sell to the community group). We think this is a really positive step as it shows that the wood is considered a valuable community asset and helps us make the case that it should be community owned.
We have now identified five trustees for the registered charity (CIO) and we are working on setting out our charitable objects (which is like our vision and mission, but written in formal legal language, as it is the legal definition of what the charity will be allowed to do.) We plan to submit our application to register a charity in the next couple of weeks.
We will have the option of adding further charity trustees later, and we’d particularly like to do this if we find someone who can help increase representation of different groups of local residents and visitors to the wood, so that we can do a better job of connecting with people, especially when it comes to fundraising. In particular we are lacking people aged under 30, women, and those from ethnic minority groups, so if you are in one or more of those categories and would be interested to join us as a trustee we’d love to hear from you.
After the paperwork is in and is being processed by the Charity Commission, we’ll move on to two key activities:
1. Confirming the viability of the project – including assessing the risks and costs involved to make sure they are manageable – working with local woodland experts (and perhaps with relevant legal professionals) to help us do this
2. Planning our fundraising activities – we’ll clearly need to raise a substantial amount of money, so we need to think about how we will approach this. We can’t start to actually raise the bulk of the funds until the charity registration is complete, but we can be prepared so that we can hit the ground running once this can start.
If you are interested in helping with either of these two activities, please get in touch with us. Once the charity registration is in progress we’ll organise a meeting for those who want to help with our project team, to plan the way forward.
So far we’ve been able to get the word out about our plans through our website, email list, and posters in Harden, Wilsden, Cullingworth and Bingley, as well as having articles published in the Telegraph & Argus, Keighley News and InYourArea website, and sharing information in local Facebook groups. But we realise that some people, particularly some of those who live very close to the wood, haven’t heard about us or are not on our email list so have missed out on updates. As we move forward we’ll plan some wider publicity campaigns, but for now it would really help us if you can help spread the word to your neighbours. Let them know that they can read more and sign up to our email mailing list at goitstock.org.uk. If you know someone who doesn’t use the internet and wants to hear from us, please can you either pass on our updates to them or get in touch on their behalf and we’ll work out the best way of keeping them informed.