Occupy Nottingham were served yesterday with notice to leave within 7 days, before eviction papers are served.

There is no valid need nor reason at all for the council to evict Occupy Notingham, a deal had been mutually agreed upon provisionally by representatives of both parties, & actions were being taken to set it that in motion & to show good faith.

The deal which would be a staged withdrawal of the camp from the 'square', by first compacting the camp & replacing the barriers, then moving to an alternative camp location within the city, leaving a public discussion & info stand in residence on the square. The finer points were still being negotiated, but the essence of the deal which would ultimately have seen the camp removed from the square to an alternative location at no cost to the council & with no need to spend Nottingham's revenue on expensive court costs, had been made & would have happened with the public's consent.

There is no valid need nor reason at all for the council to evict us.

Since Oct 15th 2011, we have been asking for spokepeople from us to meet with members of the council for a discussion, this had been consistantly denied, despite regular liason meetings, & in January 2012 the council stopped all talks, no more they said... it seems we may have been asking too many questions.

However a month later, council representatives approached us to begin talks once more, following which a proposal in response to our requests of the council was drawn up & agreed upon between an Occupyy Notts & Nottm council spokespeople, this was then presented to the relevant parties & begun to be acted upon.

In short the deal was that if we compacted the camp which would remove the unused areas from within the camp, creating less of an area to maintain, more space for public seating outside the front to make up for that lost through our camp, & replace the external barrier with council security fencing, we would get the assistance of a council team to help clear up, have a two page centre spread piece about us in the Nottm Arrow, along with a private Q&A session with councilors, in which we would present them with the response they had previously asked of us as to where & what we thought the council could do better, or should prioritise through our dicussions with the public of Nottm so far.

Following that we were negotiating an alternate camp location in the city centre, with an info stand remaining on the square, once we moved camp, the council had agreed to recognise us as an organisation working to help create a better society for all, to liaise with us regarding our outreach work to relay information & start actioning solutions, hold a press statement with us announcing what we were in agreement on, & we would host a public debate in the council house.

Some finer details were still in negotiation such as; the provision on the square of drinking water, electricity hook up, portaloo & emptying, rubbish & recycling collection, fencing of a practical height, & all of this continuing at the new site the location still undecided. Any of which not covered by the councils provision to Nottm citizens, or our own council tax payments, would be paid for by us. Also approval of the Arrow article before print, specific type of coordination with our outreach, rather than the offered paste table on a Saturday, we were thinking of a covered info stannd which would provide sheleter with external seating & tables, of our choice of type, size, & location any day of the year during the hours of daylight, so long as we continued to coordinate with the council regarding events held on the square, & to host a regular monthly debate in the council house on a subject of our choice.

All of this we wanted confirmed in writing, & prior to making a final decision, we wanted to ask the public's opinion, & we would go with the majority concensus, as we believe the choice should be there's to make, not based on a few individuals preference & business interests. As the point the council still seem to fail to realise is that this is about them listening to us from now on, we have had enough of listening to their dictations that affect our lives, they are our elected representatives & its high time they began representing us not their own interests, as we have found our own voice!

Apart from the negotiating the finer points the deal had initially been accepted by both parties, which would in the end mean the moving of the camp from the square without any expensive court costs, so why have the council opted to waste Nottinghams resources when there is no necessity to do so?
In the camp after an initial delay due to snow, cold weather & lack of willing manpower, we have since had been busy clearing out camp of anything unwanted or broken, making space for compacting, & to show willing we pulled the info point back initially by approx 15ft.

We were going to compact the camp further in good faith the weekend just gone, but due to the councils backtrack from the deal, & new intention to just evict us we have decided we will not now compact the camp, nor move off the square unless forced, we will continue to occupy wherever we can, & we will maintain a presence on the square indefinately no matter what occurs, until the council listens to us, we revoke any deal until such time as the council cancel their intention to evict us, stop trying to push us around, & begin to listen to us.

This shows a distinct lack of sincerity from the councilors, & also leads us to believe they cannot be trusted to keep their word, or relyed upon to listen to peoples needs, & certainly not to act in their best interests,. This we find very sad, as we were so close to showing & achieving, another path between the digging in of heels, & of forced confrontation, by reaching a mutually agreeable decision acceptable to all, & in turn that would have shown us that the council did have the citizens of Nottingham's interests at heart & were willing to listen to & help them , but instead they fall tell us we must do as they say, well hello we are your people, & we want you the council to listen to us & do as we ask for a change!

We were told that the deal is now only still on the table if we leave the square within 7 days & do not occupy anywhere else. We pointed out that occupying is the essence of occupy in case they had missed that, & that we will not be pushed around anymore by beaurocracy that refuses to listen to its people!