This was an informative meeting covering a number of issues such as:

• Neighbourhood Policing
• Community Speed Watch
• Section 106 Update
• Mouldon Hill Update

Meeting Notes follow: These are unofficial notes that I took at the meeting covering only some of the discussions.

Neighbourhood Policing
Community Speed Watch
Section 106 Update
Mouldon Hill Update
Next Meeting
About the North Locality Meetings

S106 Background

Neighbourhood Policing Update

Inspector Charlie Ducker (Wiltshire police) Had recently taken over as the Inspector in charge of Neighbourhood Policing. He gave an update on policing statistics.

Reported crime was down in all but two of the wards covered by the Locality. It was up a little in Moredon and Taw Hill. Detection of crimes had also improved.

Cllr Emma Faramarzi raised the issue of mini-motors being ridden around the cycle paths in Redhouse, especially at 11pm. There seemed to be little that the police could do without evidence. The Neighbourhood police were to be made aware.

Inconsiderate parking was also raised. This was described as “Not really a police issue” although the police could pursue if pavement parking caused an obstruction to those trying to use the pavement.

Note: Redhouse Residents Association has issued a comprehensive report on “Road Traffic Management and Safety Issues in Redhouse” in May 2010 that addressed many of the issues raised. Inspector Ducker stated that the preferred action was for Neighbours to sort out the problem between themselves.

Cllr Vera Tomlinson raised the issue of drug dealing in Redhouse. Again, the difficulty was with collecting evidence.

Community Speed Watch 

Lara Hill (SBC) informed the meeting of the Community Speed Watch initiative whereby some residents were being trained in the use of handheld speed measuring devices to try and reduce speeding along three local roads, identified as having a speeding problem.

Section 106 Update

Cllr Vera Tomlinson updated the meeting on the Community Centre. Many issues had been resolved and circa £700,000 of S106 funding was going to be put forward towards the Centre.

There ensued a lengthy discussion about the allocation of S106 funds. We were informed that £392,000 S106 Northern Development funds had been lent to build football pitches at Croft school, most of which had now been paid back. In all, just over £1.1m S106 allocations were discussed.

I queried the lack of any information about the £18m or was it £14m that had been originally allocated to the North development, raised in a Link article last February and about the lack of "Openness, Transparency and Communications" surrounding this issue. Apparently a well attended SBC meeting had been held that had answered many of the outstanding questions over the allocation of North Development S106 funds otherwise known as Haydon2 and Haydon3 S106 funds, apparently. Minutes of the meeting would be obtained for the next North location meeting and I was advised to contact Sara Screen (SBC) for a copy of the minutes. (Done – reply awaited.)

Mouldon Hill Update

Russell Weymouth (SBC) gave us an update on recent work carried out at Mouldon Hill. A new path had been built, between the railway and the A419, to give northern access to Oakhurst so that residents didn't have to use the route across a farmer's field and over an unmaintained footbridge over the River Ray. Cllr Heaton-Jones stated that he had not given up on trying to achieve a right of way across this field and bridge. (Click here for some information on the new path.)

Next Meeting

Thursday March 8th, 2012

Greg Browne February 5th, 2012

About the North Locality Meetings

The North Locality covers Abbey Meads; Blunsdon; Haydon Wick and Moredon Wards.

From the meeting flier.

The North Locality Meetings give:

The Meetings were previously known as North Cluster Meetings under the Council's
Swindon Strategic Partnership / Connecting People Connecting Places initiative. This initiative is intended to be:

1. More meaningful engagement with people and communities – developing meaningful conversations.
2. Delivering public services that are more locally sensitive - local communities become increasingly involved in setting and delivering priorities.
3. Building on a ‘sense of community’ – supporting and helping communities to help themselves.

S106 Background

From the Local Government Glossary. Idea.gov.uk. Section 106 (S106) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allows a local planning authority (LPA) to enter into a legally-binding agreement or planning obligation with a landowner in association with the granting of planning permission. The obligation is termed a Section 106 Agreement.

These agreements are a way of delivering or addressing matters that are necessary to make a development acceptable in planning terms. They are increasingly used to support the provision of services and infrastructure, such as highways, recreational facilities, education, health and affordable housing.

The scope of such agreements is laid out in the government’s Circular 05/2005. Matters agreed as part of a S106 must be:

• relevant to planning
• necessary to make the proposed development acceptable in planning terms
• directly related to the proposed development
• fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to the proposed development
• reasonable in all other respects.

A council’s approach to securing benefits through the S106 process should be grounded in evidence-based policy.

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We were heading for the Peatmoor Oriental Buffet, on Saturday, with a hungry grandchild in tow, but it is either being refurbished or has shut down, so we ended up around the corner at the Bombay Lounge. It proved to be a good choice. The main lunchtime fare is an Indian Buffet, which had several tasty choices of curried meat and veg, varying from mild to spicy, two types of nan-bread and salad accompanyment.

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The lunchtime buffet, at £5.99, seems very good value to me.

There were few of us in the restaurant, good for us, but meant that the staff had to work hard to keep the dishes fresh, warm and from drying out. They did this very well.

Bombay Lounge

2 Roughmoor Village Centre, Peatmoor, West Swindon, SN5 5DJ. Telephone: 01793 887799. Email: info@bombaylounge.co.uk.

Open for lunch every day from noon until 2:00pm and every evening for dinner from 5:30pm until 11:30pm.

The Bombay Lounge is also well known for hosting its charity curry nights. Tonight, it is hosting

An event for the the Encephalitis Society. From The Link Magazine.

Fitness trainer Ollie Burt, who was given a low chance for surviving viral encephalitis - an inflamatory disease of the brain - is now running 10k races to raise money for research and is recruiting others to join him. ... you can meet Ollie over a curry at Peatmoor's Bombay Lounge restaurant on 16 January in aid of the Encephalitis Society.

As The Link Magazine says, it is:  

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"to give community representatives the chance to get together to share information and talk about the things that are important to the area.

Oakhurst resident and Haydon Wick Parish Councillor Steph Exell said: “The focus for NCSA is to build wider community spirit and support throughout north Swindon, and to ensure individual groups don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.”

Both Blunsdon and Haydon Wick Parish Councils have subscribed to the new association, as well as numerous residents’ groups from the area."

It feels like a calculated slap in the face to have to watch the recycle lorry drive past all our overflowing recycle bins, on its way from its twice weekly appointment at the local flats. How come they get a twice weekly collection of recyclables and rubbish, yes twice weekly rubbish, when we cannot even get our weekly recycle collection reorganised? I tried to discuss this with Swindon Borough Council today, Wednesday (yes, yet again) but, apparently, the only option open to me was to register a complaint. I will hear the result of this within 10 days apparently.

My complaint ...

is not actually about the lack of recycling collections but about the total lack of information about what has gone wrong and when it will be rectified. Is it really so difficult to post a quick message on the SBC or local councillors’ or the Parish Council Websites? Stum - nana - zilch, nothing. Not even the merest suggestion that there is a problem; that Christmas has caught the recycling service totally by surprise, or that the service is just inadequate for the peek post holiday demand. Thank God that the gales have abated, or much of my neighbours recycling would now be spread far and wide around Haydon End.

The provisional Agenda is shown below

1. Electing the NSCA chair for the next year.
2. Creating our ‘mission’ statement and establishing the rules of engagement to everyone’s satisfaction.
3. Discussing the results of the independent transport assessment for Tadpole Farm and coordinating the ‘clicker’ group. ORA will have advice from Halcrow on how this should be done.
4. Set a date for the clicker exercise.

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Once again, the recycling collection failed this week, in parts of North Swindon. Whilst people seem to find it easy to make an instantaneous post to Facebook, as shown on the Priory Vale, Swindon Group, it seems beyond the capabilites of SBC to post an explanatory notice to the SBC Waste and Recycle website. I feel that most of us accept that things go wrong from time to time, but why do we have to be kept in the dark (like mushrooms, to answer the question in the subject line)? This raises the whole question ...

... of "Openness, Transparency and Information Flow", a subject for the next meeting of the North Swindon Communities' Associations. 

When this last happened in August, I received the following response from SBC: "Thank you for your email, if a collection has been genuinely missed due to unforeseen circumstances. Waste and Recycling aim to re-collect on the next working day."

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So maybe our recycling will be collected on Monday instead of Friday? Who knows?

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("Transparency and openness must underpin every decision your council makes for you.".; Eric Pickles (Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government) talking about “A new era of local transparency” on March 1st, 2011.)

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On 20th and 21st December, North Swindon Baptist Church invites you to

• Meet Wise Men
• Talk to Shepherds
• See the Manger

or have a free tea or coffee and use the free gift wrapping service - by the water fountain by ASDA.

In mid-2008 the developers and the council struck a deal to change the original S106 agreement to give the council elbow room to spend the money in different parts of the town which would benefit residents of North Swindon.

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To achieve this greater flexibility the council and the North Swindon Development Company agreed the reduce the amount originally agreed in the early 1990s of £17.1 million to £14.375 million. However a high proportion of the money has been spent all over the town, with large amounts funding projects with almost no link to North Swindon - for example, building football pitches in Old Town and an all weather surface at Greendown School in West Swindon. See the SwindonLink story on 23 September, for more details.