SouthdownBath

 Safety improvements are urgently needed at Moorland Road bus stop

Shopping in Moorland Road is very popular with many residents from surrounding areas due to the wide range of shops and services. However many older residents find the double step at the bus shelter difficult to climb and many have tripped and hurt their knees and legs.

Now local Councillors from Oldfield and Southdown are backing their call for safety improvements to be installed to assist older residents, and others, in getting onto the pavement from the road.

Councillor Paul Crossley commented: "Moorland Road shops are a vital and lively parade of shops for many residents from across the south west of Bath. With the free bus pass it is particularly attractive to older residents who can get a range of goods and services from the street and it is more compact and less crowded than central Bath.

"However the double step at the curb is proving awkward for many who have slipped or tripped and hurt themselves. The Council needs to install simple safety features quickly to assist residents getting onto the pavement from the road."

Councillor Will Sandry (Liberal Democrat, Oldfield) added: "Many people like to come to Moorland Road by bus for the great community shopping atmosphere it offers. What is required is a built out, level pedestrian island to get pedestrians easily from the pavement to the bus door. 

"A report released this week by Help the Aged draws attention to the fact that Councils could face legal bills when people injure themselves on inadequately maintained pavements; the same issue could arise here, and I call on our Council to improve this dangerous pavement on Moorland Road."

 Picture shows Paul with Olive Selick (lady who has tripped twice) and David Pye from Moorland Road Association.

Tesco  - have still failed to get back to us with an update on their plans or timetables for the completion of the Express store on the Englishcombe Lane. They promised to be a good neighbour but leaving this former petrol station in its knocked down state is not being a good neighbour. This is not the way to treat residents or endear theselves to people. Maybe they are only interested in their plans for the former Bath Press now. But with a planning application and a licence application and a site available for use you do have to wonder why they don't get on and build the store.

Vodaphone mast in The Circle? After getting everyone worried we still do not have a planning application to consider. Again this company has not responded to our request to meet with them to discuss the ears that many residents have over this proposal. 

We have asked the Council to repair the bus shelter at Haycombe Drive again. It has been vandalised for several weeks now and the slowness of the Council in repairing this is simply not good enough. 

Met with Julia and Adam from Whiteway Community Respect Partnership on Rosewarn field to perform a risk assessment in advance of the first Partnership car boot sale for tomorrow. Luckily it wasn't raining and so we identified 7 risks and worked out solutions for them in terms of the event organisation.

Checked out the damaged bus shelter in Haycombe Drive. I reported this three weeks ago but it is still unrepaired. A stiffer letter will be going out on Monday.

Then to a local street and called at four houses to meet residents who are interested in setting up a Neighbourhood Watch. Dine and I are going to be working with our beat team to set up a number of NW schemes across Southdown. We have also been working with the police to build a different model and trial it in Southdown. In our area Neighbourhood Watch is purely a police information 2 way channel. However round the country the scheme works in several different ways. We want ours to be much more community focused and build community cohesion as well as being a crime reporting system. Next step for the street is to organise with our beat police an evening meeting to get the residents together and form the NW.

Next call - Glebe Road to talk to residents with a street football problem. The problem is not so much the football as the points system being used - 10 for hitting a resident door with the football, 5 for a window etc - by the boys as part of the game. We are working with a number of children in this area in partnership with the Children's society and the police beat team to sort the issues.

Next - to an older lady who wants an improvement to the Moorland Road bus stops. It has a double step up from the road and several folk have tripped and hurt their knees or legs. So we will be calling for the Council to put a hand rail in. Over tea she started telling me about the history of the area going back 70 years. It is amazing the level of detail there is about areas among older residents who have lived whole lives in one locality. I shall be calling back to record it and start putting historical stories and photos up on the blog.

And finally - to the White Horse for the Charity bungee jumping. I sponsored Deacon Steph who was raising money for the Mayor of Bath Relief Fund and NICU. Well done Steph.

In between lots of phone calls on a variety of subjects.

Then home to watch Dr Who...

Neighbourhood Watch is very widespread in Bath but is variable in its activity. There are a few in Southdown but the coverage is sparse and some of them are fairly innactive. Dine and I intend to work with the Beat team for Southdown to promote them across the ward. At present the NW are used by the police to pass information out to the community and also to get some intelligence back. However it is patchy. We have been talking with the police to make them more community focussed and as a way of improving cohesion in addition to reporting on crime. The police are working with us to see how this develops in Southdown and if it works to expand the idea to other wards. The NW team at the police HQ confrmed this this week and so we will now be working on expanding the network and the role it provides in the community.

High Hedges legislation came in a couple of years ago and one group of residents in a block of flats used this against a very high leylandii hedge. The whole process took a long time and eventually resulted in an order to cut several metres off the hedge. This has significantly improved the lighting in all the flats but one is still affected to some extent. I do not think she can use the legislation again and advised her so. Its an expensive and time consuming process. The hedge owner now has an asbo on the hedge. Personnally I think garden centres and others should stop selling Leylandii. They are a plague tree.

Whiteway Community Respect Partnership (WCRP) held its first committee meeting this week. The plans are ambitious - car boot sales, football, toddlers and a healthy eating club. And that is just for starters.

Bath Boxing Club is now really motoring at the Southside club - 46 youngsters for the first session and then a good group for the 16 and upwards range. Its held every Tuesday and thes sessions are all free till September at least. This will be a real asset for many of the youngsters on the Whiteway estate and their is a real buzz about the club. At this weeks training session we even had the police up their and in the training area. One of our PACT objectives is to dramatically improve the relationships between the youngsters and the police.

Dine and I met with Bath Spa university to discuss issues affecting our ward. Bath Spa is a very successful teaching university and has formed a great link with Culverhay Secondary School for its PGCE courses. This gives us a parking problem during course days as the attendees are all mature students traing to become teachers and arrive at the site by car from all over the area. We are working through some solutions and have an agreement with the Jubillee pub to use some of their car parking space. We will be talking to the student intake in September to explain the impact on loacl residents and we will be working with the Uni to prepare bus solutions for the students. Many seem unaware at how close they live to bus routes that connect to Culverhay or within a few hundred metres walk.

The Southdown Traders Association is now starting to move forward. We will be setting up our articles, company, constitution and other related things over the coming weeks. We have created a letter head and an email account. Next stop a web site and recruiting membership and getting active. We have at last moved on from the talking stage to the doing phase. At the lastest meeting we had an advisor from Business West taking us through all the technicalities.

Planning takes a lot of time in some wards. Traditionally in Southdown there have not been many applications. However with infill and extensions this seems to be increasing at present. Called round to speak with a resident about his application that he is planning to submit.

Then called on a nearby neighbour who is interested in being a Councillor in 2011. The first question is always what is the committment and how much work is involved? Well how long is a piece of string? In B&NES amongst Liberal Democrat Councillors the minimum is 10 hours a week. However many of us are 'full time' Councillors doing upto 50 hours a week and even some of those with full time jobs are putting in 15-20 hours a week on top of their work. Being a Modern Councillor is not just about Guildhall and committees. It is extensive community engagement and meeting with residents on individual or group basis. It is not just about your ward it is also about pressure groups and wider community activity. Many Councillors make big carear sacrifices for their committment to Community. This is not a plea for sympathy - we actually enjoy the work and are motivated by working with communities and individuals - just a statement of fact.

We have been working with the Bath YMCA for nearly two years now to find a solution to them taking this building off our hands to enable them to extend it and to turn it into a real community hub for their activities. They are already providing a range of services and are ready to commit big time to making this site buzz. With the Quirk review it should be easy to arrange a transfer of the asset to them and allow them to get on with the job. In real life things never work out so easily. We are regularly in contact with the Cabinet member Cllr Malcolm Hanney(Con) on this subject and are confident that a solution will be found and the transfer made. We already know the planning should not be a problem for what they want to do. Interestingly one of the effects of the expansion will be the incorporation of the land that is currently a public loo. The inside loos of the new building will be available for public use in any new scheme. For the last 4 months the public loos have been out of action requiring repair and refurb following a vandal attack. During that time we have not had one complaint about the lack of the loos - in contrast to regular complaints about misuse when they were open.

In googling for Bath YMCA I first came across the link to BathYMCA in Maine USA.

The YMCA is becoming an increasingly important partner for Council in Bath in providing youth work and other facilities. The Roundhill Centre has many clubs and activities in its old building. Lets hope the new building comes soon.

Golden Oldies is the new Charity started in Bath and with its first pilot at Blagdon Community Centre in Southdown. It aim is simple - get older folk together and get them singing the pop classics from their youth. It is a great success and after a gap of several weeks I went along again this week. It was great fun singing with them again. afterwards I gave them a personal apology for the failure of the last part of opur Deep Clean Keep Clean week. As ever I came away with lots of little tasks to chase up.

The charity is really growing well and now brings all the Bath area groups into the pavillion once a month for a grand sing song. This Charity is really good news and brings a ray of laughter into lots of peoples lives.