East Area Committee

The city council's East Area Committee (covering Coleridge ward) meets again tomorrow, Thursday 9 February at 7pm at the Cherry Trees Day Centre. All members of the public are invited to attend and ask questions.

I definitely recommend going and contributing for anyone who wants to see action on anything in particular, but watch out, it is likely to go on a bit as councillors do like the sound of their own voices and some get very confused, often...

There's even an opportunity to volunteer to help run the Cambridge Half Marathon. (But see the Big Society running event!)

The agenda is:

• 1. Cambridge Half Marathon
• 2. Tree Planting on Parks and Open Space
• 3. Apologies For Absence
• 4. Declarations Of Interest
• 5. To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 15 December 2012.
• 6. Matters & Actions Arising From The Minutes
• 7. OPEN FORUM
• 8. Cambridgeshire Drug and Alcohol Action Team - New Drug Treatment Service Provider
• 9. Tree Planting on Parks and Open Space
• 10. Environmental Improvement Programme
• 11. Information Report - Results of Consultation for Proposed Loading Bay at 103 Mill Road
• 12. Alternative Future Arrangements for East Area Committee meetings
• 13. East Area Capital Grants Programme - Application and Project Appraisal for St. Philips Church, Mill Road
• 14. Planning Applications
• 14a. 11/1321/FUL: 129 - 131 Vinery Road, Cambridge
• 14b. 11/1432/FUL: 13-14 Mercers Row
• 14c. Land formerly known as the rear of 7 – 9 Mill Road, Cambridge, now 1a Willis Road, Cambridge

East Area Committee today

It's the first meeting of the East Area Committee since the local elections tonight, 7pm at the Cherry Trees Day Centre. The Labour party will back with a majority on the committee after defeating Raj Shah in May in Romsey Ward. It'll be interesting to see if his replacement is any more effective.

The agenda is online. There are three planning applications affecting Coleridge: a proposal to convert some retail space at Adkins Corner into residential space, a proposal to change 171 Coleridge Road from a guest house into student accommodation and the reappearance of a garden-grabbing application for the rear of 163 and 165 Coleridge Road that was approved last year but due to incompetence in the planning department was inadequately consulted upon. All three are recommended for approval.

The other main issue tonight will be environmental improvements. There's good news regarding progress on agreed improvements such as Cherry Hinton Road shop forecourts and the completed Rustat Road footpath. New proposed schemes include verge parking prohibition for Perne Road and tree planting on Chalmers road, which I think will be good things.

More care will need to be taken over other proposals to tackle commuter parking in the ward - I welcome the efforts but as with the now defunct Ashbury/Golding cycle path proposal the true consent of residents must be sought. The more 'live and let live'-inclined residents who might not want anything changed but are also unlikely to make a fuss at consultation need to be sought out and involved. Aspects focusing on safety ought to be the least controversial.

East Area Committee

East Area Committee is back this Thursday, 14th April at 7pm, Cherry Trees Day Centre, St Matthew's Street.

Neighbourhood policing is on the agenda. None of the policing priorities for the last period covered Coleridge and all are recommended for discharge and there are no recommended priorities for the next period so councillors will be working from a blank sheet.

Without Conservative Chris Howell to push the case for the speeding priority that was dropped a while ago although it's worth reading about the traffic policing session that the policy undertook in Coleridge as part of their 'beat sweep' across the east area.

Friday also saw 4 officers from the Roads Policing Unit (RPU) assist us. Their task was to deal with speeding through Coleridge, the anti social use of vehicles and other road traffic related matters. The following is a breakdown of their results:

• 1 driver reported for speeding
• 13 drivers prosecuted for driving whilst using a mobile phone
• 4 drivers prosecuted for not wearing seat belts
• 1 driver reported for not having current road tax
• 2 drivers reported for the condition of their vehicles
• 2 drivers reported for no insurance
• 1 vehicle seized as there was no insurance policy in place
• 2 drivers reported for vehicle defects
• 1 driver reported for driving through a red light
• 1 person arrested for the offence of going equipped to steal
• 1 vehicle stopped in relation to rogue trading intelligence

A lot of work on drugs was also reported - it is good to see the police following leads from the local community - often residents feel that they are being ignored on this sort of thing.

The controversial item on the agenda will be libraries, when fervently ideological opposition (to the Conservative cabinet on the county council) councillors will whip up outrage over plans to make the library service viable in a tough fiscal environment. I hope that they will engage with trying to save the libraries instead, otherwise it'll just be a waste of time - I could write out the script right now if that's the case.

Elsewhere in Coleridge the 28th Cambridge Scout Group and St Martin's Church look set to receive significant capital grants towards the scout hut and hall respectively. These are worthwhile causes.

There are no planning applications up for decision at this meeting in Coleridge.

Grilling East Area Committee: The Forum

With no Conservative councillor to fight the corner for common sense at Last Thursday's East Area Committee I went armed with questions.

First off was The Forum on Tiverton Way.


There are a number of local issues on which local Conservatives and Labour ward members agree and this is one of them; we warned the city council of the issues early on but were ignored by the Lib Dems.

The previous committee's papers indicated that Anglia Ruskin University had at last agreed to have a meeting about issues with the student accommodation, which is sited amidst bungalows predominantly occupied by older residents. My own request for a meeting with ARU a while ago was refused. Knowing that a meeting was held a long time ago with council officers but without councillors I was keen to make sure that there was democratic accountability and so suggested that ward members should be invited (if they weren't already).

At this committee I asked what the outcome of that meeting was. It seems progress is going to be slow but with continued pressure on the owner and the former polytechnic small positive changes do get made, such as the night porter, who is still not up all night but it's a start.

In the context of low to nil reporting of problems last term with the council, not surprisingly resulting in the council claiming there were no problems, I asked if reporting had increased this term (knowing that residents have reported problems). The exact answer wasn't known at the time although the chairman did refer to a specific major recent incident - I would like to find out from the new officer handling such complaints. I hope that reporting reflects the incidents so that the council has no excuses not to be involved.

As a postscript it's worth reminding ourselves not to scapegoat all the student residents of the premises - as this comment on the earlier Cambridge News story confirms. Other blocks like Sedley Court seem to run a tighter ship and students benefit.

Alana, 19/09/2010

I have been at The Forum for a week and i just want people to know that not all students are like these despicable ones mentioned above. My friends and i were discussing only last night that some of the people make us feel unsafe. I was aware this used to be an elderly home and as my nan lives in one i am used to knowing to keep the noise down. I hope that i dont cause any disturbance to anyone as i would feel really bad. I try to keep my music or tv down after about 10pm and i would just like to say to all the residents that we arent all bad guys, all the people i have met so far have been lovely and quiet and kind but there are rumours of a "select few" which are causing a disturbance. It sickens me as i am fed up of getting a bad name for a being a teen/student when i dont drink or party i dont do drugs etc, so please people if you are angry about the noise just remember we are too and we are living with it and its horrible. I hope it will die down now as lessons start monday so i hope they will go to bed!!

Green verging on the ridiculous

Thanks to the Green Party for adding some entertainment to the Coleridge by-election campaign with their recent newsletter.

Outgoing councillor, Chris Howell, has provided us with his fisking of their newsletter:

Their stuff on the East Area committee ranges from confused to grossly misleading.

On speeding

The vote at East Area committee was only won on a recount, after fierce opposition from Green party Councillor Margaret Wright who described the use of police resources to enforce residential speed limits as a scandalous waste of resources. You wouldn't guess that from the Greens' newsletter.

On verges

The Greens claim they wanted to make verge repairs the number one priority at East Area committee, and this "did not get any support from Coleridge's currently elected Councillors". This point is utterly misleading - it's debatable if it is even factually accurate, as the vote that Adam Pogonowski forced was a nonsense amendment proposed for the purpose of political points scoring and I think I made that point at the meeting, whilst confirming that I agreed it should be top priority.

The committee had over many meetings narrowed down the projects to be funded by the Council's environmental improvements budget. At the last meeting, there was enough money left to implement all the remaining projects under consideration except one, so we picked a project that in the unlikely event all the projects proved to be technically feasible and supported in public consultation would be dropped on lack of budget grounds. That was not grass verges, which had therefore been allocated funding.

Adam then put forward an amendment seeking to set a priority for funding amongst the projects that we had just agreed full funding for - as there was no further contention for funds between these projects as they were all fully funded, this didn't actually result in any additional priority - all funded projects were to be moved forward as quickly as possible.

On the reason for the by-election

"Conservative Councillor Chris Howell ... Perhaps ashamed of the savage cuts the coalition government is undertaking, he resigned."

This is a completely false accusation designed to imply to the electorate that I resigned because of a disagreement with the coalition government's policies on the deficit - for the record, overall I am delighted with the direction of the coalition, both because of their firm but considered approach to tackling the budget deficit, and in the related area of how they are seeking to roll back the patronising, expensive, bullying top down government that is blighting so many local services and local communities.

Specifically, on the budget, my view is that if you borrow beyond your means and give every impression that you aren't that interested in repaying the debt at any point - which appears to be this week's policy from both Labour and the Greens - investors will only lend you money if you offer very high interest payments, and eventually they will stop lending altogether, as the risk of the government failing to repay the debt becomes too high. The firm action of the coalition has already ensured that the immediate crisis has been averted, and interest payments on UK government debt are already lower than they would have been under a Labour (or Green) government.

I certainly don't support the argument that the risks to the economy are lowered by delaying action on the deficit, rather if the coalition government hadn't taken the steps it has, it really would have had a devastating effect on the government's ability to provide essential services in future, and would have left our children with a horrible mess to fix.

If my blog post wasn't enough for them, and they wanted to confirm my position, they could have asked and I would have made it clear what they wrote was false.

East Area Committee today

This evening at 7pm is the city council's East Area Committee meeting at the Cherry Trees Day Centre, St Matthew's Street.

There are no planning applications for Coleridge this time.

Richard Preston from the county council will be present to talk about highways, with a Q & A session which should be fun.

Environmental improvements are on the agenda as usual, as are community grants.

Council meetings are public. Full stop.

I wrote this letter to the Cambridge News in response to a strange outburst objecting to private recordings of public council meetings.

Dear Sir,

The letter from Lil Speed, 7 October, misses the point about council area committees. They are public meetings on the public record to determine public policy, not police surgeries. It is questionable whether the city council even has a right to restrict recording; it certainly should not.

Any confidential matters should be taken up directly with the police.

It is a shame that the Liberal Democrats (whom Mrs Speed endorsed at the recent by-election in East Chesterton) are so cagey about the recording of public meetings. It would be better if they lived up to their party name and encouraged this enhancement to local democracy.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Bower
Argyle Street

I fully support the right of anyone to record council meetings, which are public. I am glad that the city council relented in allowing any recording to happen at all and welcome the fact that they are considering doing it routinely. If it can be afforded then it would be a very welcome enhancement to local democracy.

Meanwhile I do not buy their justifications for making it difficult to record the meetings - the recording of meetings makes it much easier to hold representatives to account than is currently possible based solely on the necessarily-terse official minutes.

£¼ million council grants allocated to Coleridge

City councillors at last month's East Area Committee allocated more than £250,000 of council grants to Coleridge Ward.

First up was a one-off allocation of some accrued 'section 106' bribes funds, some of which the city council needs to spend soon to make sure that it doesn't have to be returned to developers.

Two very worthy voluntary projects in Coleridge were given a share of £400,000 along with three other projects:

• Improvements to the Flamsteed Road scout hut.
• Community facilities at the Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cherry Hinton Road.

A further £115,000 was allocated for future community facilities projects in the ward.

The second allocation was of the Environmental Improvements grants. This is from a pot of money that the city council created along with the area committees and is for capital projects. The aim was to spend all of the available money. It is not clear whether this fund for area committees will be replenished in future - it is something that the city council will have to decide based on its spending review.

The projects approved for Coleridge were:

• A Crossing for Perne Road just north of the Radegund Road roundabout (£65,000)
• The verge/parking/yellow line plan for Birdwood Road and Chalmers Road (£59,000)
• Completing the gap in the Rustat Road footpath (£10,000)
• The Ashbury Close/Golding Road cycle path consultation and plan (£34,500 or £47,500)

The last of these projects was given a lower priority and therefore will only happen if one or two of the other approved projects for the area falls through for any reason (and of course subject to a satisfactory outcome to the consultation, which will proceed anyway).

All of these projects will benefit Coleridge residents; I am particularly keen on the last three and all have been supported by local Conservatives with the last two being initiated by Chris.

Area committee makes way for Harriet Harman

The city council's East Area Committee is coming to Coleridge this week, beginning 7pm at Lichfield Hall on Wednesday.

This is a day earlier than was planned and therefore at a different location. The meeting was moved for the convenience of the committee's Labour councillors, who sheepishly admitted that it was so they could attend a social with Harriet Harman. This no doubt avoids a tricky dilemma between the charms of the Minister for Women and Equality and attending the council meeting!

There is no neighbourhood policing item on the agenda this time so aside from the open forum (intended for members of the public to ask questions) the main item of interest to Coleridge is likely to be a planning application for the old Cambridge Building Society building on Cherry Hinton Road: "Change of use from A2 (financial and professional services) to A3 (restaurants and cafes)."

Speeding priority moves forward

Following our victory at East Area committee on police speeding enforcement, I have been trying to help move forward this priority, and suggested the following action plan:

• Ask Councillors in East Area what the key problem roads are that they would like to see tackled. (For Coleridge I suggest Coleridge Road and Birdwood Road top priorities, then Rustat Road and Cherry Hinton Road).
  
• Prioritise Roads for consideration.
  
• Use speed monitoring equipment (as used in Queen Ediths Way to assess situation prior to action)
  
• Police enforcement action, backed up with local publicity, press, Speedwatch etc. over a period of time.
  
• Use speed monitoring equipment again to determine if actions have had an effect even when enforcement patrols not present.
  
• Evaluate if we have learnt anything useful for tackling this problem going forwards
  

These suggestions have now been considered by the officers Neighbourhood Action Group and they will come up with their version of the plan - we will be taking a close interest in this to ensure it reflects the priority adopted by the committee.

The price of victory

While Cllr Howell and I were securing a surprise victory in the battle at the city council's East Area Committee last Thursday to have speeding dealt with by proper monitoring and police enforcement someone was busy stealing my bicycle wheels outside the Cherry Trees Day Centre.

I hadn't had a bike stolen for three or four years now so perhaps I should count myself lucky it was only the wheels - time to heed the advice of my colleague in Kings Hedges and have it security-marked.

I suspect the thieves probably weren't aware that there were four police officers/PCSOs in the building at the time, which does cause me to reflect on how it can possibly be good value for money for those four public servants to have sat through hours of unrelated business before getting to the Neighbourhood Policing agenda item... Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman Richard Normington pointed out yesterday that the cost of these meetings per head of the general population in attendance is £195!

Finally, I'd like to thank Labour Coleridge Councillor Lewis Herbert for offering me a lift home after the incident...although in the event that didn't quite fit into my plans for a quick pint!

Surprise victory on policing speeding in East Area

Policing priorities for Abbey, Coleridge, Petersfield and Romsey were again up for discussion at the council's East Area Committee this last Thursday.

We learnt that the Speedwatch scheme which had been kicked off at the previous opportunity to set policing priorities on 15th January had only operated two sessions in the entire four-month period, only one 34-minute session of which was in Coleridge, and issued three letters to speeding motorists, only one of which was for the Coleridge Road session. For ongoing activities, only four volunteers have been trained.

This was despite the Speedwatch scheme being publicised across the ward by Conservatives and again to hotspots, as well as being publicised by Labour and apparently also by PCSOs, although I'm not sure how that was done.

The wording accepted for the priority in January was:

Speedwatch – to assist community volunteers to administer the initiative.

Whereas the alternative to which Cllr Howell tried to amend the priority but which was rejected by all other councillors present, was:

Tackle speeding on residential roads in East Area primarily through police monitoring and enforcement and also co-ordination of other activities such as Speedwatch that may help reduce problems.

Nevertheless, Cllr Howell went on to support the unamended priority, as despite deep reservations from within the Conservative team in Coleridge about the nature of the Speedwatch scheme we were happy to support a pilot of the initiative - we have an open mind to the possibilities.

As a member of the public I questionned the effectiveneness of Speedwatch during the period, wanting to know how many police patrols would have been possible had the priority been set differently, to which the sergeant, astonishingly, could not provide an answer.

Even more bizarrely the sargeant then went on to ask if I would really have wanted them not to concentrate on proper crimes like theft. While I am very sympathetic to that point, it did not make sense to me in the context - surely these are priorities set by the councillors for the local team and therefore Speedwatch was given roughly a third of the resources available for prioritisation - if this was not the case then then what is the point of the priorities? Were the police only too pleased that a priority had been selected that didn't require much effort? I don't ever remember the councillors taking this differential attention into account in their priority-setting process.

When the priorities came up for debate, Chris Howell tried for the fourth time since his election to the city council last May to get proper police action on speeding onto the priorities list. To my astonishment, and I think to that of some of the councillors too, Chris was at last successful in this mission, supported belatedly by his fellow ward councillors and Cllr Wright from Abbey, winning the vote 4-3!

The new priority is:

Tackling speeding on residential roads in East Area to include systematic evaluation of the problems and police enforcement action.

The police sergeant present when his recommended priorities for the next quarter were ammended was taken aback and wondered how they were going to achieve this. My first thought was: if you are struggling with this level of democratic involvement just you wait until we have elected police chiefs under a Conservative government! This rather makes a mockery of the Policing Pledge presented to us at the beginning of the neighbourhood policing agenda item!

When Coleridge Conservatives recently surveyed residents on how best to tackle speeding vehicles in Coleridge we found only 1.6% of respondents supporting the Speedwatch-style approach. Police patrols (as favoured by Coleridge Conservatives) and fixed speed cameras were the preferred solutions:

One of the arguments that Speedwatch proponents keep putting is that the scheme will help to identify areas that have a speeding problem. In my view this is a bogus argument and Speedwatch will only achieve a level of information equivalent to existing anecdotal evidence as the experience of Speedwatch teams is that people slow down for their setup, so they cannot gauge the natural speeds at which people are proceeding.

In contrast, the systematic speed monitoring that occured recently on Queen Edith's Way for the South Area Committee proved very effective at getting an accurate distribution of speeds over the course of the day and will improve on the anecdotal evidence we currently have. It is hoped that some of this kind of monitoring will now be possible in the East Area.

Minor victory in war on jargon - Bigger victory on crime reporting

It is timely that the BBC is reporting a crackdown on the use of jargon in local authorities, as there was a minor victory for common sense at the Strategy and Resources scrutiny committee on Monday. Whilst considering the future role of the police presentations and priority setting at Area committees (one part of these committees that is working reasonably well), we were asked to approve the following as an 'area for development':

"Some confusion has been highlighted in relation to the name Safer Neighbourhoods since it changed from Neighbourhood Policing. A standard introduction to the agenda item by the Chair of each Committee to explain the item will help ensure context to the presentation delivered."

The name "safer communities" in this context is meant to be more reflective of the partnership between the police and Council, but in reality nobody who isn't intimate with local authority speak has got the slightest idea what it means. So I proposed that we simply replace the above paragraph as an area for development with the simple proposal to change the name back to neighbourhood policing! And remarkably, the committee and leader agreed this change to the recommendations. 

More significantly, the committee agreed to my request to add a further area for development, namely to look at how crime and incidents of anti-social behaviour are recorded, to ensure all crimes and incidents are recorded to ensure they are taken into account when setting police priorities, and to allow Councillors to feed back the response (or lack of) to each incident that is brought to our attention. In short, I want to see zero tolerance policing, where every incident is recorded, analysed, and resources targetted appropriately.

There has been huge progress made in neighbourhood policing over the last few years - which I put down to two factors, the presence of Police Community Support Officers who provide a very visible presence on the streets (I frequently see our Coleridge PCSOs out on their bikes or on foot), and the opportunity for politicians at a local level to take part in the process, where I think the main benefit is not that we can set priorities for neighbourhood policing (which is ostensibly the aim of our involvement), but because we now have the opportunity to scrutinise the actions of the police, and the way in which they are responding to local problems. Roll on the next Conservative government which is planning to further this approach and give local people much more power of the type I have been fighting for - they have pledged to "make the police accountable to the people they serve through directly elected commissioners, crime maps and quarterly beat meetings".

Outside the realm of Council meetings, my colleague on Coleridge Conservatives Andy Bower has been doing sterling work chasing up the many incidents of graffiti particularly along Radegund Road and Davy Road. One of the main areas of graffiti was cleaned off very promptly (compare the picture below from last night with this two days ago) but there are still significant problems, and we are trying to get all these incidents recorded as crimes and persuade the police to take them seriously.

Planning decisions at area committees

Richard Taylor in the comments has asked me to post my reasons for not voting on planning applications at Area Committees, so this seems like a good opportunity.

Firstly, some history. Around 2003/4, the Liberal Democrats running the City Council setup Area Committees, ostensibly to bring decision making closer to local communities, and encourage community involvement. As part of setting up these committees, they decided that planning applications significant enough to be decided by Councillors rather than Council officers, but not having City wide significance were to be decided at these committees.

It is difficult to come up with a good argument that says the area committees are a sensible use of Council resources. It is rare that more than about 15 members of the public turn up at East Area Committee, frequently outnumbered by Councillors, Council staff and others on the public payroll – the extra costs (staff etc) of running these committees in 2004 were estimated to be £100,000 per annum (Scribbles on back of envelope, 4 committees, 6 meetings per year, generously 30 members of the public in each, average cost per meeting per member of the public engaged - £138 – can you see why I am outraged at the costs?) Whilst much of the debate at these meetings is useful, many of the members of the public present are already very empowered to communicate with their local Councillors (resident association officers, local Council candidates from various political parties etc), and rather than empowering more people, it is possible that these meetings actually further relegate the views of those not currently engaged in local decision making process – i.e. the literally 99.9% of the population of East area that chose not to turn up to these meetings.

But deciding planning applications at these meetings isn’t just a waste of money, it is actively damaging the quality of planning decisions made by the Council for the following reasons:

• Regardless of training offered, the average experience of planning law and policies amongst members of area committees is significantly below that of the main planning committee, and indeed shortly after the local elections, Councillors on area committees were asked to make what are quasi-legal decisions with no training or experience at all.
• All Councillors on the main planning committee should have an active interest in planning, as opposed to Councillors who may be more interested in other aspects of the Council’s work.
• Decisions made after 10pm at night by people who will likely have been working all day cannot be as well considered as those made at a more sensible time.
• During the working day at the Guildhall, the full planning committee can call on expert officers where necessary, e.g. tree experts etc to help clarifying points before making decisions.
• The main planning committee meetings monthly, Area committees every 8 weeks, frequently making it hard for Area committee decisions to be made within the target timescales, costing the Council money and risking immediate appeals for non-determination as happened with Mill Road Tescos.

All good reasons why making planning decisions at area committees is a disaster. But for me there is an overwhelming reason why I refuse to take part. The current planning system does not permit those deciding to ‘pre-determine’ applications – they must keep an open mind until the meeting when the decision is made, and those who, in the jargon, have ‘fettered their discretion’ cannot then take part in the decision.

And it is this aspect of the situation which means I refuse to take part in planning application decisions, so that when local residents contact me, I am free to let them know my opinion on an application, and offer my full help to oppose or support an application if applicable. Yes, I could just refuse to take part in those applications for which this scenario happens, but I wouldn’t want my constituents (or indeed anyone in the City) to be reluctant to contact me about a planning matter, knowing that by default I couldn’t even let them know what I thought about the application.

This issue got heated at the time of the Mill Road Tesco refrigeration application – with letters to the paper criticising those, like myself, who refused to vote on the application (even though I did speak at the meeting to raise my concerns). I think the concerns were more that Councillors hadn’t put aside all other considerations and voted to oppose Tesco, but it didn’t stop the Lib Dems passing a shabby motion at full Council trying to bully all members of the Council into supporting their policy on planning decisions at area committees.

I was elected this year on the following manifesto pledge:

“Conservatives will scrap the area committee system. The fiasco of the Tesco application on Mill Road showed how the planning system is in chaos, and how the area committees are incapable of taking decisions. This is an experiment that has failed. We will look at how resident’s participation can be made more effective and move to timely meetings of a full planning committee.”

I will continue to campaign for a change to the Council’s deeply misguided current policy, and in order to best represent my constituents interests, I will refuse to take part in Area Committee planning decisions.

Environmental Improvements: City Council must get its act together

I'm pressing the Council for action on a couple of projects that can loosely be described as environmental improvements. One is my election pledge to try opening an official cycle route between Ashbury Close and Golding Road, the other to fix the 'missing footpath' problem on Rustat Road near the cycle bridge.

The City Council has an official 'environmental improvements' budget that the area committees decide how to spend, and the same staff can be involved in projects to spend s106 funds from developers. Trouble is, the City Council does not have enough of the designers/engineers required to implement these projects, so progress has practically ground to a halt. The result is that Council budgets, and more crucially money received from developers that may have to be paid back if it isn't spent is sitting unused. Area Committee meetings come and go, with little progress to show in this area. The Council has know about this problem for months, and failed to fix it. I am calling on them to get their act together so we can have some progress on these much needed schemes, as it is beginning to look shambolic.

Quick off the mark

Labour in Coleridge are always quick off the mark to get their pictures in the paper. For example, here, they are calling for more money to be made available for speed cameras of a type that can be operated by residents.

This refers to a new scheme from the County Council whereby local residents operate speed cameras in conjunction with the police - I think the way it works is those exceeding the speed limit are sent warning letters. A small number of cameras are being made available Countywide for pilot schemes - Labour wants much larger funding committed even before we know if the scheme is going to work.

I think it could be a good idea - a questionnaire on our ward-wide July newsletter asked if any local residents would like to get involved. I can't say I was overwhelmed with volunteers, which to say the least is a problem. Councillors can doubtless be more persistent in persuading people to take part, but ultimately can't (and indeed shouldn't) force them.

(UPDATE: Having spoken to a fair few people on Coleridge Road over the weekend, I think it is fair to say there wouldn't be a problem finding residents to get behind this scheme...)

But the interesting thing about Labour's latest press efforts is the claim: "Cllr Lewis Herbert, who leads the opposition group, and his colleague Cllr Miriam Lynn voted during last week's East Area Committee meeting to give cameras to residents in their wards of Coleridge and Abbey in a bid to combat speeding." which must have come from Labour. Trouble is, I checked the meeting minutes and they did nothing of the sort.

Although funding for cameras was discussed, the only relevant vote I can think they are referring to is actually a vote on an amendment proposed by me to make tackling speeding a local policing priority (in additional to other priorities such as anti-social behaviour in various troublespots etc.) Speeding is a serious problem on many roads in Coleridge (and indeed some roads in Abbey and other wards), but the police really don't seem to take the problem seriously, so I want to make it one of their priorities. Maybe then they will look into why it is some people are prepared to drive often through their own neighbourhood at recklessly fast speeds, and do something about it. Trouble is, one of the Labour City Councillors for Coleridge was absent from the meeting (as was the Coleridge County Councillor), and other Labour members of the committee (who are in the majority) refused to back my amendment, so for the second time running, it wasn't passed.

Speeding is a serious problem in the ward - if my fellow Coleridge Councillors really want to see some action on speeding, perhaps rather than speaking to the press, they could have a word with their colleagues in Petersfield and the like, and make sure they all support my call to make tackling this a police priority in the area.

Tesco Defeated at East Area Committee

After around two hours of discussion about the planning merits or otherwise of the installation of a small amount of refrigeration equipment on the back of a shop in Mill Road, Tesco's suffered a defeat at the hands of Councillors on the East Area Committee. Cllrs Smart and Wright voted to oppose the application, whilst Councillors Blencowe, Hebert, Hart and Walker abstained, defeating the proposal. In line with my previous policy, I didn't vote on the application, but did speak to highlight what I saw as the two key issues and ask those deciding to consider them:

Does the fact that Tesco's would like permission for a some refrigeration equipment to be installed before opening a shop mean that all the planning issues related to a Tesco's opening (mainly the traffic impact from deliveries) become factors in whether or not to approve the refrigeration equipment? I suspect not, the officers and Council's legal advisers said not, but in view of the complaints citing this reasoning and the crucial nature of the argument, I argued that Councillors should have received independent legal advice citing previous case law on this point before approving.

Secondly, despite the Council telling Tescos in no uncertain terms to dot the i's and cross the t's on their acoustic impact report, the original efforts from their consultant appeared to be somewhat flawed, to put it mildly. In this case, I suggested, Tesco needed to get their story straight and demonstrate they had done the right investigatory work to prove their proposals complied with local planning policies about noise pollution before permission should be granted.

If the above two concerns had been addressed, I think I would have struggled to have recommended anything other than approval. In the event, 2 Councillors voted to reject the application, which was enough to defeat it. I have to say I'm still a bit confused as to how they phrased their objections to marry the evidence to the planning policies, but that was the result. I can only imagine the grief that a certain acoustic consultant will be put through by some Tesco managers next week.

Many congratulations to all those in the No Mill Road Tesco campaign, who have vigourously opposed Tescos applications. My prediction that this application would get through has been proved wrong. I'm now playing double or quits, and predicting that there will be an appeal against this decision arriving with the planning inspector in the very near future. In the meantime, life goes on at the Mill Road Social Centre...

Policing Priorities for Coleridge

In many respects the East Area Committee last week was as flawed as predicted. Despite publicity from the police and Council, there were only about 15 members of the public in attendance from around 25,000 residents in the relevant area. Members of the public were outnumbered by the 13 Councillors, 3 police officers, and several Council Officers. Several Councillors, including myself, refused to take part in the planning applications part of the meeting, which started at the late hour of 10pm. Continuing these meetings in their present form at great expense is another example of the way 'politicians are just shockingly casual about public money and how it's spent.' - they urgently need to be either scrapped or reconstituted.

An area of interest at these meetings however is reports from the neighbourhood policing team, and the setting of local policing priorities. I would like to see all the local police priorities and performance under the direct control of locally elected people - as David Cameron has promised:

"[local politicians] would be empowered to set strategic objectives for the police and ensure that those objectives are met, with the ultimate sanction of being able to hire and fire the Chief Constable. The essential principle is that voters should have a direct relationship with the person or body who appoints the Chief Constable, matched by a direct and transparent funding arrangement so that they can judge the effectiveness of the policing they're paying for,"

I am still slightly unclear as to the extent that Area Committees are able to direct police resources to the key priorities of local residents. Four priorities were agreed, namely tackling:

Streetlife Anti-social behaviour across the Neighbourhood
Drug Dealing in the Barnwell area
Underage drinking on green spaces across the Neighbourhood
Anti-social behaviour in Thorpe Way estate

I agree with all these, but my big concern is that by setting priorities we are also setting by ommission areas where the police are now free to ignore local concerns.

A huge issue in the ward is speeding cars, rat-running along roads such as Coleridge Road, Birdwood Road and to avoid lights, along Lichfield Rd and Suez/Hobart. The occasional motorist, usually living locally, is prepared to speed at up to 70 miles an hour along some of these roads. There was a serious road accident on Birdwood Road in May that resulted in injury to one occupant, and several vehicles being written off - with a local resident's livelihood put at risk. And tragically a similar situation in Abbey ward last week resulted in serious injuries to a young person.

Having sought assurances that the police would still devote some resources to the problem of speeding, I remain unconvinced they are prepared to stage even occasional speed checks, e.g. with advice issued to the unthinking motorists without making speeding a local priority, so I proposed this should be added as a priority. The chair only permitted this if I first voted against the current proposal, which i did - and this shouldn't be misrepresented as a vote against the priorities agreed. Sadly I only had support from one other Councillor - both our Coleridge Labour City Councillors rejected my plea to add speeding as a priority. Going forwards I will be looking at ways local residents can start taking ownership of this problem - for example, in other areas have piloted schemes where residents monitor speeds and report frequent offenders to the police, but it remains a significant concern.

But to reiterate, I do fully support the focus on anti-social behaviour, particularly problems with underage drinking. I met with the local Police Community Support Officers on friday, and am looking in to ways that we can ensure all local problems with anti-social behaviour are recorded, so we can have a zero tolerance approach to the problems caused.

East Area Committee

Thursday week is the first meeting of the East Area Committee I am due to attend since being elected. The City Councils area committees were set up by the Lib Dems around 2003/2004, and are designed to bring decision making closer to the people. So I will get together with other Councillors from Coleridge, Romsey, Abbey and Petersfield (because we have so much in common!) at 7.30pm on June 5th. Members of the public are welcome to join us at Cherry Trees Day Centre, St Matthews Street.

Trouble is, very few members of the public do turn up at these meetings - 30 would be a good turnout, or to put it another way, 30 people attend, over 24,000 residents of the relevant areas choose not to attend. Most of those who do attend are already actively involved in their local communities - I attended these meetings regularly last year as a Council candidate. Coleridge residents are much more likely to know what is happening in the ward and be able to influence events by reading our regular in Touch newsletters and contacting me personally. This would also be much more efficient - the meetings were originally budgeted to cost Council tax payers £100,000 per year - as members of the public are frequently almost outnumbered by paid Council officials and the Police who also attend, I dare say this cost has gone up since.

But Area Committees aren't merely a waste of Council Tax payers money - they actually seriously harm planning decision making, because at the end of the meetings, some local planning applications are decided by the Councillors. These are the applications too important to be decided by Council Officials, but not strategic enough to be decided by the full planning committee. This has a number of unfortunate consequences, beyond the mere fact that important decisions are often being made after 10pm at night by Councillors who could have been working all day.

Firstly, even though East Area Committees are held every 8 weeks, this is still enough to introduce significant delays in approving planning applications - the main planning committee meets monthly. This means targets aren't met for determining planning applications on time, which can cost the Council money, and in cases such as the Mill Road Tesco fiasco, can result in controversial decisions being appealed straight to the planning inspector in Bristol due to failure to determine the application in time.

But the key flaw is that all local Councillors are expected to be involved in deciding local planning applications - even if they are not interested in planning or adequately trained or experienced. As a result, the Council's Code of Conduct for Councillors prohibits them from taking a view on the application in advance, and therefore severely restricts the assistance they can give local residents to oppose or support a particular application.

For this reason, despite a keen interest in planning matters, I object in principle to the Area Committees deciding planning applications, and will refuse to take part in this part of the meeting.

In conclusion, the cost to Council Tax payers of these meetings is out of all proportion to the benefit, and in the case of planning decisions actually makes things worse. I think they should be scrapped, planning decisions moved back to the main planning committee (which should sometimes meet in the evening where there is a particularly controversial application such as Tescos), and replaced by ad-hoc ward or area meetings where there is a particular issue of keen local interest.

UPDATE: The agenda is now available here.