In early November I blogged on the relationship of Hadleigh High School with its neighbours. (See: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?). Today the neighbouring residents got their day in front of Babergh’s Development Committee to challenge the erection of an amenity light. The specific proposal was to retain one amenity light which was located on one of the columns which also carried one of the permitted floodlights. The amenity light to be retained overlooked the path from the school and car parking areas rather than the MUGA itself (Multi Use Games Area). Well, it was an interesting experience. First the Council’s own documentation contained errors – so much so that they recognised that there may have been invalidities. Additionally, the recommendation to the Committee referred to Lister Road as Lister Lane (according to Google to be found in Halifax and Bradford). The nearest property in Station Road is 50 metres from the light not 85.
The applicant had stated that the light was required to access the MUGA in a safe manner. However you do not need a 12 m high light for safety purposes unless you are running a lorry car park or similar. The Council officials pronounced MUGA as MUGGA. Which is just how the residents felt – mugged. The object in challenging the application was so that some of the previous decisions could be amended to correct past mistakes and unintended consequences. The Committee approved the application without giving the residents what they needed and ignored their entitlement to the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions. From my point of view – it was a sad day for justifying the democratic process. And a sad day for the residents.
Local Colour
The Lion and Lamb
Yesterday was one of those days which worked out well once you realised that it was not profitable to try to run up hill through the mud.
We needed to meet the offspring at Stansted arriving from Salzburg – but the Austrian wing de-icer was either over worked or on a go slow – so arrival time was definitely a moveable feast.
Rather than wait in the arrivals’ lounge clocking up parking fees faster than a pay day loan in default, we looked for somewhere to eat close to the airport which is when we discovered the Lion and the Lamb, situated on the B1256 at Little Canfield.
It is less than three miles from the airport – which translates as ten minutes on the road – so collectees can call you on the mobile and summon you from the pub.
The lunch was just what we needed, the house red quite palatable and the coffee was freshly ground.
We left the pub, parked at the airport and met our travellers as they emerged into the public area.
So all in all, instead of problems, the delay gave us the opportunity to enjoy a very nice Essex pub.
The Morning(s) After
Hadleigh people certainly know how to party. On January 1st the town’s Magdelan Road recycling centre was overflowing with the evidence of very merry Christmases indeed! I informed Babergh District Council on the evening of the 1st January and by the afternoon of the 2nd the glass had been collected and the street care team had cleared all the bags and boxes left behind.
To be picky, leaving one’s rubbish by the bottle banks is littering at best and fly-tipping at worst.
Three cheers then for the Council and its teams for responding so quickly and so well.
Hadleigh Street Watch
I am a volunteer member of Hadleigh Street Watch. Our commitment is to walk the streets (patrol sounds too official) in pairs for at least two hours a month. Today I joined Glenn Abbassi on our first walk of the year. We just beat the rain and purposefully wandered from the War Memorial, up to Tower Mill Lane and a look at the new Persimmon Estate by Lady Lane, then across to Malyon Road, Oxford Road, the new Morrison’s, a look at the Brett River and back onto the High Street.
Overall people at pleased to see us and occasionally stop whatever they are doing to take a break and fill us in with their activities.
Personally I find the opportunity to walk my town very beneficial. We even got to enjoy a coffee shop (called the Daily Grind tel: 01473 823267) on the Industrial Estate. The Daily Grind has been open for about three months and produces a very nice espresso and cappuccino. It is an ideal place to stop off at when going to and from the recycling centre or any of the businesses on the Industrial Estate. The Daily Grind is open from Monday to Friday and as well as teas and coffees they also serve sandwiches, pastries, jacket potatoes, muffins, slices, cakes and cookies. They offer a take out service and will also provide buffets for meetings.
For more details of volunteering for Street Watch please contact the co-ordinator Verity Line (Verity.Line@suffolk.pnn.police.uk).
Taxing Councils
Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph contained an interesting piece on the effect of the cuts to Council funding. The newspaper states that “It is a sign of how bloated local government had become that councils have shed 230,000 jobs without hitting front-line services”. Of course front line services have been hit but not in ways which significantly impinge on the services people receive. Standards have been eased but not sufficiently to cause complaints. At the yesterday evening’s Town Council meeting I was asked if the Babergh District Council staff were having to apply for their own jobs. I weaselled out of by saying that whilst I didn’t have any details it would follow that as we amalgamated services we should be able to do so with a lesser number of staff. Consequently people were not applying for their own jobs but for new jobs under the new regime. As night follows day there would be winners and losers. The keys to success were that the right people were chosen for the new posts– not necessarily those who could do the talk but those able to walk the walk. The other issue was that people who no longer had a job were treated fairly to ease the transition to the next phase of their lives – (e.g. statutory redundancy payments are enhanced by 50%). Times change and there is no iron rice bowl anywhere any more. The full piece can be found on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9755916/Taxing-councils.html
Hadleigh Local Shopping Loyalty Card
Whilst many major companies are lawfully avoiding UK taxes, they are nevertheless depriving our Exchequer of the revenues needed to provide the services and building we need – and they are also attacking our own home grown business which find it difficult to compete against people who pay little or no tax. So it’s no more Starbucks for me. In future I’ll look for Costa (owned by Whitbread).
I’m going to try to give up Amazon and instead use our local bookshop The Idler.
Hadleigh has its own Local Shopping Loyalty Card. Collect a card and get it stamped ten times by local participating retailers (look for the window decals). Hand in the card when completed and participate in a monthly cash draw (£250 in December). If we do not support our local shops – then one day they will not be there.
Police and Crime Commissioner
On Thursday we will be voting for Suffolk’s first Police and Crime Commissioner. I am supporting Tim Passmore. His manifesto is on http://www.votetimpassmore.co.uk/. I’ve known Tim for a number of years.
For him if elected it is about:
● Cutting Crime
● Holding the Police to account for an annual budget of £125 million
● Keeping taxes down – the only element of your council tax with no democratic link is the Police Precept – a very regressive situation In Suffolk the public sector (excluding defence) spends £5 billion per year. There is huge scope for savings and improving efficiency and it needs someone with the right experience and determination to push this agenda through.
He is standing as a Conservative because that is what he is but the needs of Suffolk will always come above any party stance.
Tim believes that we need to be:
● Safer:
● Delivering much greater visibility of front line policing
● Improving respect for law and order in society
● Having a greater focus on detection and conviction of criminals and
● Being more robust in our approaches to drug crime, repeat offenders, anti-social behaviour, problem families and domestic violence.
So if you are so minded on Thursday (or have a postal vote) please vote for Tim, he is a man worth backing and will give us the right balance between feet on the street and toys for boys!
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Troubles come not as single spies but often as battalions. So when I wrote in August being a quiet month I did not reckon on Tesco, East House and Hadleigh Quarry all coming out of the woodwork to claim our attention.
The good work that Babergh’s officers do often goes unnoticed and more often unappreciated. One of the current issues affecting Hadleigh is the High School ignoring the needs of its immediate neighbours in Station Road. It is a saga of mistakes, unintended consequences and an inability to appreciate that being big doesn’t mean you are right.
The problem began in 2009 when the school, County and Town Council thought that a Multi Use Games Area (MUGA) was needed in Hadleigh. The site was to measure 60m x 40m and planning permission came with a number of conditions. The suggested site was comfortably some distance away from the Station Road residences and there was no reason why everyone should not have been happy.
But then the MUGA was built 20% larger than authorised and placed nearer the houses. The all weather pitches were not sited nearer to the school but close to the boundary fences adjoining the houses. So, what should have remained a quiet residential area with residents being able to enjoy their summer gardens with the distant sound of happy athletes – meant that the residents felt they were imprisoned in their homes as balls bounced off of the fences and the “athletic” language ranged from the impolite to the downright offensive.
The school says it doesn’t have the money to put things right – as if that is a good reason for continuing to inflict mistakes on other people.
Babergh officials on the other hand served a Noise Abatement Notice on the school in response to noise from the balls hitting the fence around the MUGA. The Planning Enforcement Officer has also intervened because there is unauthorised lighting.
What’s a reasonable way forward? First use the pitches furthest from the houses before you use the ones closest to the houses. Remind players that they are not Premier Division and so do not need to emulate the bad habits that they see and read about. Switch off the lights in accordance with the planning approvals and finally use the normal pitches during the summer months.
Otherwise the authority to use the MUGA 365 days a year until 10 p.m. Mondays to Friday and until 9 p.m. on Saturdays has to be revised and past errors need to be corrected. The purpose of Government and its agents is to serve the public – not to serve some at the expense of others.
Wattisham Flying Station
On
e of this week’s fortunate happenings was to be invited to a cocktail party and beating retreat at the Wattisham Flying Station. The last time I was mixing with operational military air crew was in Salalah in 1982. That of course was a different world. The young officers today have done their tours of Afghanistan and finished their Top Gun Training in the U.S. The Army reckons that it costs about £3.5 million to train Apache Helicopter pilots. You get a sense of what a machine the Apache is when it weighs over nine tons fully loaded and can be thrown around the sky at 180 m.p.h. Not that any throwing around is done. These machines cost around £35 million each. The cocktail party was fortunate insofar as Suffolk County Council are initiating a Community Covenant With The Armed Forces. On first reading the Covenant strikes one as being a tad flabby. It is apparently meant as first steps and obviously it cannot be a one size fits all as the various units and communities have different needs. I was in total awe of the personnel whom we met. They are very professional and certainly good value for money. They do deserve our support and one of my ambitions is to make it easier for our veterans to settle in communities of their choice – or as one veteran once put it to me “I can’t go back to where I enlisted. If I become homeless in Camden my wife will divorce me”. We need to work out better ways to support our military.
Wind Turbine
I publish a monthly column in the Hadleigh Community News called Out of the Frying Pan. The point of the column is to highlight and comment on what is happening in Babergh from the point of our town. The aim is to be informative and occasionally entertaining. Hopefully I focus on some of the issues creeping under the radar. In July I wrote of a proposal for a 18 metre (59 feet) wind turbine off the Pond Hall Road. The 18 metres was from the ground to the top of the turbine and did not include the total height of the turbine blades. By contrast the only turbine in Hadleigh is only 9 metres high. The flag pole outside Babergh’s Corks Lane offices is 6 metres high. Although the site is in pasture, the turbine would be visible from the Pond Hall Road (400 metres/433 yards away) and would be extremely visible from the proposed housing area being planned for the land south of Tower Mill Lane and east of Frog Hall Lane. This week’s good news is that the planning application has been withdrawn. So a small triumph for common sense. Forward with the people
brian riley's blog 