Inquiry in Cotham School trees

Quick update into the Cotham School trees fiasco. A proper inquiry into what happened is hopefully now proceeding, as reported in the Evening Post today.

The last 'thorough investigation' turned out to be a one and a half page document from Children & Young People's Services listing a few dates and seemingly trying to blame their colleagues in City Development, coupled with some dodgy understanding of planning law. It had nothing about about how Skanska acted or who commissioned the removal work and tried to suggest that they had done nothing wrong!

(If you read the Evening Post article, you might like to note quite how cheeky Cllr Peter Abraham is being - he aggressively questioned my right to bring the issue to the Scrutiny Commission and I had to argue for about ten minutes before he allowed me to make my statement!)

London-Bristol rail line to be electrified

News out today is that the London-Swansea (i.e. including Bristol) mainline is to be electrified. This is something that Stephen Williams MP and the Lib Dems in general have been pushing for for some time.

This is great news. Electrified lines mean better reliability, (possibly) reduced travel times, lower running costs (and so hopfully lower fares) and lower overall carbon emissions. Let's hope that this is just the first of many and that the UK gets a proper highspeed rail network sooner rather than later. Decades of under-investment under both Labour and Conservative governments have left Britain rail infrastructure miles behind other countries in Europe.

Road safety around Colston's Primary School

Parents, governors and children from Colston's Primary School came to last night's meeting of Full Council to present a petition for better road safety features around the school. There are problems with access to the very small site, with no dedicated drop-off point for parents who have to drive - the school has a very wide catchment area. This has led to a number of incidents that have put the safety of the children at risk.

I've been down to the school a few times in the morning to see the problems for myself, both with the governors and traffic engineers. I am delighted, then, that a firm plan is now on the table to sort out some of the issues, with protection for the blind corners, better signage, a clear place for children to cross the road, disabled parking spaces and a space for parents to drop off their children safely. A consultation document for local residents will be going out in the next few days.

Skanska want to axe more trees!

Skanska are at it again! Not content with axing four trees at Cotham School without getting the appropriate permission, they now want to chop down one of the large London Plane trees on Cheltenham Road as part of the works at Colston's Girls School.

Unbelievably, Skanska were ranked at 4 in the Sunday Times list of the greenest companies. When they did their rankings they can't have been looking at the Bristol operation! Local residents are busy pointing out this contradiction to the Skanska head office in Sweden.

I have just fired off an objection to the planning application based on the proposed loss of the tree. You can do the same : e-mail north.planning@bristol.gov.uk quoting planning application 09/01456/FB.

No to Bristol Airport expansion

I have just sent off my objection to the planning application to expand Bristol Airport (which is actually in North Somerset).

To think of extending air travel when we now know the damage it does to the environment is ridiculous. Labour have shown their true colours by giving the Heathrow expansion the go ahead and locally they helped the Tories to water down the Council's position. As a society, we should be looking at how we can reduce air travel and reduce it's impact - not at how to increase the nubmer of flights further!

A full and largely convincing case against expansion has been laid out by the Stop Bristol Airport Expansion campaign - do have a look at what they have to say. In particular, I have no faith in the economic arguments put forwards by the airport, which seem to me to based on dodgy numbers and wishful thinking. Business use of the airport is marginal and falling.

People have until the 7th August to register their objection. Details of how to do so are to be found on the Stop Bristol Airport Expansion website.

Adult education chosen for Select Committee

Quick bit of good news is that something I called for back in May has come to pass. The Council's Overview and Scrutiny Management committee (a real thriller!) has chosen adult education to be a topic for a Select Committee in the coming year. Select Committees are used to examine topics of interest in detail on a cross-party basis to see what can be done to improve them. The Government has thrown funding for adult education up in the air in the last few months, so now is a perfect time to look at what the city is doing to try to make it more robust and hopefully to grow as well. I await the results with interest...

A new newspaper is born

Bristol has a new newspaper! Well, I say newspaper, but it's actually an online-only outlet, called Bristol 24-7. It launched a few days ago and thus far it looks quite good - a nice mix of news and features, presented attractively. It's run by Cotham resident Christopher Brown and I wish him the best of luck with the venture. A healthy press is a vital component of democracy and the more sources of news people have available to them the better!