Lantern launch - Migrant Right Centre

Another plug for the new Migrant Rights Centre that just opened out of the Pierian Centre in St Pauls.

The volunteers and supporters associated with the Centre held a lantern launch on 18th December (which is International Migrants Day) on the Downs. I wandered up to lend my undoubted firelighting skills. It was a lovely event, with the Deputy Lieutenant of Bristol there to start the whole thing off and around 50 people armed with eco-friendly chinese lanterns - despite the crashing cold! The lanterns symbolised those who travel... like part of my own family, who came to the UK about a century ago as economic migrants from what is now the Czech Republic.

The volunteers behind the Centre have done a great job of getting everything together and launching with a bang. I hope that they are able to keep their efforts going, attracting new volunteers and supporters along the way. The Centre operates a drop-in advice and information session for all types of migrants on Friday mornings between 10am and 12 noon.

(Many thanks to Jon Massey for the use of his action-packed picture.)

Wasting my time

A couple of updates on waste-based work that I'm involved with at the moment.

First up, I've been working with residents in Arley Hill towards getting a communal bins scheme installed. The initial consultation came out pretty much mixed 50:50, so there are now discussions about how the options might be refined to give something that is more suitable and which commands majority support one way or the other.

Communal bins replace individual household wheelie bins and recycling boxes with sets of bins that are used by all the residents of a street. The purpose is to declutter the pavements, especially where they are narrow. Arley Hill, being a hill, has steep gardens and some residents tend to leave their bins on the pavement all the time, rather than taking them in every week. A useful by-product is that recycling rates tend to rise too. There are communal schemes going in at various points in the city at the moment - the pic above is one of the new sets in St Pauls. Arley Hill would be the first in Cotham and we are also seeking ways of hiding the bin store so that it isn't an eyesore. Anyway, discussions continue and I'll post up here when/if it goes forward.

Secondly, I've had the final report back from the second 'waste doctors' project funded by the Neighbourhood Partnership. This targeted 2,000 student houses and others in multiple occupancy with a friendly visit from a canvasser to talk them through the waste disposal system in the city. The aim was to reduce inappropriate waste on the streets, cut flytipping and litter, increase recycling and, again, to declutter pavements.

The report is longer than I expected, so I haven't had a chance yet to read it all through, but the results seem pretty good. It highlights the problem that these types of households tend to have: they are usually keen in principle about waste minimisation and recycling, but they are fuzzy about the system - i.e. when bin days are, what goes in what boxes and so on. The project will have helped, by giving out information, talking people through it, ordering new recycling boxes and so on. The contractors have also done an assessment of the cleanliness of the streets before and after the visits. This is clearly rather subjective, but they report an overall improvement.

Thirdly, I note that streetside recycling bins have been going in on Park Street and other city centre locations. This was something I campaigned for a couple of years ago, so it's nice to see this finally happening. It doesn't make a massive dent in the city's landfill, but it's a useful constant reminder about the value and importance of recycling.

Snow update

In the style of a public service announcement (imagine a rather starched 1950s male voice), I beg to inform you that the Council has set up a webpage with information about the current state of services in light of the snow: www.bristol.gov.uk/snow.

In particular, three points of note:

1. All 600 grit bins (including the new ones put in this year) in the city are currently full and there is a good map on the website - it's still a little out-of-date, but it's pretty reliable.
2. The Council is tonight doing grit dumps on the pavement in strategic spots. There are, I think, 17 in Cotham and they are focused on hills and other hotspots. This is free to use, but for highways only please... not private paths as it'll run out.
3. Despite what some tabloids would have you believe with their "PC gone mad" horror stories, there is no danger of being sued if you clear or grit your street or pavement. Please do help! In particular, please do help older people, disabled people and others who might have difficulty in this weather.

At the moment, Bristol has good stocks of grit and there is more on order at the moment.

A nice little prize

When I went to open my council mail last week, I found a bulgey package waiting for me with no clue as to where it came from or what it contained apart from FRAGILE in large letters. In these febrile times, I was slightly worried about opening it...!

Obviously, it was all ok and it turned out to be a small green glass vase - see pic. It was a prize from RegenSW - the renewable energy agency. We'd come runners-up in their Most Proactive Local Authority annual award, but I didn't realise that there was an actual 'thing' to be had. They had very thoughtfully bunged it in the post.

Bristol's actually won the main award a couple of times before, but this year it went to Gloucester who've kicked off some new schemes using feed-in tariffs. Because our scheme is much bigger, it takes longer to get going and so we were marked down for not having anything to see on the ground (or, more, correctly, on a roof). When our turbines go in, I think we'll have comfortably overtaken Gloucester!

Other recent good green news is that the Council has been awarded £260,000 by the Department of Energy and Climate Change to help it move forwards with some groundbreaking work that will benefit Bristol, but also be shared with other councils too, including:

• Development of solar energy in Bristol through detailed research and mapping of solar potential in the city
• Improvements in energy efficiency and renewable energy at Avonmouth through an energy study linked to economic development plans
• Further work looking at the potential of how we can meet carbon reduction targets through technologies such as smart metering, a smart grid and low energy buildings
• Supporting community action on climate change and planning how the council can best support people to take action

Bristol is one of a small number of councils that are now seen as in the vanguard of the renewable energy revolution and we are seeing the benefits of this through additional funding like this. There should be some even more significant news in the next few weeks, but it's all under wraps at the moment.

Redland House - environmentally weak

Having now had a chance to look properly through the planning application for Redland House (the old Nat West building facing the Downs), I have submitted an objection.

While I think the design is fine and probably better than the plans approved in 2008, the sustainability components appear to me to be really rather weak. The building will achieve a BREAAM 'Excellent' rating, which is positive, prima facie, but it has done so by mainly collecting the 'points' for measures which are not about energy - e.g. for materials or management. As the plans currently stand, there is little or no intent to install renewables (despite a large flat roof), no rainwater harvesting and no consideration given to limiting electricity consumption. There are also continuing issues about parking and tree loss which I have highlighted.

For an iconic building, it could and should do much better. The 2008 plans were a strip-down and reface, but the new plans are for a full demolition to ground level. To my mind, this means that they need to go a lot further to reduce the carbon footprint of the development as they will be using more materials to build it in the first place. From a sustainability perspective, it reads to me like an opening negotiating position: we know it's poor at the moment, but we don't want to be pushed upwards too far. I know that the Redland & Cotham Amenities Society have also objected, so we'll see what happens next.

UPDATE (22/12/10) : Had a lengthy chat with the planning consultant yesterday and they are committed to addressing some of my concerns and are actively looking into the others. Very positive conversation and now hopeful of getting something more appropriate.

Revised parking proposals available

A quick posting to say that the revised plans under the Cotham Parking Review are now available online at www.bristol.gov.uk/cothamparking. These now address the 100 or so consultation responses that we received. There is still time to revise the plans further before the final legal consultation, so let me know if there is something that we've got wrong or something else that needs to change.

Changes to voting arrangements

There is currently a review of the voting arrangements for several wards in the city, including Cotham. This follows on the back of stories from the General Election where there were long queues to vote and some people were excluded (or gave up).

The plan, which is effectively my idea, is to create a new polling station at the Friends Meeting House on Hampton Road. This would serve the area east of Hampton Road and north of the railway line - mainly the Chandos Road complex.

The other change would be that the Cotham Hill area would switch to using the polling station at the Tyndale Baptist Church on Whiteladies Road. At the moment, these people are expected to travel all the way to the Elmgrove Centre, which is really quite a long haul, especially on foot.

The net result is that lots of people will now be closer to a polling station in the past, making it easier for them to vote. The other half of the ward is unchanged - no-one is disadvantaged as a result. Click on the map to see the proposals visually.

The consultation period runs until the 31st December and everyone is welcome to have a say, especially if they have a better idea still! (The constraint is finding suitable locations for polling stations). Comments need to go to electoral.services@bristol.gov.uk.

Parking review - consultation results

The Cotham Parking Review ended on 29th October, with 120 local people and organisations responding. Anthony (my co-councillor) and I have looked at the results with the traffic engineers and they will soon be publishing a revised plan taking into account the consultation response.

The main story is overwhelming support for the broad approach that we are taking in terms of improving road safety. Fewer than 10 responses opposed the plans and some of these had got the wrong end of the stick anyway. I am heartened that local residents actively support having safer and more pedestrian friendly streets.

Lots of the responses were about specific proposals for yellow lines - either for or against. We have been able to accommodate most of these. A few could not be done, either becuase there were submissions both for and against or because there are good reasons for why the original plans were set up in the way they were. We have continued to apply the test of trying not to constrain parking provision more than necessary and so some of the consultation ideas were more strict than we think wise at present. We have, in fact, found a couple of streets were additional parking can be added due to the removal of obsolete yellow lines.

I will post up the revised plans here once they are publicly available. There is still time to shout if you think we've got something badly wrong. There are a couple of instances where we think the problems are so intractable that they are going to need a separate project to sort them out - e.g. around junction of Cotham Grove and Archfield Road. These have therefore been excluded for the time being.

The next stage for the Review is the move to the formal consultation for the Traffic Regulation Orders that are required to paint yellow lines. This will take some work from the Council's legal boffins that is likely to occupy them for much of the Spring. The consultation is therefore planned for around March/April time. Depending on the outcome of this, we should hopefully start to see lines being installed in the Autumn.

Licensing and planning snippets

A few bits of planning and licensing news to pass on:

• Falafel King (Cotham Hill) have been awarded a licence for on-site alcohol sales, but only with food and for people seated. Along with local residents, I opposed this on the basis that the premises is within the Cumulative Impact Zone and it would create a new location for alcohol sales - I don't believe that Falafel King itself will be problematic, but our loony licensing system means that the permission sticks with the premises and not the operator. Sadly the committee didn't see it our way in a rather stunning piece of arbitrarily ignoring Council policy!
• The people behind Burritos (Cotham Hill - formerly the greengrocers and currently empty) have put in an appeal against the planning committee's decision not to permit a change of use from a shop to a restaurant and take away. Planning appeals are always risky affairs as the Inspector doesn't have the democratic oversight that planning committee do and their decisions are often, in my opinion, arbitrary or even ill-informed. Closing date for appeal representations is 21st December.
  
• The application for Derbyshires newsagents (Whiteladies Road, opposite Sainsbury's) to become a coffee shop has been withdrawn - I don't know why. I was opposing this as it would be the loss of another local shop and would undermine the retail 'offer' of the area.
  

Cotham School planning and trees

The planning application for the next stage of the expansion and improvement works at Cotham School were discussed at committee last Wednesday. There were two major parts: (a) the building of a multi-use games area (MUGA) and, (b) a retrospective application for new lampposts at the Cotham Road entrance that were put in without permission.

I submitted a written statement to the committee as I wasn't able to attend. This was broadly in favour of the concept of having a MUGA onsite as this will save the school having to ferry their pupils around to other sites for games. However, there were four things I objected to:

• The colour of the tarmac. It was shown as black, but the committee agreed with me and others that green is much softer and more in keeping with a Conservation Area.
• The usage hours. I and the Redland & Cotham Amenities Society were worried about the MUGA being used outside of school hours. I asked for a limit at 6pm, but the committee decided on 9pm and 6pm on Sundays and Bank Holidays.
  
• The fencing. Following feedback from local residents, I suggested that low-noise fencing should be used in order to minimise the nuisance of balls and humans striking it at high speed. This was accepted and the planning officers are to work with the contractors to see what options are available.
  
• The lampposts. I objected to these on the basis that they are complete overkill for lighting a disabled access ramp. The contractors will be required to remove these and replace them with low level lighting that won't cause light pollution for the surrounding area. Also, the replacement trees (see below) that have gone in are nowhere near large enough to hide the lampposts behind them.

So, all in all a fairly good outcome. I don't like causing difficulties for our local school, but it is also important to get the developments right so that they don't impact too negatively on those living in close proximity.

And back to the trees! Long-term readers of this blog will remember the fiasco that led to four mature trees being felled at the Cotham Road entrance to the school. I am delighted to report that replacement trees have finally gone in. I'm not sure I can really claim this as a victory as it has taken 18 months to see this resolved and you simply can't replace decades of growth overnight. The replacements are semi-mature (I'd guess at 10-15 years old), but I am slightly disappointed that they didn't source larger ones. If they had, they would have helped to cover up the ugly lampposts they now have to be removed!

Launch of Migrant Rights Centre

A quick plug for a new service that's being launched in Bristol this week. The Migrant Rights Centre will be based at the Pieran Centre in St Pauls and will offer a drop-in information and signposting service to migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. It is being run by students and staff volunteers from the University of the West of England, including my friend Dani.

The launch event is this Friday (10th December) at the Pieran Centre between 3pm and 5pm. If you would like to go along, drop the folks a line (contact detail via the link above) as numbers are limited. They are also doing a chinese lantern launch on The Downs on 18th December at 6pm - again let them know if you're going to go along. There are more details to be found on Facebook if you're a user.

Back in the saddle

I've been away from blogging for the last month, but now bouncing back! I've had quite a few trips away, a bout or two of illness, a raft of consultations and real-life to get on with too - sadly it was keeping the blog going that slipped. So, my apologies to regular readers and hopefully you haven't given up on me entirely...