Week ending July 19th 2015

At the siege of the Alamo in 1836 Colonel William Travis took his sword and drew a line in the sand indicating this was his final position . He’d fight here and die here if necessary. At that point Louis ‘Moses’ Rose said “Right that’s me out of here” and scarpered. Travis and the rest of the Garrison died where they stood. This week at Bridgwater Town Council we’ve been drawing lines in the sand. Hopefully, that’s where comparisons with the Alamo will end.

Today I did an interview on BBC Radio where I said our bottom line for development on Northgate was the ‘retention of the Green space, compatibility with the existing town centre, and primary leisure use‘. That’s been the policy of the Town Council throughout and now that Tesco isn’t coming and the County have ‘other uses’ for their bit of the land –probably a school, all our attention needs to be focused on what we want for the Sedgemoor bit of the land – that’s the Brewery Field and the former Splash site. After the interview the Reporter chap went off to talk to the townspeople –who probably all said they wanted a waterpark. You can hear for yourself tomorrow morning as Tuesday’s breakfast show on BBC Somerset sound will look at plans for Northgate.

Northgate-Leisure not Housing

On Wednesday this week SDC Corporate Director, Doug Bamsey, will be presenting a report to his Exec which will launch a new project for the Northgate area. We have an undertaking that this will include major consultation with the Town Council and accordingly we have set up a Town Development Forum, which consists of key groups in the town sending delegates and our first meeting will be August 12th. Leisure, recreation, green space, town centre friendly, no housing development – that’s our line in the sand.

Transport- keep it ‘public’ and ‘wanted’

Last Tuesday we looked at Transport. It’s a major issue around Bridgwater and attempts to get Sedgemoor to set up a ‘Transport Forum’ fell on deaf ears last year, so we decided to do it ourselves. After a small focus group of citizens from all across the town met to consider the Bridgwater Way cycle routes it was clear that a wider approach to transport in all it’s forms was needed and so we resolved to set up a Bridgwater Transport Forum by September. Public transport, the road network, cyclists, pedestrians, disabled users, the motorist, residents parking schemes all needed to be laid out for scrutiny by the people who used them. Thing’s shouldn’t just ‘happen to us’.

St Mary Street – get it opened for the Traders sake

And there was plenty of evidence of that happening last week. On Thursday it became clear that the painful Taunton road/Broadway roadworks-although finally finished, were not yet completely open. An angry letter from Biddiscombes in St Mary street suggested that SCC/EDF were keeping their road closed-despite being finished- solely to wait for the right moment to hold an ‘opening ceremony’. A flurry of communications from myself, the Mayor and the Town Clerk resulted in EDF finally announcing a date for the opening – which would be this Wednesday 22nd, along with a denial that there was any ‘ceremony’ planned. Although, oddly, in a follow up letter an SCC officer said “In response to an official opening, please be assured that any photocall to announce the opening of this road has not and will not delay the opening of the junction”….so…maybe there will actually be one after all. Anyway, I’ve not been invited nor would go as I wouldn’t really want to even be part of a 5 minute delay after the hardships the traders and commuters have been through.

Residents parking schemes – Westover before Wells

This week we learnt that the Westover ‘Residents Parking Scheme’ had not been submitted for the public TRO consultation as promised by SCC officers. Why not? A scheme that had been in the making for 3 years and counting, with 80% support from the streets affected and everything in place was suddenly put on the back burner. Well, the reason appeared to be so that ‘Wells could catch up’. Oddly the new SCC council leader John Osman (Wells) and the outgoing Highways Exec member Harvey Siggs (Wells) were out there announcing that scheme first….and that didn’t seem right, so we kicked off again. Cllr Leigh Redman tabled a question for full council and we demanded an explanation and a meeting to get Westover back in first place. This ‘line in the sand’ saw them back down and agree to proceed with the Bridgwater scheme as planned in August.

Setting the Town’s Financial targets

At the Town Finance Committee last Wednesday we looked at our budgets for the forthcoming year and set out our stall. Normally the Finance ctte is chaired by the Leader of Council, but as we want to share the workload and involve Councillors more in a wider range of responsibilities I nominated Cllr John Turner –a veteran of over half a century of municipal politics including the great days of the Bridgwater Borough when the town really was in control of its own destiny. The 8 member committee is proportionally dominated by Labour members in line with the council and so 7 of the 8 are red, leaving a proportional 1 place to be decided between the 1 Tory and 1 LibDem…sadly, despite 4 years of Coalition government where they managed to agree on destroying the welfare state through an Austerity agenda,they couldn’t agree on who would fill this place…or even to share it. So Neither turned up…although at least Cllr Johnstone came to the meeting to watch.

The Town Council committed itself to the core funding of several crucial sectors of our community –the 3 community centres at Sydenham, Hamp and Victoria, to the funding of that jewel in our crown the Bridgwater Arts Centre and then to further fund other institutions key to the life of the town – the Civic Society, the Flower Show, the Association for the Elderly, Community Transport, the Carnival, Christmas lights, and with money still in a development budget to consider further requests.

Key to a balanced distribution of council funds around the town is the system of ‘Ward Grants’. Each of the town wards has £4,000 to spend over the next 4 years on projects for their area. If you have ideas contact your ward councillors and point them in the right direction.

Planning – Defend our Heritage

On Thursday we looked at Planning, an area where half a dozen swords have been blunted trying to draw lines in brick walls over the years. We had been pushed beyond our tolerance with the destructive activities of some developers in wrecking our heritage and so outlined our policy that this had to stop, that iconic buildings needed to be retained or at least incorporated into any future design. Following the Town Public meeting last March we had managed to gain a stay of execution from SCC over the Workhouse buildings at Northgate and this was still in place, but again the Hope Inn was under threat. Well, from the elements as rain poured in through the callously opened-up roof, but now also from blatant demolition plans and redevelopment as yet more houses in an already busy and over developed part of town. We threw down another gauntlet of opposition and Town Clerk and ward councillors will be speaking at this weeks SDC Planning committee to try to prevent it

Setting out a Youth agenda

On Friday our focus turned to Youth. I met with our youngest councillor Diogo Rodrigues, who represents the South Sydenham area now known as Dunwear North. The Town Council has agreed we need to look at Youth Provision so step one had to be an audit of what we’ve got and what we want. Diogo had devised a questionnaire and will go out ward by ward painstakingly compiling this audit. This will go to council in September, identifying where provision is adequately supported and where there is a shortfall then make proposals as to what we can do about it. Diogo was tasked with visiting every youth facility, every group of young people that met formally in the town and putting together a robust document that we could work from and approach agencies and funders in order to see what can be achieved. If anyone would like to contact Diogo with suggestions his email is djnrodrigues@outlook.com.

Inspiration

At the weekend I went to recharge my socialist batteries at the Tolpuddle festival where the crucial line I failed to draw was one between avoiding sunstroke and not turning into a beetroot. I fell neatly somewhere in the middle. Meanwhile a bus party of 17 Bridgwater people took part in the event which recalled the struggle of ordinary workers in the south west of England to form Trade Unions, the Bridgwater Trades Council banner flew proudly alongside the rest of them, Billy Bragg sang songs of struggle, the Beat took us back to the struggles of the 1980’s (well, their opening song was ‘Stand Down Margaret’, so I assume they didn’t mean ‘Rutherford’) and Jeremy Corbyn’s arrival was greeted by at least 50% of the audience sporting ‘JC’ badges.

Including me.

Meanwhile back at the ranch….

Travis drew a line in the sand at the Alamo and was pretty much the first to be killed. His last words were probably “well, you’ve got to have a go haven’t you”.