I gather that the owners of Tilehurst Petrol Station are appealing against the Licensing Committee’s decision to restrict late night alcohol sales to service through the night hatch at the petrol station and that the shop itself will be locked after 23:00.
The appeal will be determined by the Magistrate’s Court. No date has yet been set.
Since we wrote in Council Topics about the council’s decision to go ahead with an experimental ban on parking on grass verges and pavements, both Meri and I have been contacted by quite a number of residents expressing support for this initiative and asking for their road to be included.
This is clearly an issue which many folk in Tilehurst feel strongly about and which has come through from residents’ surveys we have done in the past. I really hope that we can introduce the ban soon and enforce it. Once people start to receive warning letters from the council and possibly a few fines are handed out, I am sure motorists will think twice about parking on grass verges or blocking footpaths by parking on the pavement.
We have also had a few residents who want to plant flowers and shrubs on various grass verges. People do care about their environment and they do want it to be kept tidy (not necessarily pristine but just neat and tidy). This ban will help us reclaim our grass verges and get rid of the mud patches that are all to obvious at present.
Earlier this evening the council’s Licensing Committee waved aside a letter of protest signed by 146 local Tilehurst residents and granted the owners an extension of their licence to sell alcohol 24 hours a day.
I spoke at the meeting and represented Tilehurst residents but despite my pleas the committee decided there was nothing wrong in opening a booze outlet in Tilehurst Village 24 hours a day.
The only concession made by the committee was to order the owners to keep the shop closed between 23:00 and 05:00 and to serve customers during these hours through a night hatch only.
The Licensing Committee was blind to the potential effects on the village, of late night rowdiness or the obvious open door to any corner shop to follow suit and open 24/7. I dread to think what the long term effects will be of one company’s desire to make a quick buck out of selling alcohol 24/7 in a residential neighbourhood.
Was out with Meri this evening knocking on doors, talking to residents and gathering more signatures for our objection letter. We now have 146 signatures and I will hand them in to the council tomorrow.
We have now talked to lots of residents who live near to the petrol station and it is clear that the vast majority do not want to see the licence extended to 24/7.
Now we need to convince the Licensing Committee on 22 January.
We spent some tiome earlier this evening knocking on doors near to the petrol station and almost everyone we spoke to was against extending the alcohol licence to 24 hours a day. We have over 80 signatures on a letter setting out our objections.
Quite clearly the residents of Tileehurst do not want to see the petrol station extend its licensing hours.
Housing, or lack of it, is a huge national issue which no governemnt has been on top of over the last fifty years. Since the 1960s and the end of the post war boom years we have struggled to build enough new homes for people that need them. And since the Tories introduced the ‘right to buy’ which allows council and housing association tennants to buy homes that they have previously rented, the stock of available social housing simply does not keep up with demand. As more tennants have bought their homes so less and less are availble to house future families in need.
As a nation we have built some 110,000 houses over the last year, the lowest number of new houses built since the war and to put that in perspective we need to provide for 270,000 new households every year just to keep up with demand. But this is not the whole story, what is important is also the type of new homes we have built, not just the numbers. I have no figure for how many of those 110,000 new homes were built for social rents but I think we can safely assume it was a pitifully low number.
We have endless supplies here in Reading of two bedroom flats for well-off renters in the town centre and four bedroom executive homes in surrounding areas but where are the new homes for less well off tennants who are forced to rent privately and rely on housing benefits to pay the rent. In Reading we have over 10,000 people on waiting lists and we have managed to build around 100 new affordable homes last year.
Somehow we have a get developers to build affordable homes, not just homes to be snapped up by those who already own properties and will just rent out more houses and flats at sky high prices. The current planning regime does not allow local authorities to order developers to build affordable housing and the bulk of the income in previous years from ‘right to buy’ sales was not allowed to be spent on new housing so there is very little cash with which to pay for or subsidise new house building.
If developers could ever think of houses as a long term investment rather than a quick way to make money we might have a better chance of building houses for social rents but I see no signs of this happening and the present council’s actions (as opposed to their written policy) seems to be to give in to developers demands to build more executive homes and less and less sffordable housing. The council needs to demand more from developers.
We are in a crisis.
As my fellow Tilehurst Ward councillors will know the issue of motorists parking their cars and vans on grass verges and pavements has annoyed quite a number of local residents. After a summer of dillydallying the council is now consulting on introducing a ban for a trial period on the following roads in Tilehurst and Kentwood Wards:
• Westwood Road (whole length)
• School Road (whole length)
• Recreation Road (between car park entrance and School Road)
• Church End Lane (whole length)
• Lower Elmstone Drive (whole length)
• Brooksby Road (between Juniper Way and Overdown Road)
• Park Lane (whole length)
• Mayfair (whole length)
• The Meadway (between Church End Lane and Mayfair)
• Overdown Road (between Kentwood Hill and Brooksby Road)
• Norcot Road (between Church End Lane and School Road)
• Oak Tree Road (whole length)
The arguments for a ban are summed up as follows:
* uncaring motorists park vehicles so that they block footpaths and force mums with buggies and older folk on mobility scooters out into the carriageway.
* parking on grass verges destroys the verges and, especially when it has been raining, it turns them into unsightly mud patches and makes the whole neighbourhood appear run down.
* if all vehicles parked in the orad where they are supposed to park, they would also act to slow down traffic speeds as they narrow the road for passing traffic.
The arguments against any ban are:
* if I park my vehicle on the road it is going to be hit by passing traffic which already goes too fast.
keeping cars off the road makes it safer for motorists who then do not have to weave in and out around parked cars.
* The grass verge is outside my house so what do I care if the neighbours don’t like it, i’t my own business not theirs.
The good news is that this consultation exercise lasts through to the end of November and residents who live along the chosen roads can all have their say. None of us have any idea what the majority of reisdents want so it will be good to see what results come out of this consultation. If there is majority support for the ban then the council will introduce it as an experiment as it will be the first of its kind in Reading.
Last Tuesday’s Council Meeting gave me the opportunity yet again to press the case for building more affordable housing in Reading and as anyone who has attended Planning Committee this year will confirm, I do take every opportunity to sound off on my hobbyhorse. But this is a really serious topic in Reading as elsewhere in South East England. Not only are we not building enough social housing, we are giving in to the developers at every turn and even meeting our own local policy requirements.
The Labour Administration were pushing through a motion attacking the chnages to the current planning legislation being proposed and saying how wonderful things would be under Labour. I responded to Cllr Ruhemann (Lead Councillor for Planning) as follows:
he seems to gloss over Labour’s magnificent record in promoting house building over 13 years in government and twenty something years as this council’s administration. His opening paragraph alludes to the terrible changes that will lead to a reduction in the number of affordable homes built by an uncaring government. He studiously ignores that pathetic record of this council, under his leadership, of building affordable housing in Reading.
Can he explain to the many young people living in privately rented accommodation in Reading, or still living at home into their 30’s, why, on his watch, the Planning Committee has unilaterally given up on the 50% target for affordable homes in any new development and why he thinks that if developers offer just 15 or 20% that is perfectly fine for the residents of Reading. After all, we are really short of 3 and 4 bedroom luxury houses to buy, we just cannot get enough modern 2 bedroom flats to rent from private landlords. 15 or 20% of affordable homes when we are building just 600 new houses in a year works out at 120 affordable units a year, a drop in the ocean as far as meeting current needs goes.
Can he explain to the 10,000 people on the council’s waiting list in Reading how much he thinks about them when every planning decision is being made?
What is the point of a motion like this castigating the government, developers, and planning policy in general when this Administration does not even take steps to stick to its own policy on social housing, the one thing that Reading Borough Council can do for itself, to follow its own policy and demand that developers build more affordable housing. How can you blame everyone else for the housing debacle in Reading when you don’t even apply your own policy?
Don’t ever believe Labour on housing or planning, they are all mouth and no trousers when it comes to planning for, or building, the homes that Reading needs.
Last Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending my first meeting of the Planning Applications Committee – and very droll and boring it was too. However, one gem dropped out of a discussion on the next phase of the Kennet Island development.
I was shocked to see that officers were recommending that of the 546 homes to be built, just 19 were set aside as affordable (social) housing. The developers had apparently negotiated with the council a payment of £3m after the houses were built for the council to build its own housing elsewhere. When I asked why this should be allowed, Cllr Pete Ruhemann, Labour chair of the committee, explained that this was common practice for developers to buy their way out of any commmittment to build social housing and was necessary to attract developers to our town.
Just think about it for a minute, a developer with a huge new development which, even if they make an average of just £50,000 profit on each home will bring in £27m, is offering £3m to Reading which which it may be able to build (if Labour ever did build any new council housing) perhaps 30-35 units. Add in the 19 social housing units actually being built and you can see that wonderful Labour, whose main aim in life is apparently to support the poor and the vulnerable, have managed to squeeze 54 social housing units out of the 546 being built, a rate of 10% of the new build.
Given the 9,000 odd names on waiting lists in Reading and Labour’s committment to affordable housing, this is a complete disgrace. This is how Labour support the poor and needy in Reading. Cllr Ruhemann and the Labour Party should hang their heads in shame. Labour cannot be trusted on housing and they are guilty of obvious porkies over the last few years about their support for affordable housing.
The Council’s Traffic Management Advisory Panel (TMAP) meets tonight to approve the highway maintenance programme for the coming year 2012-13. Tilehurst residents will be pleased to know that it includes resurfacing Westwood Glen and also a section of Norcot Road that leads uphill into the junction with Pottery Road.
If money holds out then the council will also resurface Meadway bewteen New Lane Hill and St Michaels Road as well as the bit of Tilehurst Road by Honey End Lane that was strangely missed out last year.
The council also proposes to carry out minor repairs to Armour Road (something that we pointed out needed doing some time ago).
The footpaths along Beverley Road leading up from Westwood Road will also be resurfaced.
This is all part of a £2m annual plan to maintain Reading’s roads, a sum that really only allows the council to tackle the worst stretches of roads and footpaths.