The good news is that after lobbying from the Tilehurst councillors, Park Lane is to be re-surfaced between City Road and Mayfair. It is included in the list of roads being repaired this summer by the council.
Also included is Tilehurst Road (from Liebenrood Road to Honey End Lane).
Both these roads are in a shoddy condition and it is good to see the council spending some of the extra money (£400k) given by the Coalition Government for road repairs following two severe winters.
The new Labour Administration in Reading has declared its intent to drop the plans for penalising thoughtless motorists who park on grass verges and pavements.
Here in Tilehurst we are fortunate to have miles of grass verges but many of them have been ruined by people parking their cars on top of them. Look down Mayfair, Park Lane, The Meadway or Corwen Road and you will see what we are losing. The once nice green verges have been turned into mud patches. We will continue to allow our verges to be lost to people who park cars on them rather than in the road.
I don’t know about you but I would rather keep our grass verges green and cars on the road.
Well the Greens have now thrown in their lot with the Labour Party in Reading and although they have stopped short of a full coalition, they have now said that they will allow Labour to form a minority administration and run the council. In order to do this they will have to sit on their hands and abstain at Wednesday’s council meeting when the mayor is elected. With Labour on 22 councillors and the Lib Dems and Tories also mustering 22 councillors, the new mayor will be elected on the casting vote of the outgoing mayor, Labour’s Gul Khan, who will break convention and instead of voting in Tory Jenny Rynn (this year’s Deputy Mayor) will vote for a Labour nominee.
From that moment the council will be run by Labour who will continue to use the casting vote of their mayor whilst the Greens sit on their hands and abstain.
The Greens are about to find out that you do not have to vote with Labour in order to support them and that whatever the new council does from now on it will do with the tacit support of the Greens. I confidently expect the new administration to make very little impression on the £200m the council owes and that they will fail to meet the current budget which needs to find £19m of savings this current year in order to meet government targets.
It will be interesting to see if the Greens manage to gain any advantage for Park Ward residents out of their deal with Labour and if so what does that mean for Labour’s Cllr John Hartley, the last Labour councillor left in Park Ward.
For the Lib Dems it will be back to opposition on the council and campaigning on the streets again.
Last weeks local election results in Reading left the parties in the following state:
Labour 22 seats
Tories 16 seats
Lib Dems 6 seats
Greens 2 seats
No party has an overall majority and the Greens have been left with a choice of propping up a Labour administration or joining a broad coalition with the Tories and Lib Dems.
They have been put in a very uncomfortable place as propping up a Labour administration will tie them into all the decisions that Labour make and there will need to be some tough ones if Reading is to keep within its budgets.
On the other hand the Lib Dem/Tory coalition that prised control of the council away from Labour last May after 23 years has already made many of the tough budget decisions (and also opened up some of Labour’s darker secrets like funding Labour (union) activists from tax-payers money) and has developed a reputation for competance that Labour has lacked over the last few years.
Returning Labour to power will not serve the Greens or the people of Reading who overwhelmingly still vote against Labour rather than for it. It is only our peculiar First Past the Post electoral system that kept them in power for so long.
Joining a coalition and taking part in Cabinet discussions and decisions means that the Greens could look to influence things rather than react to other peoples decisions. Of course this will tie them in to a coalition with other parties but one which actually has majority support from the popular vote cast in Reading.
Sadly Labour have no ideas when it comes to sharing power with anybody else. Their politics are still very tribal and they will only use the Greens to further Labour aims (which equate to hanging on to power as there is no ideology left in the Labour party) rather than work with them.
Getting elected may not have been easy for the Green councillors, but making key decisions over who to support in the council chamber may well prove to be very much harder.
There is apparently no sense of shame or hypocrisy in Reading’s Labour Party. Today I read that Labour’s Transport Supremo Tony (IDR) Page said “It’s a matter of great concern to me and my colleagues that the administration is downgrading a long-established commitment to public transport and the importance of a third Thames bridge.” This is from the man who put the Third Thames Bridge at number 30 of a list of 30 projects in the TIF bid 18 months ago, meaning that it was kicked into the long grass depsite questions from myself about its priority. This man has no shame and a very select memory. His support for public transport does not apparently extend to providing a bus station at the heart of Reading’s bus network for the good folk of Reading which we will now do without for the foreseeable future.
Then we had a Council meeting last night where Labour proposed an amendment to a report on Budget savings, asking the Administration to look at alternative ways of providing public services other than directly through the council. This, you will not be surprised to hear is exactly what the Administration has been doing since it was elected in May, looking for the most efficient ways to deliver services, minimising any potential cuts and ensuring continuity of service. It is of course difficult when faced with having to make savings of £19m in a total budget of £160m as a result of Labout mismanaging an economy, but the Administration decided to accept and support the amendment anyway. Then the Labour councillors, with a breathtaking show of hypocrisy voted against the amended report recommendations. The truth is they were trying to trap the Administration into voting against what, on the face of it, was a sane amendment. We did not fall for that particular trick and Labour ended up with egg on their faces by voting against something they had just proposed. But the farce was there for all to see, no principles, no shame, just pure farce from Labour.
Good news for Tilehurst residents ! Recreation Road and Dunstall Close car parks are having their charges frozen for another year following negotiations between the Council and NCP who run the car parks on their behalf. It means that Tilehurst shoppers can still park for free for one hour and do their shopping, it is only the second and subsequent hours that are charged.
Actually the car park charges are only enforced between 10:00 and 15:00 so outside these times you can park for free for as long as you want !
Fantastic news yesterday. The council has rejected Vodafone’s planning application for a new 15 metre high mast in Lower Elmstone Drive. Local opposition to this eysore has been huge and once again Vodafone have been sent packing.
Well done to everyone who helped us campaign for this rejection. Thank you to the many residents who wrote in with comments, to the 272 signatories on our petition, to the volunteers who helped organis the petition and who went round knocking on doors, to those who delivered leaflets letting people know of Vodafone’s plan. It has all been a splendid success.
Thank you and well done again.
Well, having been forced to withdraw their previous planning application for a telephone mast in Lower Elmstone Drive in April 2009, Vodafone are back with a new proposal. This time they want to site the mast over the road on the opposite side of Lower Elmstone Drive where ther are no traffic issues as there were on the previous site on the corner of Elmstone Drive. The new mast is 15 metres high, even taller than the original proposal, and slightly further away from houses. It will still represent a huge eyesore that is most definitely not wanted in Tilehurst.
I will keep you updated on the campaign as it unfolds. A plan of the site is shown here 
You can send any comments you have on the plan to Vodafone’s agent: robert.baker@monoconsultants.com
For anyone who is interested in the proposed Blue Living development on Pincents Hill, there is a public meeting this coming Friday, 10 September, at 19:30 at the Tilehurst Parish Council offices in Royal Avenue, Calcot.
Back in May the local Lib Dem manifesto included a committment to introduce 20mph zones where residents want them to improve road safety.
The reasoning behind implementing 20mph zones is really twofold. Firstly it does reduce the average speed of traffic within the zones even when other traffic calming measures are already in place. More importantly, the 20mph zones are a sign and an encouragement to local residents that they own the streets, not the motor cars. The 20mph zones make the streets safer for other users, whether pedestrians of cyclists or even small children wlaking to school or visiting friends.
Lib Dems in Portsmouth were the first major city council to introduce 20mph zones and they did it on a huge scale covering the whole city apart from the main roads which stayed at 30mph. These zones have now been in place for two years and have been shown to reduce overall traffic speeds. The effects on accident figures are much less clear with little or no reduction. However, the key question of residents’ attitudes to the new regime on their streets is much more difficult to measure but the received wisdom is that if traffic speed is reduced then people will feel safer about walking and cycling and also about allowing children out. I have not yet seen any actual data on this.