Trees to be Felled

Council officers have reported that a number of trees around the town are in such poor states of health that they require felling. Sadly the list includes the old horse chestnut tree in the Triangle which has been a landmark in Tilehurst for the last hundred years. Other trees to be felled in Tilehurst include one in Teviot Road growing too close to a house and one thorn tree outside 82 Elvaston Way.

It is always sad to see trees felled and it always takes a long time for replacement trees to grow. I have asked the Parks and Open Spaces Department  about plans to replace the felled trees and also the trees felled some time ago such as the one in front of the bungalows at the bottom of Corwen Road.

Thankfully, the council now has a Tree Strategy (thanks to a Lib Dem initiative over the last year) and soon it will have a full inventory of the trees in the Borough and budgeted plans for planting more, not just to replaced felled ones but to add to the number of trees, especially in those areas that have very few at present.

Trees in Reading and other towns and cities bring huge benefits to local people apart from making the place look more attractive. They help reduce air pollution, they provide shade in our parks, they reduce stormwater runoff and they also provide an improved habitat for much of our urban wildlife. We need to look after the trees we do have and replace the ones that we inevitably lose over time. Better still, we need to plant more trees where we can.

Stop nicking our bus stops !

I am sure that there are lots of elderly folk who do not understand why all the bus stops all over Reading have been removed over the last month or why the bus stop on Pierce’s Hill in particular has never been replaced at all since an accident damaged it last year.

The explanation is that one company was awarded the contract to provide bus stops several years ago by the Labour Administration in charge of the Council. Just before the contract ran out, they tendered for a new contract and awarded it to a new company. Sadly the contract allowed them to pick up their bus stops for all over the town without any reference to the new company that apparently cannot start operating until all the old bust stops have been removed. Only when can they start installing new bus stops. It makes you weep when contractual arrangements like this end up as a right pig’s ear with the poor public losing out. Lucky for the people of Reading, we have had good weather over the last couple of weeks – otherwise a lot of people waiting for busses would have got soaked as well as having no place to sit down.

I sincerely hope that the new contract does not have the same pig’s ear of a mess when it eventually runs out.

Oh, and the one on Pierce’s Hill will eventually be replaced, we just do not know when.

That Scrutiny Vote

I have been asked why, in the light of my previous post, I voted for Conservative Cllr Skeats to chair last night’s CCEA Scrutiny Panel when I deputised for Cllr Epps.

On the first round of a secret ballot to elect a chair for the panel, I voted for a Labour councillor. The vote produced a dead heat and a run-off ballot was held between Cllr Skeats (Con) and Cll Lovelock (Lab). I abstained on this run and the result was a again a deadlock.

At this point the election of a chair was deferred to the next meeting and a vote was held to install a temporary chair just for the evening. I could not support Cllr Lovelock (and there are one or two other Labour councillors I would not support) and the only way to break the deadlock was to vote for Cllr Skeats, which I did, happy to leave the next run of an election for chair of the panel to its next meeting when Cllr Epps would be back. I took the view that this was preferable to having Cllr Lovelock in the chair for a meeting when the items on the agenda related to her time as Leader of the Council.

So there you have it.

Scrutiny on the Council

Many people may not realise it but the Council has a number of Scrutiny Committees that look at aspects of the council’s activities and allow members to question officers and lead councillors, holding them to account for their actions. Scrutiny Committees are public meetings so anyone can go along, and indeed speak at these meetings.

For many years under the previous Labour Administration the chairs of the Scrutiny Committees were handed to fellow Labour councillors who then proceeded to ensure that the committees did not upset the Administration in any way. It was not a fair or open way to conduct these meetings and as a result they were never very effective in holding the Administration to account.

In 2008 Labour lost their majority on the council and one of the changes that happened was that the Tory and Lib Dem groups wrested the chairmanships of the scrutiny panels away from Labour. I have been Chair of the Environment Scrutiny Panel for the last two years during which we have had some frank but helpful discussions on the Administration’s policies on waste collection, waste disposal and climate change strategy to mention but a few topics. I remember attending a course on scrutiny along with Daisy Benson (Lib Dem Chair of Housing & Health Scrutiny) and Mark Ralph (Tory Chair of Education Scrutiny) and learning that having opposition members chair these panels was the best way of holding the Administration to account.

However, everything has changed with the advent of a new Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition Administration. In the Coalition Agreementthe Lib Dems have accepted the Tory proposal for Chairs of scrutiny panels to be elected by panel members at the first meeting of the year. This could appear to be an invitation to Administration members to select their own scrutiny panel chairs and leave the Labour opposition out in the cold. This would do to Labour what they had done to us for many years but is not, in my book, a good way to conduct scrutiny.

It is worth pointing out that the Coalition Agreement also calls for a rethink of Scrutiny and how it is best achieved and, whilst not wanting to prejudge what might come out of this, I am of the opinion that Scrutiny Panels must be seen to be independent of the Administration and so I, for one will not be voting for any councillor from the Administration Groups to chair a panel on which I am a member.

Just because Labour had a stranglehold on power in the Civic Centre for many years is not a justification for  weakening scrutiny panels now under the new Coalition Administration.

Park Lane School Update

Tilehurst residents have endured a long saga on the project to rebuild Park Lane School on the site of the current Laurels Infants School, Tilehurst Library and the Health Clinic. Essentially the plan involves building a new school on a single site (replacing the four different sites currently used by the school) with outdoor play areas and selling off the existing playing field in Downing Road, the curent main school building and the annexe in Downing Road. The plan was put together in repsonse to the last two OFSTED reports on Park Lane School which pointed to the limitations of using the current four sites and the unsuitability of the old buildings for modern teaching methods. The sale of the land would finance a large part of the new build. The plan has already been out to consultation in 2008 and last year a further consultation was held prior to seeking agrement to sell off the playing field (legislation requires that permission is granted by the Minister for Children, Schools and Families before any playing fields are disposed of).

The minister has now given consent for the playing field to be sold in order to finance the building of the new school. This is excellent news for Park Lane School and the children of Tilehurst.

However, in the current climate the value of land is considerably down on estimates from two years ago and government is far less likely to  fund any rebuilding as it deals with the current economic crisis. The upshot is that the school now has permission to sell off the playing field but will have to wait some time (probably several years) before finance can be found for the rebuilding. This is not good news for Tilehurst as the saga will continue for some time to come and the council also has to decide whether to finance some serious repairs to the school buildings that are becoming more urgent by the day.

Victory on Tilehurst Car Park Charges

The Labour Administration in Reading has today backed down on its decision to charge users of Tilehurst car parks from the moment they park their car. Lead Councillor for Transport Tony Page was forced, in the face of furious Lib Dem councillors from Tilehurst and elswhere, to reduce the plans for car park charges to only charge after the first hour which will remain free, and to put the whole proposal out to proper consultation.

This is a huge relief for residents and shop owners of  Tilehurst and allows residents to do there shopping with free parking in Recreation Road and Dunstall Close car parks. It is a massive victory against an arrogant, out-of-touch Labour council. It also shows the value of electing Lib Dem councillors to represent Tilehurst !

Charges for Tilehurst Car Parks ?

The Lead Councillor for Transport has once again demonstrated how arrogant Labour politicians never actually listen to local people. Cllr Tony Page has just announced his decision to implement charging for car parks in Dunstall Close and Recreation Road. There has been no consultation with local councillors, no notice, just a decision announced. I and my colleagues, Cllrs Pete Beard and Chris Harris are incensed at this heavy handed and outrageous move.

We have told officers that, following our recent Residents Surveys, lots of residents were in favour of charging for long stay parking, more than 2-3 hours, in these car parks as they  are denying space to the people for whom the car parks were designed, the shoppers.

What the council have come up with is a decision to charge everyone who uses the car opark, even if they only park for a few minuites to use a cash machine or buy a paper. This is a nonsense and Tilehurst residents will not support it.

We are calling in this  decision for re-consideration at Cabinet where we hope reason will prevail.

Speed Guns in Tilehurst

Speed Gun in Action Picture

Well they have finally arrived and I have been out to see them in action, along with my Lib Dem colleagues from Tilehurst Ward, Cllr Chris Harris and Cllr Pete Beard. We were out in Wetswood Road, Chapel Hill and Halls Road and everywhere we went we had residents come up to congatulate us on taking action on an issue they were really concerned about.

Up till now we have had very little deterrence to make motorists think about sticking to the speed limits. Well now the Lib Dems have got the Council to provide 5 speed guns for use by local Neighbourhood Police Teams.  Whilst this is far from a complete solution to a serious problem on many of our local roads  it does give local police teams a chance to deter speeding motorists.

Several tickets have already been issued in Tilehurst.

You have been warned !!

Bus passengers kept away from new station

Reading station is being rebuilt.  The whole station area is being revamped. We have fantastic plans for the new station buildings. We have Mr Madjeski’s skyscapers going up over the road. We should all be celebrating the huge investments being made in our town. Unless, of course, you are a bus passenger.

In amongst the hundreds of millions of £s of funding the council has decided that we do not need any sort of bus terminus outside the station, passengers will be dropped at bus stops in nearby streets and then also have to queue up there. There will be no information desk, no teabar, no loos, no covered walkways to protect against bad weather and no easy way to find your bus stop if you are not a regular passenger. No, Reading can do without these, they might get in the way of developing Station Hill. We may have excellent buses and a good network of routes but at the hub of the network there will be no central terminus and no facilties.

The plans for bus passengers at the new station are a shambles and will not serve the town’s current passengers let alone the doubling of numbers expected after the station is rebuilt. This is no way to encourage people to make more use of the bus.

In case you missed it, Reading Boerough Council has just finished consulting on Traffic orders to close Station Hill to through traffic as the first stage in redevloping the station area.

Services for Vulnerable People or Tax Cuts

Tonight’s Council meeting really set out the difference in approach to running council services. The Tories attacked Labour for not sticking to their budgets. Labour accusd the Tories of not caring for vulnerable people. The spat arose over what to do with a windfall of £3.6m that Reading BC has been given from the government as a result of overpaid VAT. The Tories want to use it to keep next year’s Council Tax increase down to 0%. Labour want to use part of it to to pay off some iof the extra sopending incurred by Childrens Services and Adult Social Care in catering for a huge increase in demand for these services which has affected almost all local councils this year (as a result of some highly publicised abuse cases).

The Lib Dems sided with Labour in the votes and opposed the Tory idea of cuts across the board to pay for these overspends this year in order to have their0% council tax rise next year. They were never specific about where they would cut the money other than calling for ‘across the board cuts.’ This, from the party that could not even produce a budget last March and insists on being the party that knows how to run government.

I told the Tories that they could not run services for vulnerable people as though they were running a corner shop and that they could not simply ignore the increased demand this year, or slash other front line services to pay for it  when this windfall was available.

I also pointed out that the Labour Government knew exactly the level of demand currently being experienced by both Childrens and Adults Social Care Services up and dowm the country but had chosen not to provide councils with any more funds. They had been quite happy to spend billions to prop up broken banks but would not spend a few millions to support broken humans.