Railway railings

Railway in Sydney Gardens 

Network Rail are seeking to fenmce the high speed line through Sydney Gardens.

Netwrok Rail, who own the line, have been instructed by the Rail Regulator that the railway line must be made safe against trespass and vandalism. At a consultation in February, 90% of people agreed that something should be done to improve safety.

The revised plan is for a tall iron railing, one metre back from the low stone wall. The little-used track-side path to the North would be closed entirely. Network Rail also suggests a gate in the fence, so that they can organise track-side steam train viewing.

The plans will still need permission from the council, who own the park, and from the planning committee as the gardens are protected.

Moving onto Bathwick Hill

Cleveland Court 

As of today, I live at the junction of Cleveland Walk and Bathwick Hill. We shall be moving in over the coming week. The new postal address is:

8 Cleveland Court, Bathwick Hill, Bath BA2 6JY

No need for a welcome visit though – during the day I am at work and in the evenings I will be at meetings! You will know that I’m in if, on a warm day with the windows open, you hear Beethoven sonatas. I tend to tire after an hour of playing though, so you won’t have to endure them for long.

University neighbours’ Forum – Thurs 18th, 17:30

The next public forum for Bath University and its neighbours is this week. I established this forum to give local residents more information about work and events at the university and to give them more influence in decision making.

The meeting is at 5:30pm on Thursday 18th on campus. The agenda includes news on building works on campus, the new bus service, an update on the masterplan and a list of forthcoming large events on the campus.

Please RSVP to W.J.Marsh@bath.ac.uk or 386285 and refreshments will be prepared for you!

Summer garden parties

Bathwick Hill 

It was a wonderful day on Bathwick Hill yesterday with Summer fetes, open gardens and tea & cakes from St Mary’s all the way up to the Youth Hostel. In warm and sunny weather, the Church Fete and Bathwick Hill Residents’ Assoc Garden Party coincided.

The five residents’ associations within Bathwick do an excellent job of looking after their members and the Bathwick Hill RA is especially good at social events and community building. From next month, I shall be able to become a full member of the association when I move onto the hill.

Many areas of Bathwick do not have a formal association, but get by with Neighbourhood Watch fora and general neighbourliness. Some grants are available from the council towards setting up a Residents’ Association, though, and I would be happy to help a committed group of people to establish an organisation.

Committee controversy

In light of this week’s Chronicle I thought I’d better write a little about Development Control Committee, or ‘planning’.

Normally I try to keep this blog to mostly interesting local news items, with occasional mention mentions of council meetings – the Regulatory (Access) Committee is as fun as it sounds. To test this , I have set up a running poll to the left hand side of this page, just below the links. Kindly vote for ‘more’ or fewer’ committee stories, so that I don’t waste anyone’s time with long meeting minutes in the future.

However, last month’s planning meeting has spilt considerably into the news realm, with accusations of coersion, dishonesty and impropriety over the park and ride applications.

I voted to support two park and ride proposals, at Lansdown and Odd Down (although I am quite proud to have voted against this at a previous meeting). However, I could not support the third – an application to concrete over the river-side meadow at Bathampton for a 1,400 space car park (yes, I do know the Joni Mitchell song; by apparent co-incidence I returned home after the seven hour planning meeting to hear Big Yellow Taxi on the sterio). Given the level of congestion on the London Road and suppressed demand, the traffic report showed that the scheme would allow 1,400 extra car drivers into the city centre, without any reduction in congestion or pollution. This I assessed as particularly small gain, far outweighed by the huge inherent cost of paving an alluvial meadow in such an idyllic spot.

However, others did not agree with me, indeed two Liberal Democrats voted for the scheme, demonstrating an entirely split party vote. However, all six of the Conservative panel members backed the Conservative Cabinet’s scheme. Quasi-judicial committees such as planning should not operate a party whip system. It is entirely possible that the Conservative members, all being men of similar ages and backgrounds, chose by chance to vote in the same manner. I trust that this will be investigated by the standards board in course. However, the Liberal Democrats do not operate a party whip system on planning, or indeed any other meeting. At council meetings, we tend to vote together because we agree with each other!

The Newbridge Park and Ride and associated bus road application was not determined by the planning committee. Instead, the committee deferred the application as it felt that not enough evidence had been provided to support the scheme. Certainly, I felt the the transport justification was insubstantial, and voted to wait until more information was provided.

A government minister has now suspended the planning application while he decides whether to let the council decide it, or whether he will send it to a government inspector to decide. If it does come back to BathNES, it will come before my committee again, so at this point -to avoid impropriety – I should stop typing.

Rubbish and recycling collection changes

Cllr Nicholas Coombes with his recycling box and compost bin

From this week, household waste and recycling is being collected on the same day. If you haven’t yet discovered your day, visit the council website to find out.

I think that these are beneficial changes which reduce the frequency of waste on the streets and makes recycling more practical. I was elected on a manifesto of introducing same day waste collections, so I am glad that the council have introduced this, even if it is much later than I would have liked.

Incidentally, I hear that even David Cameron’s own Conservative council now collect rubbish from his back garden only once a fortnight…

Election results

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg with Bristol councillors

On 4th June the European Elections co-incided with local elections in most rural areas of the country.

As an active Liberal Democrat supporter, I have been campaigning for my party in these elections, in Bath for the European elections, but mostly in Bristol where we stood a good chance of winning control of the council.

Our Lib Dem MEP, Graham Watson, has been in Bath several times last month. I joined him leafleting in Lambridge, near his mother’s old house! I am proud that the Liberal Democrats campaigned for the European elections on European issues. In the last two months, we delivered three European themed leaflets to (nearly) every house in Bath – 100,000 items in all. It is disappointing that no other party took these elections seriously enough to campaign to this degree.

In the run up to the elections, with politics and the opinion polls in flux, the election was considered very unpredictable. The results, oddly, show very little change from five years ago. Nationally, the number of MEPs representing Britain to Brussels has reduced. Labour absorbed most of these losses; indeed here in the South West the allocation went down by one, and our Labour MEP lost his seat. Aside from that, there was no change in BathNES, in the South West or (to much extent) nationally. The only notable result in BathNES was the fall of the Labour vote and the comensurate growth of the Green and minor party vote. The Conservatives, Lib Dems and UKIP got largely the same result on the same turnout.

In Bristol, however, the local elections have brought about significant change. The Liberal Democrats won four extra councillors, giving them majority control of the city. Labour lost heavily in a once strong labour council. This fits a little noticed pattern of Liberal Democrat growth in urban areas. The Lib Dems now run Bristol, Cardiff, Sheffield, Liverpool, Newcastle and Edinburgh city councils among others. Nationwide, the Lib Dems came second in the popular vote – again ahead of Labour – and were the only party to increase their support from the previous election.

That’s why this website has been a little quiet recently – I have been developing a healthy suntan delivering leaflets to the suburban housing estates of Bristol. This isn’t just good exercise, Lib Dem control of Bristol city council has real benefits to us here in Bath. My primary concern was the proposed incinerator, which the fallen Labour council had been forcing through. This pollution and unsustainable project is now dead, just in time before a single chimney was built!

Woodside care home re-opened

Yesterday I joined the Mayor of Bath to officially open Woodside care home on Bathwick Hill.

This was one of many council elderly people’s homes sold by BathNES a few years ago in order to fund the refurbishment of the rest. The site was bought by a local family business and has been thoroughly rennovated as a private care home. Their first clients are due to move in from Thursday.

There are still some outstanding planning problems with the landscape and garden, however; work has been halted while BathNES council investigates. The Bathwick Hill Residents’ Association and I are following this.

Notwithstanding, the home manager and company director are approachable and seem genuinely concerned to be good neighbours. Let me know if you experience otherwise…

In the council chamber

Bath Guildhall

It’s mid-way through a busy week in the council chamber.

On Thursday we had a meeting of the Full Council (ie, all 65 councillors). These are now quite rare under the Conservatives so there is generally an exciting (and long) agenda. This was also our AGM so we elected a new council chair and made changes to our panels and committees.

I have swapped one quasi-judicial panel for another; leaving Regulatory & Access to take up Development Control. That is, I have handed over the footpaths’ committee in exchange for planning. I have sat on the planning committee to fill in for missing members several times recently, so know how it works by now. I also have experience from the other side; I have an architecture degree and have worked for, and submitted applications with, a couple of Bath architecture practices. This does mean though, that I will have to be very careful giving planning advice to Bathwick residents. I will continue to explain the system to applicants and objectors, so that they can make best use of the opportunities available for them to put their case, but I can no longer speak for or against individual cases before the meeting.

On Thursday night, council had two named votes. Ordinarily, votes are taken by show of hands with only the numbers recorded. However, councillors can request a named vote be taken for the public record.

The first vote was after a debate about licensing a casino in Bath; a similar proposal was passed in principal last year. Now with applicants in mind, the cabinet brought the controversial plans back to council. While the Conservatives proposed the licence, they clearly want the political cover of a council resolution in case it gets unpopular! A free vote was held, in which I voted against. I appreciate the principal that responsible adults should be free to spend their money as they see fit, and that politicians ought not interfere, but in this case, I cannot see the social or economic benefits of a slot machine parlour outweighing the social and economic costs. Regardless, this was an unusually and genuinely interesting debate with a close result. The casino licence was granted.

The second named vote was altogether more odd. Bristol Airport wants to expand and is preparing a planning application to its local authority, North Somerset. The Liberal Democrats of Bristol City council recently passed a motion questioning the justificaion for expansion on both economic and environmental grounds. BathNES council has a similar motion on record from a few years ago, but the Lib Dems wanted to strengthen it. With the airport causing as much global warming as all the traffic in Bristol, the environmental cost of short haul air travel is obvious. However, less clear is the economic cost. Recent surveys by the South West regional assembly reveals that most business does not want or use a regional airport like Bristol. The airport is used mainly for tourists – leaving the UK. With convenience and cheap fares, British people spending weekends away are taking their money out of the UK, hurting tourism jobs. It should be fairly obvious that there are more Bristolians who holiday in rural Spain and Portugal, than Iberian farmers who take their holidays in Bristol. However, this section of the Liberal Democrat motion was deleted and exchanged by one praising the job creation potential of the airport expansion. The Conservative who proposed this not only sits on the Bristol airport consultation panel, but his ward is the most blighted by airport traffic and noise! With the motion thus wrecked, I was forced to vote against.

Finally, now that I am on the planning committee, I am one of those judging the park and ride and BRT proposals on Wednesday. I look forward to an exciting meeting with an open mind.

Throw-away article

a new bin by the university

While I can’t resist a pun-headline, waste is an important issue.

Litter bins in particular are of concern to many up and down Bathwick Hill. Over the course of the last two years, Armand and I have had to harrass the council bin department about the replacement of three bins on the hill, at the canal bridge, opposite Cleveland Walk and at the top bus stop.

This month though, I have had the minor triumph of an all-new bin being installed at the very top of the hill. This is at the junction of Bathwick Hill, North Road, Copseland, Oakley and The Avenue – a rather busy pedestrian intersection, especially with the foot path access to the university. This is a prime location for students walking to and from campus, and also catches them leaving the bus here, as pointed out by members of the Beech Avenue Residents’ Association at their last AGM.

However, even the expension of our litter bin network is only maintenance; it does not develop our approach to waste. The Liberal Democrats have long argued for a ‘Zero Waste’ policy, which tackles the entire length of the waste chain. This is why, for example, we are opposed to the Bristol incinerator; provision of an easy ‘solution’ does not encourage recycling or deter production (of excess packaging for example).

At the most recent council cabinet meeting, I asked the Conservatives about putting recycling bins on the street, alongside normal litter bins. I had first asked about this in November 2007. The answer, paraphrased, is that the trials of recycling bins in parks, that the inherited from the Liberal Democrat administration 2 years ago, are continuing successfully. No moves have been made to expand this into the street.

Somewhat disappointing.