Paul Crossley1

This is my first entry in my Southdown Blog. Southdown is a very attractive part of Bath. It has a large amount of Social Housing - particularly the Whiteway Area. This is now run largely by Somer Housing but other Registered Social Landlords also operate in the area. We have two sheltered housing areas in Wedmore Park and Blagdon Park. There is also a care home called Avondown. We have one doctor's surgery, a small parade of shops and only one pub, the Jubilee. We have an infant school and a junior school. I have been a governor at the Infants since 1990 including 2 spells as chair. During that time I have served 3 head teachers - Georgina Bramley, Gill Culley and now just recently appointed Sue Adams.

I have been a Councillor for Southdown from 1988 to 2006 and 2009 till present. Throughout this time Southdown has been served by Liberal Democrat Councillors and I have worked alongside Marian Hammond, Angela Godfrey and now Dine Romero.

Community Cafe

In Southdown Methodist Church there has recently been established a Community Cafe. It is open every Tuesday and provides good food and a pleasant place for a chat. Somer put on the post opening reception there which was a good boost for the workers at the cafe. 

Housing

Since the ‘right to buy' the amount of new social housing has been declining. Affordable rent in Bath is a huge problem and we have many families sharing homes with their children who in the past would be now moving to their own homes. In Haycombe Drive we had some awful flats that had big problems. We knocked these down and in partnership - Somer, Local Councillors and the community - have designed and got built some great new housing.  The official opening was this last week and all the social rent flats and houses were snapped up as have been the affordable mortgages for the second phase development of some housing. We also officially opened the new housing at Wedmore Garage site. We had been getting lots of antisocial problems at this tucked away garage site and the new housing has solved these problems and will soon be key worker housing for teachers and nurses. As with all planning though there has been debate and issues along the route. Pictures show our Chair and the CX of SOmer at the tree planting and a view of the housing.

Hillcrest Field

This is an ex corporation tip site which is now public open space. Over the years we have got two public rights of way established - with tarmac cover, seating, a fenced of area for young people to play in and various litter bins to keep it clean. Now we are looking to increase the biodiversity of the site. We have just changed the mowing regime after consultation with residents to allow certain areas to grow longer grass and encourage native flowers etc. The next phase is to get a community tree planting day and at a meeting with residents and officers we have agreed on a Saturday in the autumn national tree planting week. We are going to use native trees including the locally rare Black Poplar. We also decided to have an area for fruit trees with fruit available to anyone to pick. Our local apple is the Beauty of Bath which because of its soft skin is completely un-commercial. Picture shows one of the rustic footpaths up from Ivy ave and one of the new areas for less frequent mowing.

Twerton Roundhill

This is a very important Nature reserve. When we first changed the mowing regime to allow grass to grow longer about 10 years ago we got a lot of complaints about it being untidy. But now everyone likes the wild flowers and more natural aspect. We hope to get a friends of group going to be actively involved in its management and future development. Picture shows some of the residents who came on the first walk this year. We saw three different types of orchid.