SouthdownBath

Pictured above is Paul and Dine at the small strip being proposed for sale. Since we sent out the consultaton document on its possible sale we have had a large number of responses by email and telephone - but not any letters yet. I will be calling around a few houses in Southdown tomorrow to get some more soundings. So far the response by phone has been i for and 6 against and by email 1 for and 11 against.

I have annonomised the emails received and put them together in the following document. Roundhill_Consultation_1.doc

The Roundhill is a very special area in Southdown and as you can see from the responses there is a strong local feeling of affinity for the site. We have in the past organised a variety of wildlife events on the site which have been well attended. The strip may look small but  it is still part of the Local Nature Reserve. 

The nature of modern cabinet government is that the decision comes down to two members of our Conservative Cabinet. We have spoken at length with both of them and have now presented them with resident feedback. They know our views. Now we have to wait and trust that they accept our logic and decide NOT to sell. 

Subject: Replacement of street lighting equipment in Brougham Hayes and West, Claude & Lymore Avenues, Bath.

Dear All, I am writing to inform you that owing to the roadworks already taking place in Brougham Hayes it has been decide to postpone our own works there until the week commencing the 17 March. We will therefore carry out the works in Oldfield Park/Southdown first and we aim to start there in the week commencing 18 February.The slight delay here has been caused by longer delivery dates for 8metre columns than anticipated. We have in fact had to insert a community safety scheme in Keynsham first which uses 5metre columns already in stock.

So thats good news for our area. The new lighting works will start Mid Feb in Lymore and Claude Avenues.

Planning - one application this week - any comments please let us know.

Ward: Southdown App Ref: 08/00087/VAR

Parish: N/A

Registered: 22nd January 2008 Expiry Date: 18th March 2008

Location: Parcel 3212 Padleigh Hill Southdown Bath

Grid Ref: (E)372311 - (N)163098 LB Grade: N/A

Proposal: Renewal of planning permission ref no 02/02512/FUL to permit to keep existing stables as approved on 25 February 2003 and expires on last day of February 2008

Officer: Sarah James

Our latest Southdown e-newsDear Resident

First of all we would like to announce a relaunch of our blog where you can see directly what Dine and Paul are doing around the ward at http://www.readmyday.co.uk/SouthdownBath. The previous blog was being written by Paul but the new one will be shared equally by Paul and Dine. Please feel free to take an RSS feed from it or email us with any comments. This enews is being sent earlier than normal to give you all advance notice of the PACT meeting which we mentioned in our last enews as well. We hope the attachments do not cause any problems for anyone.

Southdown PACT (Partners and Communities Together)

February 4

at 7pm

in the Methodist Church Hall

on The Hollow

All Welcome. This meeting with Police, Council, Somer and others is open to all residents.

We have attached the agenda, the top three priorities from the last meeting and the remaining items identified as word documents.

If anyone has problems with Word please contact Paul and we will send you the information another way.

IT training at The White Horse A free six-week course introducing people to the basics about computers, is to be held in the White Horse pub at Shophouse Road.

The course is organised by the Council and will start in February or March 2008. Book your place now by calling Christina on 01225 396834. The White Horse is also putting on a number of social events during February. They are displayed on the noticeboard outside the pub. Golden-Oldies This new charity was launched from Blagdon Park and is now getting international interest. BBC TV ran it in the national news and now Canadian TV have been across to film and German TV is on the way. Golden-Oldies is about getting our older residents together to have a good singsong singing the popular hit songs from the 50's and 60's. It is held every Monday morning in Blagdon Park Community Centre from 1030 to 11.30. Planning decisions last month 78 Mount Road 07/03177/ful single story extension and garage PERMIT 5 Sladebrook Rd 07/03283/ful single story extension PERMIT 71 Mount Road 07/03352/ful roof change and dormer PERMIT 234 Englishcombe Lane 07/03437/ful new 3 bed house REFUSE 35 Blackmore Drive 07/03483/ful two story extension REFUSE Rugby club's new youth section starting up Stothert & Pitt Rugby Football Club, of the Somerset Premier League, based at Bath Road, Corston are forming a New Youth Rugby section for boys and girls 11-16 years old. The first Coaching session is on Sunday March 2nd at 10.00am at our Corston Headquarters (on the A4 Bristol Road - half a mile past the Globe Inn). First matches will be in April and a full season of fixtures next season (starting September) is planned. Visit the club website for club information www.stotherandpittrfc.co.uk and to register your interest please contact Tony Adams - 01225 404048 (home) or 01749 333523 (work) Police news Burglaries continue to be a concern in the area and therefore the Police are putting a lot of effort into supporting Southdown/Whiteway. High visibility patrols will continue in the Southdown and Whiteway area, including evening patrols. Other efforts are being made and the Police are working closely with Councillors, the youth, highways and waste departments of the Council and other agencies such as Somer. Neighbourhood Watch Local Councillors from Southdown and Twerton have approached the Police with a view to setting up more Neighbourhood Watch Schemes in our area. We are particularly keen to make these more community focused. If you are interested in setting up or being part of a new scheme please get in contact with us and we will help set up the meetings and work to get such schemes started.

Events

Mayor's Multi-Faith Gathering - All Welcome

Banqueting Room, Guildhall, Sunday 3rd February 2.45pm

The latest exhibition, The Blue and White Show, at the Victoria Art Gallery is well worth a visit. Admission FREE

Useful Links

Planning applications

http://planning.bathnes.gov.uk/publicaccess/

Road Works in Southdown

http://tinyurl.com/k7lnn

All Meetings of the Council

http://tinyurl.com/2bev4s

The forward plan of the Conservative Cabinet of the Council

http://ewp.bathnes.gov.uk/ewp_efp.asp

Councillor Surgery

If you would like to speak to either Councillor Dine Romero or Paul Crossley personally, our surgeries are held on the first Saturday of the month at the Methodist Church in the Hollow, from 10 am until midday. No appointment is needed. Alternatively, you may contact us by phone or email.

Councillor Paul Crossley Councillor Dine Romero

07718 632959 07900 276613

paul_crossley@bathnes.gov.uk dine_romero@bathnes.gov.uk

BLOG www.readmyday.co.uk/SouthdownBath

Share information: Please pass this email on to Southdown residents who may find it useful.

Unsubscribe: If you would like to unsubscribe, please send an email to paul_crossley@bathnes.gov.uk writing 'unsubscribe' in the subject line.

Changing your email address? Don't forget to let us know your new email address!

plus pact documents

The Roundhill is now the subject of a decision for our Conservative Cabinet. A request has been made to the Council to buy a small strip of the land on the Whiteway Road at the cemetry end. This is to enable the person to build an additional home for family reasons. The Cabinet members Cllr Hanney (Con - Chew Valley) and Charles Gerrish (Con - Keynsham) will be making this decision after the 26th.

Both Cllr Romero and Crossley have spoken to the Cabinet Councillors and asked them NOT to sell this land for a number of reasons. We would like to hear your views on this subject and all comments - for and against - will be forwarded to the councillors in a Southdown Views digest  for their consideration before reaching their decision.

The full report can be viewed at the following link:c  

http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/Committee_papers/Executive/WL/2008/080118/01E1564TwertonRoundhillLNR.htm

Hillcrest Drive Field  

* As you will have seen the fenced children's area is now fully repaired.

* The Council is now regularly strimming around the disputed development site to ensure that no further claims of ownership can be made. As notified yesterday his appeal has been turned down. So we will not have two bungalows built there.

* The kissing gate at the Hillcrest entrance is to be modified to allow easier access to buggies and wheelchairs whilst still restricting bikes and motorbikes.

* We have asked property services to renew the very old turnstyle arrangement at the Sladebrook/Coronation side of the field.

* We have asked for the dip in the path between these two gates which is holding water to be repaired.

* The overgrowing brambles from the field to the Drive will be pruned back.

* We will be continuing for a third year with the new mowing regime.   Advance warning. The very large Leylandii Hedge by the flats has been declared anti social for the residents of the flat. This decision was also upheld on appeal. It will be pruned back fairly heavily in the spring when the field is dry. This will require some fairly heavy machinery being on the field for a few days whilst the pruning is happening.  

A question to you? We have been asked by a resident if we could provide a climbing frame in the play area. In the past residents have been reluctant to have us proceed with getting equipment. However this suggestion is just for a single item and the resident feels it would also take some of the pressure of the group of trees in the palyarea which are used for climbing. We would appreciate your views on this.

Marsden Road

We have met with parks today to discuss the poor state of this green and the trees. The trees are shedding lots of small branches and this interferes with the grass cutting regime. Parks will ensure that the wood debris is removed before the next scheduled grass-cut. Whist there we also discussed the state of the trees and a tree officer will be inspecting them soon to determine whether any crown thinning would be appropriate and also about removing the dead branches.  

ALSO   Marsden Road did not have their recycling collected this week due to a problem that the collector has had over the weekend. On behalf of ECT and the Council we would like to apologise for this blip in service delivery. There was a break-in at the ECT Recycling depot at Keynsham over the last weekend. The effect of this was that none of the regular round vehicles were available for use on Monday morning. ECT have managed to borrow a number of vehicles from other areas and have hired some vehicles too but the recycling rounds have been significantly affected due to delay and the fact that these vehicles are not designed to take the range of materials we collect meaning they need to return to tip more often.

New locks are being fitted to the trucks and it is expected that this will be completed by Wednesday. Around only half of Monday's rounds were completed and Tuesday was also affected. ECT will return to clear up some of those streets remaining from Monday. The Council have agreed that, anyone still waiting from Monday or Tuesday on Wednesday will not be done until next week - otherwise the disruption could carry on all week and people may be given promises that can't be met.

The aim is to return to normal service on Wednesday providing the lock repairs are done as scheduled. We really value the effort made by residents to fully recycle and again we regret this incident and the impact it has had on this week's collection.

Dine and Paul have just completed their two monthly visit round the ward with the Council Highways Engineer. Please see attached document for update on the issues round the ward. Please feel free to contact us if you have other highway issues in and around Southdown you would like us to take up.

Roads_22.1.8.doc

The Whiteway area of Bath has a few problems which we regularly report on but we now have a major good news story of INTERNATIONAL importance from Blagdon Park. Just before Christmas Cllr Marian McNeir, John Cullum and Grenville Jones launched a new Charity called Golden-Oldies. The idea is simple - get a room full of elderly, lonely, isolated or disabled people together and get them singing songs from their youth. The first pilot group was Blagdon Park Sheltered Housing. They have now been on BBC local, national and world news, ITV localTV, The Bath Chronicle, local Radio and the Western Daily Press have covered them. Canadian, German and Japanese TV are coming and a person from Texas has got in touch about starting a similar idea out there. No charge is made and the songs are all so well known everyone just immediately joins in. It provides fun, conversation, action as well as a good sing song. Grenville is now recruiting other people to lead the groups and this morning we had another leading Bath choir maestro visit to see what it is all about. Well its all about the JOY of SINGING together. Well done Grenville and team.

CLICK THIS FOR BBC NATIONAL ITEM you will need REAL PLAYER which is available free from the web.

The burglary and anti-social problems problems continue on the Whiteway estate. I visited two residents this morning with various problems and issues to raise. Driving motorscooters around narrow footpaths and litter dropping. We have had a lot of police effort in the patch over the last few weeks but we are still not seeing the hoped for reduction in the problem. It can only be a matter of time. Our next step will be to try and set up some neighbourhood Watch schemes in the area.

Two functions today as Deputy Mayor - the first to Argos and the Bath Launch of the 'Go Bananas to Beat Blood Cancer' by Leukaemia Research. Argos have made Leukaemia Research their corporate charity for the next two years.

And the second function was Bath City 1 Bromley 1. It was very wet and the ground was muddy and slow but it was a good game of football and 1-1 was probably a fair reflection. These are exciting times at Bath for sport with Team Bath doing well in the next division down. Bath City doing very well in their first season at the Conference South level and of course Bath Rugby playing some great stuff. I gave my rugby season ticket to a friend. Deputy Mayor has to take precedence. Not only is the sport good but the logjam against development seems to be giving way. There is talk of an exciting redevelopment of Twerton High St which could give the football club a massive opportunity to revamp its ground. And then it may just be that the Charity Commission finally move on the issue of the Recreation Ground.

Started the day with a long meeting at the Southside with our local youth worker going over the issues, programmes, activities and opportunities that are around at the moment to address some of the problems we are experiencing form a small number of young males in the Whiteway. For £6,000p.a. we could have a Friday Night session at the Southside specifically targetted at the youngsters concerned. I shall be suporting the Team there to get this funding and to get this activity up and running. Friday eve is the problem night with alcohol locally - so keeping some of them away from drink on a Friday eve would help everyone.

In the evening went to Victoria Art Gallery for the opening of a stunning new exhibition featuring work by Kaffe Fassett, Candace Bahouth, Carole Waller and Anna Teasdale. It is a stunning show, one of the best in recent imes and with FREE entry - well you cannnot get better value.

Dine and I have regular site meetings around Southdown with different departments of the Council and different agencies such as the police and Somer Housing.

Over Wednesday and Thursday we had our regular meeting with the Highway Engineer to cover a number of issues around roads and pavements around the ward. I will be sending out a detailed e-news on this and will post that here when it is written.

Also a regular visit to Rosewarn Close with the cleansing departments of Somer and the Council. Rosewarn really suffers from litter and flytipping and it is a constant battle. Residents are getting fed up with the flytippers and so information on the culprits is now starting to come forward. Whilst on this trip the lightinging engineer joined us to look at a few dark spots and discuss ways of improving lighting and visibility and security around the area.

This is the first entry in the joint BLOG for Southdown co-written by Councillors Paul Crossley and Dine Romero. This initial entry is being posted by Paul. Southdown is on the South West of Bath and is a vibrant lively community. We have 4 churches, a parade of shops, an Infant and Junior School, a YMCA project at the Roundhill, a number of open spaces and the Haycombe cemetry. Within Southdown is also half of the Whiteway estate. Over ths last few months we have had a lot of problems of antisocial behaviour from a largish group of young boys aged between 12 and 17. The Police, Council and Somer Housing have put a tremendous amount of effort into tackling and sorting this problem. Several of the boys are now on ASBOs and some have been or are in detention over the period. The next Southdown PACT (Partners and Communities Together) will be on Feb 4 in the hall of the Methodist Church in The Hollow when we will provide a large amount of statistics on the work done over these last 4 months on this problem.

We have been trying for a while to get a Mount Road Traders association going similar to the very successful Moorland Road Traders Association. We had our initial meeting on Monday and have decided to proceed. We have a steering committee and a set of tasks ready to do. The aim will be to promote Southdown shops as a place to visit and shop in and to build up a positive image of the community. Referring back to the previous paragraph one of the traders sent a late apology - his back door had just been kicked in and he was awaiting the police to arrive. We have chosen a name - Southdown Association - and will now work to promote this parade of shops in a positive way.

Also in the morning BBC national TV came to Southdown to the heart of the Whiteway Estate - not for bad news but for GOOD news. It was to do an article on the new charity Golden-Oldies which aims to get older people together and in groups singing poular hits from the 50's 60's and 70's. The anthem is "Hi Ho Silver Lining". It is great fun - gets folk out and about singing, smiling, moving and talking. The Charity launched in Bath under the guidance of one of our musical maestros Grenville Jones (who now runs 4 choirs). The first and pilot choir for the charity was the Blagdon Park sheltered housing complex. There are already 5 groups around Bath and NE Somerset and the charity is hoping to make it a national scheme.

One of my New Years Resolutions was to share in prayer with all our churches in Southdown more regularly than in the past. I am often at the Methodist and occaissionaly at the Anglican but so far I have not prayed with the Catholic or Evangelical congregations. This last weekend as well as going to the Anglican St Barnabus service I went to the Catholic St Joseph service for the first time. I was a bit surprised when the Father asked me to line up with him at the end a shake hands with all the congregation as they left. As a Bath Charter Trustee we attend services around Bath in a number of denominations and also services at other faiths. I enjoy the tremendous variety and am always struck that all faiths have so much in common.