You will probably be wondering where and how we got our name from? First we need to understand the political topography of the area. Barkingside ward comprises that part of Gants Hill north of the A12. However, Barkingside tube station is in Aldborough ward while Barkingside High Street is split down its middle between Fullwell ward and Fairlop ward. Fairlop ward includes Fullwell Cross and half of Hainault but does not include Fairlop Plain - that is in Aldborough ward. Fullwell ward is mostly Clayhall and whilst Clayhall ward does contain a small part of Clayhall it is mostly Redbridge – not to be confused with the name of the borough or the other ward by that name in Southampton. Have you got that? Would you like me to go over it again? We started life as Clayhall Agenda 21 in the spring of 1997. This was a pilot project by Redbridge Strategic Services, funded by central government, on a programme that arose from a top brass environment summit in 1992, which took place in Rio de Janeiro. The big idea was that we need a bottom up approach to the environment where local communities are encouraged to act for themselves and therefore complement the prescriptive top down approach. Trouble is at present it conflicts rather than compliments, but we’ll leave that aside for now. The Agenda 21 is the Agenda for sustainable living in the 21st century. The area of benefit, Clayhall, was defined by the IG5 postal district extended slightly eastwards to include Barkingside High Street. The council engaged with residents over a two-year period via workshops and meetings to produce a Community Action Plan on what they felt should be done. This was published in 1999 but at some intervening point the Fullwell ward Councillors threw a strop because their ward was included in its entirety but the name was not mentioned. The Action plan bears the name Clayhall/Fullwell Agenda 21. At this point we were set free and became an independent body with an elected committee and constitution. But the residents living around Barkingside High Street wanted their location included, so we became Barkingside/Clayhall/Fullwell Agenda 21. The councillors assumed this to mean wards but the residents had other ideas. Just to add to the confusion, in the year 2000 the council introduced Area Committees and split the wards of those 3 names between Area 3 and Area 4. By the AGM of 2001 most had become tongue-tied with this rather long-winded name and the secretary had got RSI from having to keep typing it out. So, some bright spark [I know not who] pointed out that the original name of Barking Side referred to pretty much the whole area covered by both Area 3 and Area 4. So we changed our name to Barkingside 21! And there we stayed – at least for now!
