Bottle Banks in Tilehurst

Reading BC is under pressure to increase the amount of glass it recycles. For years it has collected all the kerbside recycling in a red bins provided free to each household. The recycling materials are then sorted at the new Materials Recycling Facility in Smallmead. Glass is excluded from this collection system as it would shatter and create a hazard for anyone sorting the recycled material by hand (and even in Smallmead some of the sorting is indeed done by hand). So for years now tonnes of glass are thrown into the grey non-recycled bins and end up in landfill. It is one of the major components of the waste that Reading sends to landfill.

The answer the council have come up with is to put out many more bottle banks around the town to try and encourage people to recycle more of their glass bottles. That is a good aim but convincing local residents that a bottle bank close to their house is a good thing can be a bit tricky. Sending out letters explaining the reasoning behind the bottle banks has not generally produced a flood of comments being fed back to the council.

The council have identified 3 potential sites in Tilehurst for bottle banks. The first one in Harvaston Parade got very little response (only 6 out of 50 letters sent out) so the local Lib Dem team sprang into action and surveyed the houses near the proposed site, door to door. The result was 21 residents in favour and 16 against and whatever the result it was a lot more representative than the council’s letter responses.

More recently sites were proposed atoutside the Horticultural Society Hall in Gratwicke Road and on the green in Lansdowne Road. Again the council’s response rate to its letters has not been brilliant. Again the local Lib Dems carried out surveys and found that residents in Gratwicke Road were 15 against to 14 for the bottle bank whilst over in Lansdowne Road there was a big majority, 9 to 2, against the bottle bank. In fact on the latter site there appears to be a petition now being circulated to oppose the bottle bank.

All of which goes to prove that if you want residents’ opinions on local issues, the best way to find out is to go and talk to them. Relying on folk to write back is not good enough.

Road Safety in Reading – Again

Another month, another councillors’ surgery. Last Saturday I was regaled again with residents angry at what they see as the council’s non response to road safety issues. For many years the council has stuck by its policy of only putting in traffic calming measures after major accidents have occurred that caused death or serious injuries. They seem incapable of understanding that residents do not feel safe on their own streets any more.

Despite the many petitions and angry residents that have come to TMAP (the Council’s  Traffic Management Advisory Panel), we never seem to get very far. The only advance I have seen in my two and a half years on the council is the decision to buy speed guns for the use of local neighbourhood police teams, something that I pushed through into this year’s budget with the help of my fellow Lib Dem councillors.

For the rest, the Administration and the council officers seem to represent a brick wall, they are certainly not listening to the public they are supposed to work for. The latest Speed Awareness campaign targets a road every few weeks, puts up a few palstic signs and, if you are lucky, one Smiley Sid flashing warning light. At the end of two weeks they are moved on to another road with very little lingering effect. It is a fine example of the council trying hard to be seen to be doing something but not really making a difference.

There is no effort to put up more Smiley Sid signs, no discussion of 20mph speed limits, no use of speed guns until the Lib Dems came up with  the idea – just a refusal to think about humps or chicanes or anything until there are serious accidents and blood on the road.

We simply have to address road safety as a council, we can no longer turn away and ignore residents calls to make their streets safe for young and old, able and disabled alike. For many years anti-social behaviour was also ignored by local and central government and only after many years campaigning has this been turned round. Nowadyas we finally have neighbourhood police teams taking responsibility for local law and order and also taking their priorities from local people.

Speeding must be the next issue to tackle.

Station Hill Planning Mess

Over the last week I have been at two functions that show the limitations of the planning system in this country.

Firstly, I attended a meeting of Reading BC’s Strategic Transport Board where we looked at plans for the new station and for the developemnt of the southern concourse which is designed to be an attractive glass ‘gateway’ to the town.

Later in the week I popped in to see the new plans on display by Sackville (controlled by John Madjeski) for the redevlopment of Station Hill. Station Hill 2 is the second attempt by Sackville to produce acceptable plans for this area. They have redesigned their original scheme to include more open space and put more thought into the amenities that could be provided for the public. This is very much designed as a showpiece that would change the face of Reading significantly.

The problem is that the two design teams working separately on Station Hill 2 and the new station itself do not seem to have had any contact with each other and however good or bad their plans are, they do not fit together. If built as currently proposed the vast new glass station entrance would be shaded by one of Sackville’s office block skyscrapers and nobody would ever see the magnificent new station entrance from the town and visitors coming in to Reading would be greeted by a concrete block obscuring the sun and light from half the new glass atrium.

And then there is the matter of Reading’s new transport interchange which the council’s team are now designing not as one complex but a series of three transport interchanges that will make changing buses at the central hub of Reading’s bus network a nightmare of long walks up and down stairs before finding that the new terminus is just the old bus stop in Friar Street (or wherever).  The bright new transport terminus is turning in to a different one way bus loop using bus stops spread out over miles of existing town centre roads with their narrow pavements and lack of facilities.

Would it not be possible for both sides, Sackville and Reading BC, to rethink their proposals for the vast area that is ready for redevelopment on the south side of the station and come up with an attractive, unified plan that incorporates the new gateway to Reading, a modern transport interchange (for buses, taxis, MRTs and even Private Hire Vehicles), a welcoming public open space as well as the new office blocks, shops and appartments.

Surely the value of  both developments would be enhanced by  working in unison, rather than each partner pulling in different directions.

No to New Mast – Tilehurst 1 Vodafone 0

There is huge relief in Tilehurst today now that council officers have decided to reject the application from Vodafone for a 14 metre high mast on the corner of Lower Elmstone Drive and Elmstone Drive. Local residents, 229 of whom signed our petition against the mast application, are delighted with the news. This is a good decision for Tilehurst where we have clearly demonstrated the depth of feeling about plans to erect this monstrosity in our residential neighbourhood.I would like to thank all the residents who signed our petition and I would also like to say a special thank you to Nerys and Andrew Wilkinson who helped with the petition and also provided a lot of excellent publicity for our cause.

The council’s rejection is based solely on planning grounds in that the mast and its base cabinets would be obtrusive structures that do not fit with the surrounding environment.  However, Vodafone can appeal against this decision and they have three months in which to do so. Given the amount of time and money they have already spent on this case, an appeal is very likely. Any appeal will be heard by a Planning Inspector and both sides will be able to put their case.  

Despite this threat that will hang over Tilehurst for a few months yet, this is a splendid win for Tilehurst in Round 1. We look forward to facing Vodafone again should they appeal.

 

Note:   Planning Application 09/00289/TELE can be viewed on the council’s website.

RESCUE in Tilehurst

Yesterday I took part in the annual RESCUE clean-up operation run by Tilehurst Globe. I spent a couple of hours clearing rubbish from Blundell’s Copse, one of several wooded areas that make Tilehurst such a pleasant place to live. The woods, of course, attract kids and apart from being a place to walk the dogs, they are a huge free-range playground.

One of the perverse joys of clearing up the mess that had accumulated over the last year was discovering what our younger generations had been up to in the woods. There were countless discarded blue plastic bottles of cheap cider and not a few empty beer cans which belie any notion that we are successfully cracking down on under-age drinking. Interestingly, there were almost no fag ends or signs of smoking, just lots of bottles and cans and piles of domestic refuse, especially close to any of the neighbouring houses.

So I started to think what lessons I could draw from my time in Blundell’s Copse and here are a few thoughts.

Kids do still obtain cheap booze and consume it in out-of-the-way places where no-one bothers them. Is this better or worse than staggering round the streets of Tilehurst whilst a little the worse for wear, or is this perfectly normal, acceptable, behaviour from youngsters with little else to occupy themselves ? I think the general view was that if that’s all they got up to then leave them to it. If only they would take their bottles and cans away when the finished !  Thankfully, our youngsters do not appear to be that much taken with smoking, which can only be a good thing.

Secondly, people do abuse our woodlands by fly-tipping all sorts of domestic rubbish and some of the worst offenders are those who live closest to them. We have a long way to go to convince residents that woods are nicer without the heaps of rubbish and endless bits of litter.

My thanks to Tilehurst Globe for organising this annual event and to all those who take part.

Get Lost Vodafone

Vodafone have recently sent in a planning application to erect a 12 metre high mobile phone mast in Lower Elmstone Drive, Tilehurst, in the middle of a residential area where it will stick out like a sore thumb. As a comparison, the current street lights are 6 metres tall. Vodafone’s column will be twicw that height and have antennae on top adding another 2 metres, making 14 metres high in total. This will destroy the existing outlook of a pleasant tree-lined road and has already upset local residents.

Last summer Vodafone did a ‘consultation’ exercise and wrote to the 10 nearest houses with their proposal, outlining their intention to put in a planning application. Upset residents sent in a barrage of 40 protest letters,a clear indication of local feeling.

Well, the planning application has now arrived and I am working with local residents to get it rejected.

You can see the plans in the Planning section of Reading BC’s website at:

http://planning.reading.gov.uk/publicaccess/tdc/DcApplication/application_searchform.aspx

The reference number is 09/00289/TELE.

We cannot allow this monstrosity to be erected on our doorstep.

Road Safety

I was struck again earlier on today driving back to Reading from Oxford by the amount of investment by other authorities in basic road safety. Every village on my route had an electronic 30mph speed sign that flashed a warning if drivers approached at faster speeds. These signs are now common almost everywhere except in Reading. They do remind careless drivers that there is a 30mph limit as they enter a built up area.

In Reading we have a very different approach to road safety, we tie several small yellow plastic signs to lampposts with long messages in print so small that drivers could not read the messages even if they saw the sign amongst all the other street clutter as they speed by at 40-50mph. Oh, and the signs are taken down after two weeks and moved to another road. There were originally supposed to be electronic signs used in these two week actions but the council only has two such signs so most of the campaign is restricted to the ineffective yellow plastic signs on lampposts.

And the reason  –  RBC officers fear that electronic signs would be vandalised and parts nicked if they were left in Reading streets. So why does this not happen to traffic lights or other road signs ? They also have precious little budget for road safety so we have this wonderfully ineffective ‘awareness campaign’ which is, apparently, going to help reduce traffic speeds in Reading. Do not ask them how, they are not measuring traffic speeds before or after the signs are put out. In short the whole campaign is all about pretending to do something about a very serious problem for which they have no resources to tackle properly.

Community Alcohol Partnership

For the uninitiated this is a scheme to tackle alcohol related problems around known troublespots. Reading are due to give the go-ahead next week for a pilot scheme in Tilehurst around the Triangle. In essence they will make use of government funds to pay for a full-time worker to tackle the well-documented problems around the Triangle area where there is the constant threat of unruly behaviour by youngsters, often fuelled by alcohol. When the council has carried out test purchases in Tilehurst using under age kids, some 33% were allowed to buy alcohol illegally.

 

Whilst we all applaud this pilot scheme (and the results of a similar pilot in St Neots had a dramatic effect of local alcohol-related problems), it is just a shame that we have had to wait for Home Office funds to pay the £8,000 cost of a part-time Project Officer for the 6 month trial period. Other areas in Reading are not so fortunate and in the current economic climate, may have to wait a long time for similar projects. Despite all the newspaper headlines and trouble for local shopkeepers, Reading cannot run a scheme off its own back.