komadori's green corner

Rodbourne Community History Group

2010-08-28T22:51:00.005+01:00

It’s amazing what you can find hiding in ladies lingerie. Today was spent in the company of Rodbourne Community History Group. As part of the GWR 175 celebrations they were running tours of the Swindon Designer Outlet and surrounding Even Swindon area. Unfortunately this had received very little publicity with only a handful of people on each tour and most of them seemingly already known to the guides. Despite the small numbers, the guides — and occasional heckling from passers-by and unrestrained dogs — the guides did an excellent job of describing the past of Even Swindon and the railway works and their recollections and reminiscences of them. And the connection with ladies lingerie? Well, the three giant steam cylinders that powered the GWR works hooters that commanded the workers to and from work are now hidden almost out of sight behind the lingerie department of Marks & Spencer in Swindon Designer Outlet.

Obstructions

2010-08-12T21:17:00.004+01:00

This week has not been a good one for the remaining street traders in Swindon town centre. Following Swindon Borough Council’s refusal to renew their trading licences for their current pitches, it is now taking five of them to court. They are accused, apparently, of obstruction. Seemingly seats by a mobile stall are an obstruction; seats outside a coffee shop are not, even when that shop is in a busier street.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the council’s planning officers have now waded in with a policy that contradicts what the traders might have once have been lead to believe by the head of licensing, Mr Starling. Back then, they were lead to believe that the council didn’t mind fast food stalls, just not in their present location.

The land in front of the old post office site in Fleming Way adjoins an area which has been cleared in anticipation of major redevelopment works. It enjoys a temporary ‘vacant’ status and does not suffer from conflicts of use. Short-term use of that space is desirable and street trading could fill that void…. Fast food trading may not be the ideal use for the site but the area has been plagued by drug dealers and street drinkers in the past and a strategically located fast food van could help to prevent their return. There are good reasons for rejecting hot food trading in the core of the town centre but this location offers a possible alternative location for use of that kind.

The planning officers take a different view.

Street Trading Pitches for the sale of hot food have a potential to have an impact on surrounding uses in terms of noise, smell, pollution. Unlike shop units it is difficult to provide adequate ventilation and filtration systems to mitigate these issues…. Associated litter and antisocial behaviour can also be a problem.
Therefore [hot food] pavement traders operating from mobile units and temporary stalls will not be supported within the Town Centre and Old Town area’s (sic) as defined within the adopted Swindon Central Area Action Plan (2009) (or as amended), unless part of an organised Market. They will also not be supported in Local or District Centres.

It’s increasingly looking as though the main aim of these policy changes is to put the stallholders permanently out of business.

Swindon Mela 2010

2010-07-31T22:39:00.003+01:00

As always, the Swindon Mela in Town Gardens was a good day out, though, like the Children’s Fete in Faringdon Road Park, it has had to fight against the ’elf ’n’ safety extremists to continue. Their influence showed, with one stage fewer and seemingly fewer stalls too.

The 7 versus the 600

2010-07-27T21:44:00.003+01:00

I could almost have some sympathy for longstanding residents of Okus. Once upon a time, a large part of Okus was occupied by the Princess Margaret Hospital. As a major — and indeed first — large general hospital built by the NHS, bus services to it were plentiful. Then, in 2002, the hospital closed, replaced by a new PFI upstart at Commonhead. Bus services were reduced to once every half hour, subsidised by Swindon Borough Council.

Now, with the council’s coffers empty, the service has been reduced to hourly. In response, a couple have started a petition. It already has 600 signatures… in support of a service that Thamesdown Transport claim carried on average 7 passengers each journey.

How many of those 600 might be passengers on the partially withdrawn service 23? The bus ran every half hour for eleven hours a day, six days a week. That’s a total of 22 return journeys each day, 132 a week. Even if every passenger only made one return journey per week, taking the Thamesdown average of 7 only gives a total of 792 people. Unless Ms Matthews has been extremely thorough in extracting signatures from former passengers, the likelihood is that most of the signatures on her petition are from people that did not use the service — maybe do not even use any bus services at all.

Even if one were cynical and thought that the bus company was underestimating the number of passengers, the figures are still very low, and in reality an average of 7 corresponds to a few buses in the rush hour carrying many more passengers, and most of the rest carrying far fewer. On the few occasions I’ve observed a number 23 bus in Okus, it never had more than three passengers — less than a taxi-full.

If people were as willing to use bus services as they are to sign petitions complaining of their demise, public transport in this country would be in a far better state.

The efficient approach to building restoration

2010-07-24T16:13:00.006+01:00

In these economically tightened times, how do you go about restoring a building in the most efficient way possible? Don’t know? Never mind, let Swindon Commercial Services be your guide.

First, get some banners specially made, that’ll only be of use for this one job.

Next, give someone that most strenuous of tasks: being the ’elf ’n’ safety guard who stops pedestrians blundering into the path of passing buses, ’cos the pavement has been cordoned off.

Then hide those specially prepared signs with big wooden hoardings.

Finally, as noted by Swindon Centric, paint the hoardings white. It’s nice to know that the newly pseudo-independent SCS is spending our money so carefully.

Update, Tuesday, 27 July 2010: As expected, the hoardings have now been fully painted in traditional white, ready for the graffiti taggers to do their worst.

Ready for the Children

2010-07-17T12:31:00.002+01:00

A little reminder that the Children’s Fete in Faringdon Road Park has just begun, with the grand opening and crowd photo at 1 pm. It runs until 10 pm.

What expenditure isn’t protected?

2010-07-14T07:11:00.001+01:00

With the local blue councillors claiming first that expenditure on big arts events is not ‘not a priority’ and then that the programme of upgrades to play areas will be protected, I’m beginning to wonder whether there’s any scheme that — when challenged — they won’t claim is protected, despite their impending emergency budget.

But then, if that accounting genius, Mr Bluh, can claim that ‘the value is not related to money’ we really shouldn’t be surprised that Swindon Borough Council’s budget is in such a mess.

Repairing the Mechanics

2010-07-05T21:35:00.007+01:00

Today I noticed preparatory work has commenced around the Mechanics Institution. Barriers have gone up and a bus stop temporarily moved out of the way along Bristol Street. It’s taken rather a long time to get here, but that Swindon Borough Council is finally taking action to repair the crumbling Mechanics Institution has to be a good thing. If they can then claw back the costs from the owner who has allowed it to fall into such disrepair, so much the better. If they can’t and they have to sell it on to a more conscientious owner, even better still.

Update: It seems it may take a little longer yet, as the site was locked. The matter will now go to court for a warrant to give the council access.

Children’s Fete

2010-06-29T19:29:00.003+01:00

The Children’s Fete in Faringdon Road Park is back this year on 17 July, from 12 noon to 10 pm, with the grand opening and crowd photo at 1 pm.

Thanks to Ms Leakey for drawing this to my attention in the comments.

The cut and run approach to regeneration

2010-06-29T06:57:00.001+01:00

It seems that far from being a fresh start for Swindon’s economic and physical regeneration, Forward Swindon, the reincarnation of the New Swindon Company, is, as I’ve noted before, repackaging failure. And it goes right to the top of the organisation. Mr James, erstwhile chief executive of The New Swindon Company, cut-and-ran when the going got tough. It was rather a habit for him. In as much as she is, for the moment, considerably more circumspect in her comments, the new chief executive of Forward Swindon, Karen Walker, is an improvement. But like her predecessor, her record for seeing the job through to its end is not good. Indeed, so successful was the last regeneration company that she led, in Sandwell, that all three of its public-sector backers pulled the plug on its funding last year.

Given the current state of Swindon Borough Council’s finances, Ms Walker might find a greater sense of ‘continuity’ between her old and new jobs than she was expecting.

Fun and arms

2010-06-26T21:40:00.004+01:00

I find the Family Fun Day in Faringdon Road Park on Armed Forces Day a rather odd event. Now in its second year, the event seems to have replaced the only recently revived Children’s Fete held in July. It’s not that I have anything against Armed Forces Day, just that this particular event is a rather odd combination.

The Children’s Fete was, as its name suggested, very much an event for children, with games and competitions run in the centre of the park and a fun fair round the edge on the Faringdon Road side of the park. For the adults, there were some municipal, charitable and craft stalls on the Park Lane and Church Place sides of the park. The family fun day is similar, but the events seem aimed at slightly older children, and in place of the stalls there is assorted military hardware and military charities. Thus today we had an “It’s the knockout” type event, with much water thrown around, whilst the local civic dignitary inspected military vehicles.

“Games without frontiers” surrounded by those that enforce frontiers doesn’t quite work.

Swindon Tories back socialist town centre

2010-06-13T23:27:00.003+01:00

The boys in Bluh ensconced in Swindon Borough Council are rapidly becoming the least conservative Conservatives in the country. What other Conservative controlled council would go for a government funded, local-government owned town centre regeneration? So far the only part of the regeneration of Swindon town centre to be privately funded is the rebuilding of the BHS store — which was never part of the New Swindon Company’s grand scheme. The big screen in Wharf Green belongs to the BBC. Repaving of Canal Walk and Regent Street is funded from government grants. Now the council is propping up the Union Square development by buying a car park for over £14M from developers Muse.

Last November, we were told that work on Union Square would be ‘starting on site in summer 2010’. As I said back then, never believe a project plan based on the seasons. Summer 2010 is here, but nothing’s happened, not even a planning application. As recently as December, Mr Bluh told us ‘We have the Union Square development going ahead’. As is so often the case, the easy way to tell whether Mr Bluh is spouting ignorant twaddle is to see if his lips are moving.

Last week, buried in a cabinet report ostensibly about lowering the charges at the council’s town centre car parks were options for splurging more of our money. The report makes it clear how ill-informed Mr Bluh’s earlier comments were.

It is clear that if the Council is unable to take up an option on the car park, the development would remain unviable in the current market. MUSE have indicated that they would mothball the project and unless there is a significant improvement in the economic situation, there would be unlikely to be any redevelopment for the foreseeable future.

And thus it is that the residents of Swindon once again find themselves at risk of picking up the financial tab for one of Mr Bluh’s grandiose schemes.

Hat-tip: Bogomil on TalkSwindon.

Closing the Gateway

2010-06-05T09:54:00.003+01:00

With the recent pronouncement that the housing targets of the Regional Spatial Strategy should nolonger be a material planning consideration, the Swindon Gateway Partnership may feel they’ve wasted their money submitting yet another planning application. Like its predecessors, the new application depends heavily on the targets of the Regional Spatial Strategy to justify concreting over much of Commonhead, near Coate Water. Lets hope that the dying Regional Spatial Strategy will take this development proposal with it to the grave.

Now, the developers may, rightly, point out that the development area in the new plan is little more than that identified in the Swindon Borough Council’s Core Strategy. But it is more. The development area in the new application extends slightly further south than the area the council identified for possible development. The developers also want to squeeze 960 little boxes houses into an area the council believes can only accommodate 750. More importantly, the Core Strategy was written to meet the targets in the Regional Spatial Strategy and at the moment is still only in draft. With the Regional Strategy now being hurriedly buried, the Core Strategy’s housing targets should also be seen as immaterial.

Swindon may well need many more houses to be built, but squeezing almost 1000 of them into this particular space at Commonhead is not the way to do it.

The weekend’s big sporting event

2010-05-31T20:10:00.004+01:00

For those either disappointed or just not interested in 22 men kicking a ball around, today had the highlight event of Swindon’s sporting calendar — the duck race. On an overcast day, attendance was good (the event was washed-out a couple of years ago). It was even graced with the presence of a councillor, the cabinet member for children’s services, Mr Renard, seemingly trying to go incognito by donning a pair of sunglasses.

Duckwise, it was, apparently, a bumper year, with over 8000 entries, all of which were plucked from the water once the race was over. Despite there being two clear front runners at the halfway mark, they tired towards the end, with the race being an almost dead-heat between several hundred ducks.

Dial-a-cut

2010-05-26T06:26:00.002+01:00

I’d not been aware that social and community transport is a hotbed of international competition, with companies from other EU countries queuing up for a piece of the action. Indeed, given the strength of the UK’s bus industry — Stagecoach, First Group and National Express are all international operations with the only strong overseas presence in the UK being French state owned Transdev and imminently German state owned Arriva — and community transport being almost by definition transport services that are highly unviable commercially, it would be amazing if that ever were to be the case. However, Swindon Borough Council seems to believe that European community bus operators will be queuing out the door if they put out to tender the service currently provided by Swindon Dial A Ride.

’Tis odd that Swindon Borough Council is happy to apply European competition law to a small non-commercial transport operation, yet elsewhere claims it’s irrelevant to giving almost £½M to a company launching a service in what’s already a highly competitive industry.

Update, 22:11 Thursday 27 May. Apparently, the EU regulation being used by the council is one specific to public transport rather than the general competition-related regulations originally thought. But it’s a regulation that specifically defines ‘public passenger transport’ to exclude services such as social dial-a-ride services.

Regenerating

2010-05-23T19:26:00.003+01:00

Photographs from newly renovated Canal Walk in Swindon town centre. The effect is far better than I’d anticipated.

’Tis unfortunate that MacDonald’s are flouting the arrangements for the regeneration by placing their advertising board as an obstacle in the middle of the street.

The only less successful part of the regeneration of the street scene is the new fountain, which has a tendency to dribble.

All photographs © komadori.

Fountain or folly?

2010-05-22T23:36:00.003+01:00

I’m sure that, on paper, the new fountain at the crossroads of Canal Walk, Bridge Street and Regent Street was a good idea. I’m sure that, in model form, the water cascaded nicely down what is now almost £¼M of curvy metal and into the drains below. But the reality is somewhat different.

I passed the fountain this morning. There were no children playing around the fountain then, but the flow of water was just a trickle, and what little water there was was mainly splashing on the paving rather than running through the drainage grills. Come the winter, just how long will it take for Swindon Borough Council to be the recipient of an insurance claim for a fall on ice from the fountain? It could be better; it should be better; perhaps with a few tweaks it will be better, but for the moment the fountain looks like an expensive folly.

Whose bus service is it anyway?

2010-05-16T23:31:00.006+01:00

Others have already covered in some detail the buck-passing that has followed the re-routing of Stagecoach Route 54 away from Freshbrook. They’ve already noted that there’s been a certain amount of uninformed Braying going on. Quite why, given his political affiliation, Mr Bray is disappointing with the functioning of market forces puzzles me. But then, given how poor Mr Bray’s memory is, perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Over 400 members of the travelling public have signed a petition requesting the service be reinstated. They and I believe it will attract many more customers if it is properly advertised, unlike its arrival out of the blue in 2007.

Now there are many things that Stagecoach might reasonably be accused of, but being publicity-shy is not one of them. I’m not sure how much publicity it would need to get Mr Bray’s attention, but Routes 54 and 55 and the TransWilts Express all received extensive publicity — to accompany new buses and a more frequent service — when they were revamped in 2007 with the aid of a part-funded government scheme.

And just as in town planning, a petition is worthless. What matters is the number of passengers. If the majority of passengers are travelling from Wootton Bassett to central Swindon — as Stagecoach clearly believe — then a fifteen minute detour round the suburbs of west Swindon is no incentive to leave the car at home and take the bus instead.

When is a wifi investment not an investment?

2010-05-09T19:27:00.001+01:00

We have been told repeatedly by Mr Bluh that Swindon Borough Council’s decision to give Digital City a loan of almost £½M of our money was an ‘investment decision’. Indeed, the powers under which the decision was made with the involvement of most of the council’s cabinet were delegated powers for investment decisions. So it is rather surprising that the council has recently provided the following response to a Freedom of Information request.

Council officers were not asked to investigate possible investment into Digital City (UK) Limited. Officers were only asked to consider the provision of a loan.

So if in the council’s now stated view this was not an investment, how legally could the decision to make the loan have been made under delegated powers applying only to investment decisions?

Hungover — the evening after the election night before

2010-05-07T22:30:00.001+01:00

Having succumbed to the need for sleep just half an hour before the first Swindon election result came through, it was refreshing to wake up to blue parliamentary representation, but a disappointment that in the local council elections the administration had not been punished for the way it has frivolously wasted our money on vanity projects whilst having to makes cuts to other more important services, such as street cleaning. The local election results are, of course, not typical. In an average year turnout is never much more than 30%. Being at the same time as a general election bolstered that to over 60%. Despite that, the overall outcome, in terms of candidates elected, was almost unchanged from the last time these candidates stood.

From the Swindon general election results, it was apparent that local presence helped: Mr Tomlinson converted a notional red majority of 2,675 into one for him of 7,060 — a swing of over 10% — whereas Mr Buckland managed only a majority of 3,544 where before Ms Snelgrove had a notional majority of only 1,493 — a swing of ‘only’ 5.5%.

Our new MPs now need to prove themselves and their commitment to put constituents before party. Some of us have unfinished business with Swindon Borough Council for which their support is expected.

Positively negative

2010-05-04T22:32:00.000+01:00

Whilst he’s not the first ever politician to suffer from this ailment, it’s disappointing that Mr Buckland — who claims not to be a career politician — in his latest leaflet struggles to distinguish positive campaigning from the negative.

Other parties in this campaign have spent a lot of time knocking their opponents. I am not interested in that. Our campaign has been positive and is all about what we want to achieve for our future.

So just what is positive about implying that the current incumbent in South Swindon is ‘tainted’?

I represent a fresh start for South Swindon, untainted by the discredited politics of the recent past.

I’m also sure that he’s well aware of Ms Snelgrove’s reputation for being the government’s representative in South Swindon when he makes a final plea.

Please give me the chance to serve as your new MP, who will be your representative at Westminster, not Westminster’s representative in South Swindon.

Mr Buckland may not yet be a career politician, but he’s clearly more than content to use the ‘skills’ from his barrister career to practice the politicians’ black art of spin.