Posts from — April 2007

I Had some excellent news today about a project I’m very keen to see succeed.

Elford Hall Walled Gardens are an historic site near Elford village which, despite being in Staffordshire, is actually owned in Trust by Birmingham City Council. The Walled Garden which dates back to 1705 and Gardener’s Cottage which is Victorian have fallen into serious disrepair over the last fifty or so years.

You may remember around a year ago I got involved with helping out a group of Elford villagers who are very keen to see the cottage and gardens restored to their former glory. It’s fair to say that, for a variety of reasons, Birmingham weren’t cooperating at that time but after some encouragement from me a dialogue of sorts started.

After much frustration and a number of false starts Birmingham have finally agreed to support the project and start the legal work to offer the group a peppercorn rent lease on the whole site. The ambitious plan is to restore the wall around the garden and add leisure facilities and traditional orchards and workshops to the garden area partly using labour from Swinfen Young Offenders’ Institution.

The hope is that while the Gardens are being worked upon the inmates from Swinfen will be learning traditional skills which will be useful when they are released back into society. As I said ambitious and, some may say, bold. With the group’s track record on the fabulous Millennium Playground they built from scratch I have no doubt they will succeed given time.

So, it’s all systems go and I’m meeting the group on Monday evening to see how I can assist further. I did have the thought that it may be a good idea to start some sort of ‘Friends of Elford Gardens’ scheme. Something I’m sure we’ll discuss next week.

Although I’m not directly involved I must admit I’m quite excited at the thought of the restoration and particularly the innovative approach. I’ll write more in due course.

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We’re all still working hard to engage with young people in the Fazeley and Mile Oak area and as part of that one of the local Police Community Support Officers has just arranged to do some football coaching for youngsters.

He successfully qualified a couple of weeks ago as a level 1 FA coach and I said I’d get him some funding from my LMIS County grant scheme to get an additional kit to allow him to coach more often.

Unfortunately the scheme doesn’t allow individuals to be grant funded for this sort of thing so that was a non starter. Well, Kevin put in a lot of effort to get his qualification and the work he’s now going to do will pay dividends for local youngsters and the community. So, for the sake of a few quid out of my own pocket I thought it would be a nice surprise to buy it myself. And it was…he was delighted and the boots, training bottoms and soccer top all fitted fine.

He’s got football coaching lined up in Mile Oak, around the new youth club which opened last week, and also at Coton Green Football Club in Fazeley. Well done Kevin, what you are doing in the area is great!

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Had the Special Licensing Hearing about the Alcohol Control Order I’ve been promoting for Fazeley earlier tonight. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I’d got agreement to hold an extra meeting of the Panel. I gave evidence to them a couple of hours ago and I’m really pleased they have agreed with my request for restrictions on drinking alcohol in public in the Deer Park part of Fazeley.

You may remember that three months ago I was asked to visit the area and see for myself the damage that had been caused by drunken yobs. The talks I had with residents resulted us doing a survey in part of Fazeley and you can see the results of that here.

Anyway, I’m delighted with the weight the Licensing Panel gave to our survey and it also seems the discussions I’ve had with the police, who were not supportive of an Alcohol Control Zone a couple of months ago, have paid off because they were very supportive tonight.

So, what does it mean and what happens next?

Well, an Alcohol Control Zone means that police will confiscate any alcohol seen on the streets within the area with the Order and if needed arrest people who have an issue with giving it up. Importantly it will also be very well signposted so it is very obvious that alcohol is not wanted in public there.

The ‘what happens next bit’ is quite straightforward. The law requires the Licensing Authority to do a formal consultation with local people before making the Order legal. That will be done in the next few weeks and I encourage everyone in the affected area to formally support this Alcohol Control Zone Order.

A very satisfying outcome from my point of view and a big thank you goes to Ian Lewin, Ben Adams and Brian Yeates for doing most of the survey work. And, of course, thank you to everyone in the Deer Park area who replied to the survey. People power in action…. something I feel very passionate about.

The team have already started to survey Mile Oak with similar aims in mind and we also want to know what residents think about the various alleyways which criss-cross Fazeley and Mile Oak…. keep them open, or gate them off because of the problems they cause? Let me know.

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I really hoped the HGV problem in Shenstone was going to be, more or less, a thing of the past when we managed to get rid of Wille Betz from the area last September.

And for a while, a month or two after they left, it was a joy to get letters from local people saying they felt they’d got their village back from the monstrous lorries. Infuriatingly, with all the work I put into it, the improvement was short lived. Recently, I’d been getting mixed messages from local people as to how much the problem of HGVs was on the increase again.

The people who own the site where Wille Betz were, assured me there were no plans to replace WB with yet another large haulier. Sadly, I’m afraid I believed them and it seems that was a foolish thing to do. At the public meeting I called for last Thursday it was apparent from the sixty or so people who attended that several more hauliers with massive HGVs are operating out of the ex WB site at South Staffs Freight.

So a new tactic is called for on my part as the owners of site don’t seem to want to cooperate with the Local Authorities who are willing to talk through ways of helping the situation. They also don’t seem to want to give some required information to the development control department.

Until now, a softly softly negotiation approach has been utmost in my mind. As far as I can tell no one is breaking the law by operating these HGVs from the site. Add to that the little bit of local employment it creates and the softly softly approach has been appropriate. But there is a big safety issue here. Already when large lorries pass each other in opposite directions they have to mount the pavement because the road through Shenstone isn’t wide enough for this type of vehicle. And recently we’ve been getting more and more of the new even larger HGVs complete with enormous trailer.

Someone is going to get hurt….a couple of the residents at the meeting said that when they had been pushing prams along the pavement they had needed to quickly seek refuge in front gardens because of the lorries mounting the curb.

A new tactic is what is needed and I’ve got several options which will, for the time being, remain unpublished. I will update again though in the next couple of weeks. I should know more then.

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The ongoing saga of trying to get firm action on the anti social behaviour being experienced in Fazeley may reach an initial conclusion on Tuesday 11th when I give evidence to LDC’s Licensing Committee.

I say ‘initial’ conclusion because if we are successful it may well mean the start of wider Alcohol Control Zones across Fazeley and Mile Oak. Colleagues have been surveying the Deer Park area, asking local people what their experience of anti social behaviour in the area is. The results of our surveys have proved very useful as they have certainly opened the door to the chance of alcohol restrictions in trouble spots.

I met with Licensing officers and the chairman and vice-chairman of the Licensing Committee a couple of weeks ago and put the case informally. They seemed to take it in and that has led to the formal proceedings on the 11th. I always say it, and I’ll say it again; Fazeley and Mile Oak, in the main, are good places to live. But small parts of the area are really problematical, mainly drink fuelled.

Bad language, playing football and shouting on the streets into the early hours as well as mindless vandalism are regular issues in places. It needs tackling; it might not be life threatening but I don’t see why normal law abiding citizens should be subjected to this blight on their homes and lives.

I’m disappointed with the lack of support on this whole thing from the local police. They still say that the problem is not that significant. I disagree with that and I think, at last, they are coming round to my point of view. It remains to be seen what they say at the hearing on the 11th April.

I will fight the residents’ corner on this and I’m reasonably confident we’ll get a result. Thanks to Ben Adams, Brian Yeates and Ian Lewin who’ve done most of the survey work. They’ve already started the next one in Mile Oak and we’ll continue around the area to get a fuller picture.

I’ll write about the hearing and the results soon after the 11th.

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