Lib Dems vindicated over snow fiasco at county hall

The Liberal Democrats have today claimed that they have been vindicated over the county council’s performance in this year’s snow fall.

Chris White said: ‘I am glad that it has been recognised by the county council’s scrutiny process that there needs to be improvement in relations with district councils and in communications with community groups and parents.

‘Our own actions in January ensured that the county council started publishing a list of closed schools on its website – rather than relying on radio stations to read out long lists of local schools.’

He added: ‘I hope that the Conservatives will learn from their experience and stop hiding behind the idea that heavy snowfalls are somehow surprising.’

Comment on HCC plans to expand primary schools in St Albans

Chris White commented this morning about the expansion of school place provision in St Albans.

‘I am glad that county is now taking some action – but it is frankly too little too late. I began campaigning on this in 2006 and was told that HCC were not sure there was a problem.

‘Now they do admit there is a problem. But we still need a new 2 form entry primary school and the Tories are taking far too long to find a suitable site. Perhaps they should for once involve local councillors on the ground who know the situation. Some of us would point out that there is a suitable site – the one that Tesco has had its eye on for some time.’

Our stance on the East of England Plan: Hands off Herts

hand_1.gifResidents have begun asking me about the Liberal Democrat stance on the East of England Plan.

Some of you may remember that we campaigned under the slogan ‘Hands off Herts’: in short, we have vigorously opposed the excessive housing numbers proposed for Hertfordshire, especially in the St Albans area. These are based on massive projections of growth in demand for housing. They are clearly unsustainable: we simply do not have the roads, the public transport systems, the medical services or the schools.

Meanwhile the Government has ploughed ahead with these excessive plans so that thousands of new homes are currently scheduled both to the west and to the east of the District.

What has been exasperating about the process has been the Government’s fixation with restraints on housing suppy (the planning system, local people, and local councils). The Barker reports were predicated entirely on the fact that the problem lay with the supply side. no analysis was done of the reasonableness of the demand.

But the credit crunch has shown beyond doubt that some of this demand – maybe the greater part – was due to a defective mortgage and banking system, where people were inflating house prices after being offered unaffordable loans. There is reason to suppose that there has been a step change: there will be no mortgages in excess of 100% of the value of a property and deposit will again be required.

So more than ever we must challenge the numbers – while being reassured that it is unlikely that there will be any major new house building starts in the foreseeable future while the banks are paralysed.

What is county saying about primary school places?

I am being asked this quite a lot. Below is the most comprehensive briefing note to hand. As you can see, they are now admitting that there is a need for a new school – which I first asked for in 2006, only to be told that there was no evidence that there was a problem. Even though I am glad they now admit that I was right, there is still no sense of urgency – despite that fact that there is an obvious site – namely the land bordered by Alma, London, Lattimore and Bedford Roads, which Tesco has its eye on.

Interestingly, the same problem has now cropped up two years on in Watford, showing that county have not learned anything about the limitations of their forecasting systems.

# In December 2006 an increase in the number of reception age children in St Albans was identified once applications for 2007-08 had been received.
# As a response to this, capacity was provided in 2007 through provision of temporary buildings for 1 f.e [one form of entry] for one year only at each of Maple, St Peters and Aboyne Lodge schools.
# Investigation of the forecast and raw data sets showed that the demand for schools places would be sustained, and that in the long term an additional 4 FE would be required to provide sufficient capacity in the city. In parallel, work was undertaken to identify school sites which could accommodate a permanent increase of 1FE and to identify any non-school sites which could accommodate a new primary school.
# This work identified only three schools in the city which could expand by 1 FE (Bernards Heath, Mandeville and Margaret Wix). As such, in 2008-09 1 fe of additional capacity was provided at Bernard’s Heath Infant School, which will need to flow through the Junior School in due course, and we are going through due process for this is to become permanent.
# In the same year we also raised Mandeville School by 1 fe temporarily and are moving to make that permanent too.
# There was no opportunity to implement an alternative solution within the timescale available, even if a site had been identified (which it was not).
# This has met a need within and around the centre of St Albans but there remains a need to find another 2 f.e. preferably to the west of, and around Aboyne Lodge School.
# Colleagues continue to talk to district council officers about site potential and this will form part of the on going LDF process.
# In the absence of that solution so far, we have proposed temporary increases of 1 f.e. each at Cunningham Hill Infants and Margaret Wix for 2010. While this isn’t in that location they are on the edge of the central area within the city where the greatest demand is being experienced.
# We’ll be keeping a sharp eye on levels of need when our next forecast is produced

Government to respond to lobbying over empty shops

I can only welcome the fact that the Government has responded to my lobbying over the problems of empty shops in our high street.

This I did on behalf of the Local Government Association in February. The basic idea is that empty shops (especially those boarded up) can drag the rest of a high street down. If councils had powers to take these shops over on a temporary basis – perhaps for use as galleries or centres for the unemployed – then the retail sector is more likely to come out of the recession relatively unscathed.

The Government will be announcing today a £3 million fund to tackle the “recession in the high street”. The money will be given to local councils to come up with “creative” ways to reuse shops left empty as a result of business closure or bankruptcy.

City Vision: your comments needed

If you missed the City Vision exhibition, then have a look on the St Albans District Council website. Please let me know your views as to how you want St Albans to develop over the next few years. It’s a fine city but could be a lot better provided we think ahead and don’t let our lives be dominated by the whims of developers.

http://www.stalbans.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/press-room/items/2008/pr-2008-october/pr-city-vision.aspx

Should St Peter’s Street be pedestrianised?

There has been some recent controversy, stirred up by our MP (who is not of course from St Albans).

I have certainly been told by many residents that they are frustrated by the fact that St Peter’s Street is still open to cars, although others have doubts about where the cars would go banned from the town centre. Evidence gathered when the street was closed for roadworks over the past two years shows that ‘footfall’ (the number of people shopping) went up when the street was closed.

No pedestrianisation scheme is likely to exclude buses or taxis – or emergency vehicles. If readers have views then let me know by completing the on-line poll on this site.

…meanwhile keep on reporting those potholes

Some of you may well get the impression that things are worse than ever.

I have reported:
– the terrible state of the road surface as Hatfield Road crosses the railway line
– the huge pothole in Grosvenor Road as it joins Alma Road.

Unfortunately some of the worst surfaces aren’t even controlled by the county council but by private companies. Station Way has rightly attracted much criticism and the private company responsible is under pressure to do something about it before there is an accident.

Local highways officials have requested that the following go up the pecking order when it comes to funding:
Woodstock Road North
Clarence Road
London Road (Alma Rd to rail bridge)
Hatfield Road from Catherine Street to Clarence Road (mainly the junctions).

These are in addition to Woodstock Road South, Beechwood Avenue and Beaumont Avenue previously mentioned.

I have also requested that the Victoria Street and Alma Road junction be improved (this is showing signs of subsidence).
pothole-press-story.jpg

Conservative Councillor Stuart Pile (captured in this article) is responsible for roads and pavements in our city

Herts CC slammed in Panorama programme

Readers may have seen the truly distressing Panorama programme last night showing the state in which some of our elderly people have been kept by private companies. I will be following this up by calling for an Inquiry into the management of home care contracts in Hertfordshire.

The programme is available on BBC iplayer at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jnknl/Panorama_Britains_Homecare_Scandal/

Herts is about 29 minutes in but the whole programme is worth watching.