Opps! My Mistake!

Always the first to hold my hands up if I've made a mistake - guess who wrote, but forgot to publish last weeks blog? Guilty as charged. So better late than never...This was last weeks blog, covering the first week of April.

: This week I have mostly been…enjoying a four day bank holiday. The first time in a number of years where I didn’t do any door knocking or leafleting, albeit that I did have to field a number of phone calls from our friends at the Daily Echo. For those of you playing Chaos watch, yes, another headline to add to the collection.

: Discussions with Officers and Councillor Jeffery on the future of bus subsidies and impacts on routes. The unofficial statement is that we have taken just shy of £400,000 out of public subsidy. I am trying to develop better relations with bus companies and so I will not comment on the withdrawal of considerable public funds with minimal change to routes as a result. We will see maintenance of 95% of routes and even an increase in frequency for some routes. This was another gamble for the administration, but due to diligent work of officers and support from Councillor Jeffery we have secured considerable savings for very little loss.
: Wednesday saw me developing ideas for a joint bid with Portsmouth for government funding on bicycle networks. Fingers crossed for another announcement in the coming months. This bid would be for the West of the city and would complement the work being conducted on the East of our city;
and would aid us in the modal shift we need to see from cars to other more sustainable forms of transport.

: After that meeting it was a case of spending a considerable amount of time getting to grips with the Sulphur Plant fiasco. Lots of discussions with officers, scratching of heads and strange noises. Suffice to say that another press release went out which corrected the ill thought out comments from Planning Officers, but the Echo declined to use it.

: Yellow lines seem to be dogging me currently, as does any form of work on the new Costco development within Regents Park Road. Another example of where Balfour Beatty's contractors have not adhered to amended plans…leading to hand delivered apologies from Balfours alongside lines
being removed less than 24 hours after being laid. Importantly without cost to us.

: This week I've also spent some time with planning Councillors from both Hampshire County Council and Test valley Borough Council. They are an exciting lot. This was in relation to the development of Bakers Drove (in Rownhams) to accommodate extra housing and our new Academy School in the area. As Councillor Letts put it, it sounded like the script out of an episode of "The Thick of It"; basically me arguing that I didn’t want to lose a large swathe of our field for their filter road due to it being used to house our Slow Worms. Suffice to say, another game of Poker ensues; original proposal from TVBC at 90 metres, then 70 and now 45 metres. I'm waiting for their next offer.

: This afternoon (Friday) will see me meet with Dave Ross, who recently appeared at full Council in relation to his development of the learning centre at City depot and his subsequent national award.