New plans for School Road

School Road at The Triangle

Traffic managers at the council have come up with new plans to improve road safety along School Road in Tilehurst, in part due to a number of incidents involving pedestrians in recent years. The plans call for:

1. A number of traffic islands along School Road to make it safer for pedestrians to cross.
2. Removal of the bus lay-by in The Triangle.
3. Creation of a new bus lay-by in Corwen Road.
4. A new 20 mph limit along School Road, Walnut Way and the closes off them.
5. A safety barrier (guard railing) in front of the library.

The lay-by in The Triangle is used by the 33 buses as a timing point so buses may be parked there for several minutes. Moving the lay-by to Corwen Road will allow pedestrians to cross using a new island in front of Barclays Bank without the buses holding up traffic. The 17 will continue to use the bus stop which will move slightly closer to the traffic lights, but on the road and it does not use this stop as a timing point. The lay-by outside the Plough will not be changed.

Pedestrians can use the new islands to cross over School Road and also to avoid the tricky crossing of Westwood Road where mums, schoolchildren and elderly folk currently have to walk in between cars.

All in all the plans are welcome although we would have preferred a much wider 20 mph zone incorporating a lot more of Tilehurst’s residential roads.

You can see the plans here on the main Reading Lib Dems website.

Feel free to send any comments in to the ouncil, in fact the more comments you send in the better. And do not forget to mention the need for a safety barrier outside the library to stop very young children from running out into the street.

Potholes, potholes and more potholes

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This is clearly a subject that concerns a lot of folk in Tilehurst according to our recent residents’ surveys. We also get a number of pothole reports coming to our monthly surgeries. Since the council has put in considerbly more effort to fix potholes over the last few months I thought I would share with you some figures that were presented to the recent Traffic Management committee in November.

Since 29 July the council has fixed 540 out of 885 potholes reported, which is 61%. This includes all those on major (A and B class) roads. Having fixed the major roads they are are working down the list of priorities and should complete the vast bulk before Xmas and the inevitable bout of colder weather that will, no doubt, open up another load of potholes.

Do spare a thought for the gangs who spend their time out on the roads fixing potholes, its a job that never ends.

Why we need blanket 20mph zones across Reading

I am often accused by the Labour Administration in Reading of wanting to impose 20 mph zones on the whole population where they want to achieve something similar area by area. Well let’s get the democracy question sorted first. Yes I want to see 20 mph zones across all residential areas of Reading but only after we have made the case to residents and got their support. I believe that the case for reclaiming our streets with blanket 20 mph zones is overwhelming both in terms of reducing traffic casualties and of encouraging more people to walk and cycle.

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Labour’s slowly slowly approach has meant that only the one area, in Newtown (where they hope to take the seat off the Greens next May), is currently being targeted for a 20 mph zone. Other councils have taken a much more proactive stance and gone ahead to consult with residents over whole towns and cities. These include Portsmouth, Brighton, Islington, Warrington, Liverpool, Wirral, Lancashire, Oxford, York, Cambridge, Waltham Forest, Newcastle, Hackney, Bristol, Middlesborough, Bath, Camden and Darlington.

For years Tony Page and his Labour colleagues have prevaricated on the issue of 20 mph zones whilst all these other places have grasped the nettle. We need action now over the whole of Reading and we need to make the case to Reading’s population about the need to reduce car speeds in residential areas. Actually I am sure that most Reading residents will take little convincing as whenever I have asked people about it there is almost total agreement.

So stop shilly-shallying and let’s have 20 mph zones across Reading

Road closure in Tilehurst over half-term week

There will be a major road closure in Tilehurst next week. The council will be closing the roads at the junction of Corwen Road and Walnut Way to work on drainage issues and to improve the footway crossings. The junction will be closed entirely to undertake the works.

Residents and businesses will need to access The Triangle, Walnut Way, Tyle Road, and Tree Close from St Michaels Road and the ‘No Entry’ restriction on the junction of Walnut Way and St. Michael’s Road will be suspended to allow this.

The road closure will be for five days from 28th October between 09.30 – 16.00 (School Half-Term). Letters are being sent out to affected residents.

Reading Buses have been notified, and will be diverting their affected services.

Labour’s flaky commitment to affordable housing

Labour’s planning documents which they use to make judgements on planning applications includes a commitment to seek 50% affordable housing on all major developments where more than 15 houses are proposed. It is an excellent target given that not only is there a severe housing shortage in Reading but we have little hope of making inroads in to a council housing waiting list that numbers around 10,000. Given that the population of Reading is approximately 150,000, that is an awfully high number of people and families who are being forced into private rented accommodation, often in poor quality buildings.

So it was with great interest that I read a planning application to do with some minor matters relating to the scheme to rejuvenate the Dee Road Estate. The total scheme calls for the demolition of 376 houses on the site and replacing them with 763 houses and flats. However, even in one of their flagship schemes, the Labour council has only managed to provide 281 affordable homes out of the total of 763 being built. For the mathematicians amongst you, that equates to a measly 37% of the total.

So much for the 50% target that was introduced with fanfares only a year or two ago. Do please write and ask Cllr Page (Lead Councillor for Planning) what has happened to the 50% target which has never been anywhere near met on any major development project that I am aware of.

Tilehurst Allotments

Now here is a complicated story that raises its head every few years in Tilehurst.
On one side is the Tilehurst Poors Land Trust, an old established parish charity that provides all sorts of help to local people who have fallen on hard times. And they do a good, and useful, job. It relies on its assets to fund its good works. The assets consist of land (mostl use for allotments plus the Victoria Rec which is leased as a park to the council on a long term lease) and the proceeds of previous land sales all of which allows the trust to provide some £10-12,000 of charity every year. Their only way of increasing their funding for charitable works is to sell off more of the land they still own.
On the other side are the allotment holders who have spent years cultivating their plots to provide sustainable, wholesome, food for themselves and their families.

Some fifteen years ago the trust moved a number of allotment holders off one side of the land at Kentwood Hill and on to vacant plots nearer Armour Hill and Polstead Road. They then proposed to sell the Kentwood Hill land for development and use the proceeds to fund more charitable work. There was uproar in Tilehurst as allotment holders feared the thin end of the wedge and the death of the remaining allotments if they gave way on any of them. There was no thought for increasing the charity’s good works, for building much needed affordable housing in Tilehurst, just an absolute determination to stop any development on allotment land.

And so we have had the same scenario played out between the trust and allotment holders every few years. Currently the trust have abandoned Kentwood Hill (still derelict after all these years) and have given notices to quit to the 7 or 8 plot holders of a small patch of allotments on Chapel Hill, a site which even the trust admit (on their website) would be a very difficult place to develop given the proximity to existing houses.

I cannot see this latest ploy succeeding any more than previous attempts to sell off allotments and the council is in no mood to allow development on such land.
The only way to break the impasse would be for the trust to come to an arrangement with the council and the allotment holders to sell off part of Kentwood Hill (much of which is not suitable for allotments anyway) for development in return for guarantees to retain the other allotments over the long term (perhaps 50 years in to the future). However, this needs sensible discussion between two sides that currently distrust each other.

More on parking in Tilehurst

Well the experimental ban is now in force and the first reports of contraventions are filtering through. I had to laugh at the first report though, it was of the council’s own vans parking on grass verges in Tilehurst. Clearly the council has yet to get the message round to its own staff.

However, the camera van has been seen around Tilehurst and letters should soon be sent out to people who have parked inconsiderately. The council has rightly opted to just write letters to offenders first and only if they don’t take the hint will subsequent offences be punished with a fine.

There is still a lot of concern about parents parking when dropping off children for school in the mornings and when collecting them in the afternoons. Parents’ parking is a real problem for all our local schools, despite yellow lines and 20mph limits, they still park on street corners, across driveways and on the pavement. Clearly there is not room for every parent to park their car close to the school gate at 3:00 in the afternoon but that is no excuse for the inconsiderate parking of quite a few parents.

Here comes the ban

Tomorrow, Tuesday 7 May, the experimental ban of pavement and verge parking comes in to force along a number of roads in Tilehurst. Our local surveys suggest that 2/3 of residents in Tilehurst support the ban. It is designed to counter two local problems; firstly the uncaring drivers who park on pavements rather than the actual road which then blocks the footpath and forces mums with buggies, mobility scooters and anyone else to walk out in to the road. Secondly, the ban will stop drivers using grass verges as parking bays and destroying the verges, leaving behind a rutted muddy patch where grass used to grow.

Since the new signs went up a number of residents have contacted me with worries about getting disabled partners or parents from the front door to a car some distance away on the road. I can understand the problem but common sense suggests that in such cases it may be necessary to ‘block’ the footway for a few minutes to let disabled passengers in to, or out of, a car.

The ban will force more drivers to park in the roads rather than on pavements and verges. One possible result of this is a drop in speeds of cars as they manoeuvre around parked vehicles rather than put their foot down on an open section of road.

The need for social housing

Owen Jones writing in The Independent today has summed up the need for a social house-building programme here. It is needed both to provide jobs quickly (and revitalise the economy) but also, just as importantly, to provide decent, affordable homes for the generations of young families who are otherwise confined to the vaguaries of the private rental sector. Our country has become a haven for unscrupulous landlords who have bought up large swathes of private housing to rent out and maximise the profit on. This includes many former council houses now used as an asset to be sweated by landlords who think nothing of forcing tennants to sign up to a commitment to pay future rents even after they have vacated a property so that the unscrupulous landlord can continue his profit stream even during a ‘vacant’ period on a property only let on a short term agreement.

Neither the government nor local councils are doing enough to provide affordable housing to thw millions looking for secure, affordable, homes in which to raise a family. We need to build our way out of this mess, and quickly.

Housing, benefits and a crisis

Many people seem to be working up a lather on the government’s proposal to reduce benefits to those who live in under-uitlised social housing. The aim of this proposal is to encourage small households that are living in large houses to swap with large families living in smaller houses. Given that there are around 1,000,000 overcrowded families looking for larger houses and some 2,000,000 smaller families or singles living in larger houses, you would have thought there might be some scope to swap people around.

However, trying to tackle this issue is fraught with problems, not least of which is people’s attachment to their house and to the community in which they live (and may have lived for a very long time), not everybody wants to uproot themselves when their sons and daughters leave home.
Social Housing
However the key issue in talking about social housing is the lack of new affordable housing coming into use. Had we been building at two or three times the current rate of affordable builds for the last decade or two, we probably would not have needed to tackle the issue of under-utilised houses, as the total stock would have been much bigger and the problem much smaller.

We simply need to build more housing that people can afford to live in and the current planning regime (and propsals in the pipeline) do not make this any more achievable. We need an emergemcy programme to get Britain building.