PRESENT: Chair Karen Leakey, Vice-Chair Pam Freegard, Secretary and Archivist Kevin Leakey, Treasurer John Phillips, Muhammad Chaudhry, John and Vi Clark, John Freegard, Axmed Ismail, Kate Johnson, Brian Jones, Kath Jones, Cluniford Mason, Rebecca McIntosh, Mr Murray, Beryl Phillips, Val Purvis, Madge Sutton, Ros Timlin
ALSO PRESENT: Tim French, Councillor Montaut, PC Diffin, and Mark Walker, SBC - guest speaker.
APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE: Alan Jones, Kay Malko, Evelyn Mason.
A silence was observed in memory of our former Vice-Chair Derek Sutton who sadly passed away recently. Madge thanked everyone for their concern and care for Derek and the marvelous support and help offered, this was also appreciated by Derek who had very much enjoyed his time with the Community here.
CONFIRMATION OF THE MINUTES: – 01 December 2010 meeting.
These Minutes were confirmed and signed a true record. Proposed by Ros Timlin and seconded by Pam Freegard.
MATTERS ARISING FROM THE DECEMBER 2010 MINUTES: The white van that was parked in a 2 hour bay in Gladstone Street has now been towed away.
WARD COUNCILLORS REPORT: Councillor Montaut told the meeting of his views on, and his understanding of the council’s budget cuts. He had been told there would be no cuts to services in certain areas, but jobs had gone instead. It was asked why, with all the cuts, were the 2 leading political parties in Swindon still employing political assistants (P/A), paid for from council tax? – This was all controlled by the Administration, the Labour P/A post costs £30k and the Conservative post, £50k and even if his Group was to lose their P/A, the administration would not, as all councils still needed this support for the Lead Groups. There was some good news, as Swindon has a house building programme of around 1000 per year, every new house build meant a certain amount of money would be given to the council from the Government, this would help drive down council tax in 2012.
NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICE TEAM REPORT:
· Parking/obstruction rear alley Manchester Road – This problem still continues and tickets are still being issued.
· Speeding in Broad Street, Bathurst and Station Road – There is to be a speed enforcement day, but there have been no real speeding issues lately.
From February, the four Central Neighbourhood Police Teams will become one large one that will cover SBC’s Central Cluster. PC Diffin will become the overall beat manager. There will be 10 PCSO’s but the Broadgreen Area should retain the 2 we presently have and they should not be called away to the Town Centre at weekends.
There are 3 Police Officers to cover the new NPT area and they will deal proactively with intelligent led problems e.g. anti socials behaviour, drug dens and dealers etc. The 3 priorities will now cover the whole of the new NPT area. PC Diffin explained that the community area Tasking Groups will become one big one, be held at a strategic level, attended by councillors, MP’s and other relevant council officers, will cover the whole Central Area and the 3 priorities taken from the meetings. The minutes from the meetings will be available on the new NPT website.
Questions asked – Where will the information for the priorities come from as the people that gave it over before were no longer invited to the Tasking Group, when will the new meetings start and who will run the new group? – The Tasking Group will no longer be a community meeting, they will be starting in February and will be at a strategic level to deal with problems from across the cluster area, the Information will be gathered as before via meetings, drop ins and surveys. PC Diffin felt the key to sorting out problems are the councillors and as it is their responsibility to represent the community they will be the ones to run the meetings.
There was some considerable dissatisfaction from the meeting about the new Tasking Group as despite the ‘Big Society’ and a move to ground up power, the group was moving to a top down meeting and the information would be coming from councillors that didn’t live in Central, seemed to take little interest in the Broadgreen Area and, along with the Police and Borough Officers didn’t listen to what people wanted, were more interested in telling us what to do and how to live our lives and making decisions based on what they wanted.
GUEST SPEAKER: Mark Walker, SBC Town Centre Cluster Lead. SBC has obtained a grant for £40k for moveable CCTV cameras to help with environmental problems, this was put out to tender late last year, and around a dozen national and local companies had shown an interest. There is a meeting tomorrow (6th January) to decide who will be putting this in, then the instalment will happen in weeks rather than months. The 6 cameras will be mounted on lampposts, for example on the corner of Broad Street and Gladstone Street, but not be permanently fixed, allowing them to be moved around to the areas that had problems, then prosecutions will be obtained. Notices will be put up warning people that CCTV was in operation in the area. At a meeting in September, residents had the chance to say where they thought the cameras should go, as well as SCS contractors that are regularly in the area. At the moment SBC spends twice as much on rubbish in Broadgreen than it does in any other neighbourhood in Swindon, so what ever has happened in the last 20 years has not worked; if this resolves the problems then money can be spent else where and the cameras can be moved.
A number of concerns and questions were put to Mark:
The original idea put forward by Richard Palacio was that the cameras would be a temporary measure for environmental crimes i.e. fly tipping and residents would decide where they would be put, basically in the alleys, so why has the Broadgreen play area been identified? – The main area will be the alleys, but as a power supply is needed for the cameras they will have to be mounted on lighting columns as part of the street furniture and will be put in appropriate places on the corner of alleys to cover the back alleys. They will be able to look down Broad Street and can be controlled to look around, so if something is happening in the street they can be directed to look at it.
Will the 6 cameras be placed mainly in the alleys, where most of the fly tipping happens? – Not necessarily, they might have vantage points down the alleys but they need a power supply from a streetlight.
We thought the cameras were for environmental use, not to police people’s behaviour, there has not been any dumping on the play area, and there are concerns as to the reasons they will be put there and how long they will stay – No specific locations have been confirmed there is still an open invitation to say where they should go as it is residents that live here and know where the problems are. The message will be if people fly tip there will be zero tolerance, we will prosecute and expose the person in the media.
Will there actually be any prosecutions, or will the council just give people a smack on the hand? – Yes there will be prosecutions, and when there is evidence the Council already takes people from across the town to the Magistrates Court.
There is a high turnover of residents on short term leases in some of the rented houses, this often leads to people not caring about the area and dumping their rubbish in alleys and at the back of the property, can the landlords not be held responsible for this? – National legislation does not permit the council to do this, although a few councils do have bi-laws to cover it, Swindon would need to introduce a bi-law to make the owners of properties responsible for the waste on the curtilage of their properties.
How good are the cameras, can they pick things up from a long distance away? – The pixel quality means they can see way beyond the Broadgreen Area. They film in colour during the day and b/w at night.
Is the CCTV primarily for fly tipping problems or will they be used for other criminal activities? – If other problems occur then they can be used for that purpose. The CCTV will be monitored 24/7 from the control room at Waterside Park where the operators are already monitoring a whole network of cameras across the town, and are in contact with the Police.
Councillor Montaut said that the picture quality will be so good, the operators will be able to look into people’s homes and lives etc – It is not the idea to look into peoples domestic lives, there are 2 protections in place, 1- screens will be put up using certain software and 2- the control room operators have to have a security industry qualification and only use the cameras for the purpose they are put in for, if not they could go to prison.
Will there be a trial period? – There will be an open dialogue on this.
In Birmingham, CCTV has been used to spy on people which would not be welcomed here. – This is not intended to cause any alarm but to help sort out the problems and when it is up and running, a visit to the control room could be arranged.
It was a surprise to hear that the cameras were supposed to be for the rubbish, but will also be used for other purposes. Very few people actually know about the introduction of CCTV and there is no agreement or remit for them to be used for other things. – No decisions have been made yet, but as other crimes may be picked up by the cameras, that information will be passed to the Police but the council have clear protocols as to how the information is managed and passed over, so if a criminal act is captured it can be used in a court of law. The signage for the cameras will clearly state this, because the purpose of the camera is to reduce environmental crime and other crimes as well.
PC Diffin added that the signage across the area would in itself discourage people from dumping rubbish and by its very nature CCTV generally captures more images than the specific reason it was put in for, meaning that it would also add up to an increase in public safety. – Some residents agreed that they will feel safer if there is CCTV in the area and where ever you go, you are constantly being picked up on CCTV cameras anyway.
The Chair made 2 requests to Mark, 1- could he attend the February meeting for an update on this situation. 2- as the layout of Tasking Meetings have changed, we are looking to set up our own group to do the same work and work with the partners we worked with on there, therefore could he regularly attend our meetings or keep in touch to update us? – Mark agreed to both of these things, although he may not be able to attend every meeting as they clash with other community group meetings.
Councillor Montaut left the meeting at this point.
CORRESPONDENCE:
Sent – None Received – No reply concerning the Broad Street Trust
PLANNING –
S/ADV/10/1735 - Display of 16 no. Advertising Banners attached to lamp posts - Lamp Posts 260, 261,262, 263 Magic Roundabout, Queens Drive, 101, 163, 164 Drove Road, 103 Fleming Way, 1,2,3,94, 96 County Road, 96, 97,98,99 Shrivenham Road - Application Withdrawn - Case Officer, Miss Kimberly Walter.
3 other applications for these Advertising Banners around Swindon are to be considered at Planning Committee on the 11th January. It is recommended that they are given permission.
TREASURERS REPORT:
Proposed by John Freegard and Seconded by Val Purvis.
CHAIR REPORT: We have applied for a £44k grant to improve the Broadgreen Centre. A forum for businesses will be set up this year; there will be a meeting with John Bishop at St. Luke’s to see if the forum can be held in the hall. The Chair and Secretary will not be at next months meeting (February), Pam will Chair the meeting and Ros said she would cover the minutes.
The Chair said she had been working in the community for 11 years and although she didn’t want to completely walk away, she had never felt as disaffected as she did now and despite ‘Connecting People Connecting Places’ and the ‘big society’ idea, things seemed to be even more top down and she did not know how to move forward. For example we put together part one of our Community Plan with no help or funding from SBC and the council simply took from it what they wanted and binned the rest without anyone from the council even bothering to contact us about it. Mark Walker said the council had not binned the plan but the Chair pointed out that both Cllr. Montaut and a Senior Planner at the local planning priorities ‘place shaping’ event in October had told us this had been the case. This sort of thing was making people angry and discouraging us from wanting to work with the council any more, which was very sad as the community council had made big and successful efforts to work in partnership with SBC in recent years. Mark further explained that as councillors were the elected members, they would be the ones to decide things as they represented communities and that Community Plans were the way forward if people wanted to attract grants.
BROADGREEN HISTORY PROJECT: As mentioned at the December meeting, hopefully with peoples help, this year we would like to continue with the project John Taylor started, by talking to residents and recording their memories of the area.
Historical connections seem to have been forgotten in Swindon, and one thing that has been discussed with our MP Robert Buckland was the possibility of putting up blue plaques on buildings where either some one with historical connections had lived or worked, or to commemorate something significant, for example, the 10 people that died in the Rosebery Street air raid in 1940.
It has been mentioned to Rod Bluh and he would be prepared to discuss it further, but it doesn’t have to be in conjunction with the Council. It would probably mean seeking funding and working with the Swindon Society, Civic Trust or other historical groups that have a real interest in the historical side of Swindon, and obtaining permission from the property owner.
This would be a good and simple way of bringing some history in to peoples lives, as they go about their daily business.
Request for any old photos of the area, shops, people, churches, events held in this area – VE day celebrations, Queens silver jubilee, street parties, fete’s etc
SHRIVENHAM ROAD REPORT: There has been some graffiti in the alley recently. The Police regularly patrol the area in a van.
NEIGHBOURHOOD/STREET WATCH REPORT: There are drinkers in the alleys and they are leaving behind cans and bottles. People are still cycling on pavements.
ANY OTHER BUSINESS: We are still hoping to visit the House of Commons this year.
Meeting closed at 9.35pm.
