Bristol on green award shortlist

As a nice quick snippet to follow up my previous post, Bristol City Council has been shortlisted by RegenSW for a 2010 Green Energy Award for Most Proactive Local Authority in the southwest. We'll hear in November whether we've got it or not, but it's nice to be on the list - along with Gloucester City Council on this occasion. There are a good smattering of Bristol companies and people up for other awards, so the city is well represented.

A big green step forwards for Bristol

This month's meeting of the Bristol Cabinet is going to be a 'green cabinet' - it's the culmination of things that I've been working on for the last eighteen months since I've been the Assistant Exec Member for sustainability and I'm really excited about it!

The headline is straightforward: a £23m capital investment programme in renewable energy production and energy use reduction.

This breaks down into the following projects:

• £4m for 10 new biomass boilers in schools and leisure centres
• £1m for 80 solar photo-voltaic installations at schools
• £4m to accelerate the replacement of 34,000 street lights with low energy units
• £5m to fit 300 council homes with next-generation energy measures, including solar PV - this is reliant on a successful funding bid
  
• £9m for two new wind turbines at Avonmouth (this has already been approved, but it's part of the same strategy)

This has partly come about through the £500,000 sustainability budget increase that we announced last year. This has enabled us to commit the staff and money to move these projects forwards and to increase our green ambitions. There is always more to do and it's important to point out that this is Phase One only.

However, this wins for the Council and for the people of Bristol on many levels. It is estimated to save the Council £26m over the next 20 years by cutting energy bills and taking advantage of the new government's decision to allow Councils to sell electricity. This is after the cost of the investment has been paid for, so it can be used to keep Council Tax bills low or fund the next generation of projects.

It will also save 14,000 tons of CO2 each year, amounting to around 20% of the Council's footprint (though it's not quite that straightforward as it depends what is done with the electricity generated and so on). When forced carbon trading comes in, this will increase the financial savings further - it starts in a limited form in April 2011.

On top of all this are the 'soft' benefits of showing people what is possible and how individuals and businesses can do their bit too. This is part of the project too - an active attempt to use the projects to engage with people about their lives and how they can become more sustainable.

Phase Two of our energy plans also appears on the agenda for Thursday's Cabinet meeting, but it is in closed business as it is commercially sensitive and we don't want to jeopardise our ability to make things happen for Bristol by making it public too soon.

The other green item on the agenda is a significant increase in the Council's commitment to car clubs in the city, using £450,000 of developers' S106 money. There are now two operators in Bristol: City Car Club and Streetcar. The new approach will see a radical increase in the number of spaces, especially in areas of high demand. Car clubs help to reduce car ownership by giving people the ability to rent vehicles in a low-cost and user-friendly way. One study has suggested that each car club car can actually cut private ownership in an area by 20 cars. I've been pushing for progress on this since chairing the Sustainable Travel Select Committee a couple of years back and I'm delighted to see this come to fruition too.

Back from Conference

Apologies for a quiet week on the blogging front, but I've been away for Lib Dem Conference (and my mum's birthday).

I've come back very reassured about how things are progressing. Those who know me well, will know that I consider myself a liberal left politician (as much as right-left makes any sense these days) and the last few months haven't always been the most comfortable for me. However, what Conference made me realise was just how much rubbish is being written by the press about the Lib Dems and the coalition. Even during the Conference, the coverage was all about rebellions and splits, but there was no more of that than usual! In fact, the mood was positive and forward-thinking, despite irritating journalists constantly pestering delegates for off-message soundbites. Judging by the rabid look in their eyes, I think they were struggling...

Yes, there are cuts and tax rises - this is Labour's legacy of don't-tax-and-still-spend. But there are also spending increases and tax cuts. Like an extra 2.5% for the NHS every year for the next five years. Or the increase in the personal allowance for Income Tax that takes nearly 1m of the lowest paid people out of the tax completely. Couple this with some great green progress already and a raft of good liberal policies on equalities rights, child detention and electoral reform and I came back from Liverpool postive and re-enthused.

Yes, there are going to be things along the way with the coalition that I'm not happy with. Thankfuly, I'm not in the government myself and I'll have no problem saying so! But, as one speaker put it, at least we can be confident that this government isn't going to blow billions on invading another sovereign state. Hopefully it also won't bring the country to the verge of a financial crisis either.

One of the highlights was Vince's speech. Anyone who thinks that the Lib Dems have all become Thatcherite Tories should watch this and see if they still think the same at the end. It's in two segments for some reason.

(You can just catch a glimpse of me at the end of Vince's speech leading the standing ovation - 10m25s into the second clip... look for a dark brown T-shirt to the left of the screen!)

Cotham parking consultation out

The draft plans for the Cotham parking review are out - you can find the maps and an accompanying leaflet on the Council's consultation website.

This is something that I've been campaigning for over the last couple of years to address some of the worst road safety issues in the area, so I'm glad to see the maps out there for people to look at. I stress that these are draft - they are an amalgam of ideas from Anthony and I, complaints that we've had over the last few years from residents, ideas from the traffic engineers and so on. It is very definitely not a final plan! My view is that it's much better to give people something to look at as a 'starter for ten' rather than starting from a blank sheet of paper. We want to hear ideas for improvement.

The vast majority of the proposals are about road safety and specifically protecting corners and junctions from parking. There is also an intent to make access for emergency vehicles better in narrow streets and a couple of proposed changes to help local shops and business by having controlled time parking (i.e. to stop people parking outside all day, blocking their customers).

Paper copies of the information leaflet will be going out shortly in the relevant areas, but the maps themselves are too large and expensive to send out to everyone. They are available on request (to traffic.management@bristol.gov.uk or 0117 903 6822) and there will be copies in Redland Library on Whiteladies Road too... not sure when, but in the next week or so. The consultation is open until 29th October.

Service disruptions on the 8/9 route

I've just had notification that due to 'driver shortages', there will be a temporary disruption on the 8/9 bus route that runs through Cotham. It will be between 3rd October and 14th November and will effectively lead to a reduction in frequency from 12 minutes to 15 minutes.

The annoying news is that they won't be posting up temporary timetables, so the ones at the stops will be haywire. Timetables will, I presume, be available on the First website in due course and I'll post up a link when there is more information.

Cotham Forum success!

Happy to report that last night's meeting of the Cotham Forum was, I think, a rousing success. Around 20 residents attended and we had lively and positive discussions for two hours; the neighbourhood Police (and colleagues from the Transport Police) and officers from the community safety and traffic management teams were also there.

The discussions were varied and wide-ranging, including graffiti, problem parking, student/community relations, issues with licensed premises, availability of public toilets, loss of shops, a new zebra crossing and waste management. Myself, the Council officers and the Police all went away with a list of things to work on.

My list of new issues (please correct me if I forgot anything!):

• Advertising boards on Cotham Hill blocking vision for motorists
• Trees from the railway line blocking the pavements on Meridian Road
• Concerns about a planning application for a restaurant at St John's Court, Whiteladies Road - just off-patch, so I wasn't aware of it
• 'Half-hearted' dropped kerbs causing uncertainty about parking regulations, especially around Chandos Road
• Dangerous parking on the junction of Oakfield Road and Whiteladies Road

I'm glad that we've got things off the ground successfully after the false start last time. The our Neighbourhood Partnership officers really pushed the meeting to residents on their mailing lists and I sent out 250 letters to people in the adjoining streets in order to invite them along - I was very heartened to see some people clutching their letters!

The next meeting of the Cotham Forum is 25th November at 6.30pm at Tyndalls Baptist Church Hall, Whiteladies Road.

There is also a meeting of the Neighbourhood Partnership (which covers Bishopston and Redland, as well as Cotham) on 30th September at 7pm at Redland Parish Church Hall, Redland Green Road. This is also open to the public and it's the meeting at which councillors take decisions about local spending on a range of issues.

Parking changes around Hampton Park

Back in February, there was a consultation about putting new double yellow lines in and around the northern end of Hampton Park and sections of Hampton Road.

This is now going to the formal stage of consultation for a new Traffic Regulation Order which allows the Council to mark out the lines. The map to the left (click to expand) is slightly out of date now; as a result of the Febrary consultation, the lines on Ashgrove Road have been extended in both directions to provide more protection around the blind dog-leg, where lorries habitually get stuck. Otherwise, I think it's all the same - I just get sent a written description in very formal language that is quite difficult to follow.

I'm very happy to see this happen. I've been campaigning for improvements to the Chandos Road junction for a couple of years, where parked cars often obscure the sight lines, causing problems for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians alike. The same principle applies to the Melville Road junction too. The other feature is protection for the petrol station, where their entrances were being blocked, causing difficulty for the tankers.

The full plans with a new map are available to be viewed in Redland Library on Whiteladies Road - the code number is CAE/RGW/P-681. The deadline for comments is 1st October.

Welcome to PC Dave Gill

I met this morning with the new Cotham Police Beat Manager, PC Dave Gill. Dave is covering Cotham for a while at least, while our normal Beat Manager Steve Harding is away recovering from some injuries sustained in the course of duty.

Among the things that we talked about were problem parking, licenced premises on Whiteladies Road and Cotham Hill, the long-standing burglary issues in the area and the start of the new university year with its inevitable pub crawls! Dave (along with our PCSO, Nadine Horton) are going to be clamping down on parking around Dominos and ensuring extra night-time patrols during the two university freshers' weeks in late September.

Dave has a long history within the Police, but this is his first experience of being on a neighbourhood policing team, so I am hoping that Cotham will prove to be a nice introduction for him!

Right answer, wrong reason!

I had the dubious pleasure of attending a licensing hearing today for the old Rumours bar next to Platform One nightclub on Whiteladies Road. I and the local residents got the result that we were happy to accept as a compromise - they were granted a licence for alcohol sales until midnight, but not for the 2am hours that they had asked for. There is also a condition to make them keep drinks inside after 10pm.

It was a strange meeting as the first part was taken up with a legalish argument about whether the Cumulative Impact Area (CIA) covered the premises or not. The problem was that the written description and the appended map were out of kilter with each other. The Licensing Committee took the decision that the map was more important - I can't really see how they came to that conclusion, but there you go! In any case, they then agreed with us that a 2am licence was inappropriate in a residential area and rejected it, even without the protection of the CIA.

The lesson that I've learned from this is how important it is, when making 'laws', to ensure that there is internal consistency. If not, a decent lawyer (and the applicants today had one) can tear holes in the policy and get their way, whatever the merits of the case. I have already asked for an urgent clean-up of the CIA policy to ensure that it is 100% clear which premises are in and which are out.

Platform One has now applied for an extension of its alcohol sales hours through to 3.30am most nights. This is application number 10/03004/PREM - if you live locally and want to comment, the consultation period runs until 1st October and you can e-mail your views to licensing@bristol.gov.uk. Needless to say, I have already made an objection.