PRESENT: Chair Karen Leakey, Vice-Chair Pam Freegard, Secretary and Archivist Kevin Leakey, Treasurer John Phillips, Muhammad Chaudhry, John and Vi Clark, Paul Izquierdo, Kate Johnson, Alan Jones, Susan Kane, Cluniford Mason, Rebecca McIntosh, Val Purvis, Ros Timlin
ALSO PRESENT: Councillor Derique Montaut, PC Diffin, Mark Walker SBC, Tim French, Kathryn Hawke
APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE: John Freegard, Kay Malko, Evelyn Mason, William Murray, Beryl Phillips, Madge Sutton,
CONFIRMATION OF THE MINUTES: – 01 June 2011 meeting. These Minutes were confirmed and signed a true record. Proposed by John Phillips and seconded by Val Purvis
MATTERS ARISING FROM THE JUNE 2011 MINUTES: None
Ros Timlin chaired the 6th July meeting to gain experience in carrying out the role.
WARD COUNCILLORS REPORT: Councillor Derique Montaut.
The County Ground was being looked at as part of the Leisure Strategy consultations about upgrading the area for sports. Mark Walker added that feasibility work was being undertaken concerning the usage of the extension area and if 106 monies and possibly Sport England and Lottery Grants could be used to improve the athletics area for more multi-use purposes, rather than just an uplift of the site.
Cllr. Montaut reported back on the walk around the area he had made with the Chair, Secretary and a number of residents, where he had witnessed for himself the problems residents were facing with ASB, fly tipping, vandalism and prostitution. He had raised the issues at the Police Committee in very strong terms, as he was shocked at how people felt and what he had seen and was very concerned that there were underlying fears amongst people he met. If any of his family lived in the area he would not want them to suffer similar problems and that was why it was important that residents that didn’t feel safe should shout about it as we all needed to work together.
Questions asked –
What was happening about the proposed park at old Post Office site, £130k seemed to be a lot of money spent on a temporary project that would need a large amount of money to maintain, when the area could have been used for a market or just grassed over at a much cheaper cost, as the Community Council had requested? – Much of the 106 monies were now going to council projects rather than community ones, decisions were made by SBC Officers and residents were not often consulted upon them. Mark Walker said the park was tied into the Town Centre regeneration but all the materials used could be moved and reused elsewhere in the future.
8.15 pm: Cllr. Montaut left the meeting
CORRESPONDENCE:
Sent – Councillor Rod Bluh, AZ maps and Ordnance Survey (O/S) have all been contacted about the name Broadgreen being recognised as a District of Swindon.
Received – Telephone conversation with Chris Hitchings re Whalebridge work – work due to be finished by the 23 December, but they were 3 weeks behind, they will catch up though. At the moment it will become a junction with traffic continuing to go along Fleming Way past Debenham’s, but traffic will not be able to turn right into Corporation Street – it will probably be a couple of years before the final plans to close Fleming Way west of Whalebridge happens. A road closure order would need to be applied for before Fleming Way could be closed – this could take up to a year to be obtained.
The Medgbury Road underpass slope area has to be left for a while for the infill to settle, then compaction tests could be carried out to make sure no areas sank after the landscaping work had been carried out.
Recognition of the Broadgreen name – AZ maps take their info from O/S and O/S replied - ‘the place names that we allocate to locations on our maps are provided to us by local authorities. Broadgreen is not a district recognised by the local authority and therefore does not feature in Ordnance Survey’s gazetteer’. There has been no reply form Councillor Bluh yet. But the meeting agreed that we should continue to pursue this issue.
An exhibition was to take place at the Oasis Leisure Centre regarding the Great Western Way Highway Improvement scheme which was due to start in the summer of 2012 at Bruce Street Bridges. Dates and times were given out. It was understood that Cllr. Bob Wright had attended a pre meeting about this and how it might affect Central as the roundabouts at Whitehouse and Transfer bridges would eventually be altered, but we had not been contacted or received any information from the councillor about it.
PLANNING –
S/11/0835 - 24 Manchester Road, SN1 2AB -Installation of a new shopfront, William Hill - Application Pending Consideration - Case Officer, Tom Buxton
S/LDE/11/0702 - 98 Broad Street SN1 2DT - Certificate of Lawfulness (existing) for the use as House in Multiple Occupation - Application Granted - Case Officer, Mr Rob O’Carroll
S/11/0701 - 98 Broad Street SN1 2DT - Erection of 1 no. rear dormer window - Application Granted - Case Officer, Mr Rob O’Carroll
We were Cc’d in on an email to Cllr. Wright re an update on paragon laundry site – The owner still had plans to develop it as a Hilton Hotel but had been having difficulty obtaining funding, they had also been trying without success to let the site for short term storage use. Although the plan was still for a hotel, the original planning permission for flats had less than a year to run now, so as a back up, they were putting in application to extend the permission for a further 3 years – with no further amendments to the original plan. The meeting raised no objections to this application.
TREASURERS REPORT, to 30 June 2011: John Phillips
Proposed by Muhammad Chaudhry and Seconded by Val Purvis
NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICE TEAM REPORT: PC Diffin
Crime figures for 01-30 June 2011 – Criminal Damage – 10, Robbery – 1, Burglary Dwelling x 5 (3 were multi occupancy, where a fellow resident had entered someone else’s room in the property), All ASB - 8 (This would include malicious communications), Violence against the person - 9 (7 were domestic related), Theft - 37 - (32 of these were Tescos and Go Outdoors).
The Chair asked if the Store thefts could not be separate from the other crimes as it gave a bad perception of the residential area. PC Diffin said that most of the ASB was in Tescos car park as was the shop lifting and although much of the crime was low level he agreed it did look bad and gave a bad perception of the area.
Street drinking was on the increase the same as last summer; the Police would be more proactive and would be in attendance along with SWADS at the Goan Festival at the County Ground to help cut down on drink problems.
STFC had a couple of big local fixtures coming up, against Reading and Oxford. The Oxford game had been switched to a Sunday and there would be a heavy Police presence at the games.
There had been no reported problems with residents at the bale hostel in Rosebery Street; most of them were actually tagged, nor had there been any problems with the dog at the Broadgreen park area since the meeting between all the involved parties.
Following the problems between the Asian and Afghan young people, Restorative Justice had been involved resulting in no further problems. An Afghan Association had also been formed. Sports Coach Doug Imrie had a pot of money for the Nepalese young people in Parks, but it was also being used to help all young people in Broadgreen with various sports activities being arranged. The Police were now working closely with Doug and Lindsay at Skeetz. Sport was the best way to bring people together, but it was all based on a reward system, if they didn’t behave then they would lose out on the activities that had been arranged. It was asked why everything seemed to be male orientated, PC Diffin said the problems in Broadgreen were mainly with young males, but Lindsay was working on engaging with girls.
PC Diffin apologised in advance for not being at next months meeting. PCSO Bird would be in attendance.
8.45 pm: PC Diffin left the meeting.
GUEST SPEAKER: Mark Walker SBC Central Cluster Lead –
There was an open invite from the Council as to how the environment could be improved in Broadgreen, lots of money was spent clearing up the rubbish, which could be better spent elsewhere. All sorts of things had been tried over the last 20 years that hadn’t worked. We all needed to come together and better educate people and inform them of the options for waste presentation. SBC wants to improve on the problems, but it was not for them to say what to do. They would like a small group of people to discuss about the problems and solutions. It was pointed out, not for the first time, that SBC always seemed to be preaching to the converted and not to the people that were doing the dumping, so it was actually up to the Council to move this forward. It was also suggested that it would be a good idea to re-establish a resident led NeST (Neighbourhood Safety Team) to include as many of the different cultural groups as possible, the meeting agreed with this.
It was also asked if the CCTV was now working as PC Diffin had told us last month that they were not connected to the central control room. Mr. Walker said that they had always been working but there was a problem with the broadband as it was not large enough to cope properly and until improved connectivity was in place then there was a contract to remove the camera hard drives for viewing. Since the cameras had been put in, there had been a significant reduction in fly tipping and a drop in other areas and if the cameras were moved around enough it would reduce the need for enforcement – when SBC got the opportunity from filming people fly tipping they would prosecute them.
9.10 pm: Mr Walker left the meeting.
CHAIR REPORT: Karen Leakey
Karen thanked Ros for chairing the meeting and reported that she had had a 2-week holiday recently and taken a complete break from any community work.
An anonymous letter had been received regarding concerns about huge problems and issues within the Goan community, which had been split into a number of groups; Points raised from the floor included the fact that people had been talking to friends and neighbours about the number of Goan people now living in the area and that the behaviour of some of them was of considerable concern and as they often seemed to have multiple families living in a single home, only paying one lot of Council Tax, was it putting an unfair burden on the amount of income SBC could expect to take in compared to what had to be paid out. The Chair said that we should be one big community, as we all had to live together but was very concerned herself about reports that rivalries and a criminal element originating from problems in Goa had been re-emerging in Broadgreen, this should not have to be tolerated by the rest of the Broadgreen community.
There was an incident concerning prostitutes working in Manchester Road - a number of them were openly working which was reported to the Police but unfortunately despite about 5 patrol cars driving around, and an obvious verbal confrontation taking place between the Chair, Secretary, one prostitute and two men who were looking out for her, none of the Officers stopped, despite at one point the Chair trying to wave them down. Karen said that was the first time she had felt unsafe, which wasn’t acceptable for any residents to feel. The following evening an Operation Dobbin was put on. A phone call about the incident followed 3 days later between the Chair and PC McIntyre who was not happy that we felt the Police were doing nothing about the prostitution problems. The Chair invited PC McIntyre to attend tonight’s meeting but she was unable to attend, but did send a report explaining all the work the Police had been carrying out with partnership working and the success they had had in reducing the number of prostitutes. Only the ones that refused to accept help with their drug and drink problems were still working on the streets and they were robustly policed, although it was well known that simply arresting them did not solve the problem. Recently 2 kerb crawlers had been fined £360 and £600 which sent out a message that kerb crawling would not be tolerated in Swindon and the consequences of doing so were severe. The report concluded by assuring residents that ultimately Swindon police would continue to ensure our community was protected from the anti-social behaviour associated with prostitution and urged residents to email sophia.mcintyre@wiltshire.pnn.police.uk or telephone 07966818119 to report any issues related to prostitution and if a matter needed a more urgent response then to call 0845 408 7000.
People felt, and it was agreed by the meeting that the prostitution problems should come back under the NPT as there was a general feeling that the problems with prostitution was coming back again.
HISTORY REPORT: Kevin Leakey
The website was now up and running – www.broadgreenhistory.btck.co.uk, there was not too much on there at the moment, but there was lots of information to upload when the time could be found.
Looking at the 1911 census it was a surprise to see that there were quite a few versions of the Station Road name, people variously called it - New, East, and Extension and the very eastern end, by County Rd was called Sydenham Terrace. Because the area was built by many different builders, they often named the rows they had built ‘terraces’ and although those names had now disappeared they could still be found on house documents. W know there is a block in Gladstone Street called Kimberley Terrace and a block of 3 houses in Alfred Street called Rose Cottages. It was requested that if any residents knew of any more names of terraces, the information would be gratefully accepted and added to the archive.
There were also a number of sportsmen living around the Broadgreen area as well –
Harry Mitchell a pro cricketer was a boarder at 101 Broad Street, plus a few of Swindon Town players – Tommy Bolland and Jock Walker in Salisbury Street - Walker was a Scotland International and certainly into the 1960’s he owned a fish shop in Manchester Road on the corner of Corporation Street, where Sexton’s car audio now was. Bob Jefferson was at 65 Broad Street, Chas Bannister at 69 Broad Street, Billy Silto at 135 Rosebery Street, his son Joe was a well known Swindon Sportsman and local history author, as was his Grandson – Willy and finally at 41 Elmina Road Sammy Lamb was boarding with his family.
One thing that did stand out about the Census was the fact that hardly any of the adults had been born in Swindon, but nearly all of the children had been.
Kevin had spoken to and shown Cllr. Montaut the bad state of repair of the 1930s signpost in County Road, the councillor said he would report it in for repair work, as it was important to retain heritage and this sign had been rather neglected.
SHRIVENHAM ROAD REPORT: The brambles overgrowing Stratton Bank at the County Ground still needed cutting back.
NEIGHBOURHOOD/STREET WATCH REPORT: A drain in the alley at the rear of Broad Street was filled with tarmac a number of years ago and despite it being reported on numerous occasions that it caused flooding problems whenever there was heavy rain, SBC had still not sorted it out.
ANY OTHER BUSINESS: There had been lots of charity bags pushed through doors recently asking for clothes donations, the Secretary pointed out that although the reputable charities names might be on the bags, they would only receive a donation from the sale of the clothes because the people behind the collections were actually private businesses and they were making a financial profit from peoples kindness.
It was reported that a number of residents had had people knocking on their doors offering to help write a Will for them, which was of some considerable concern and a lady of Eastern European appearance had also recently been stopping people in the street offering jewellery for sale.
The overgrown garden and fly tipping at the rear of a property in Rosebery Street had still not been cleared up, but Mark Walker and Cllr. Montaut had been down to see it and sorting it out was in hand.
Meeting closed at 9.45pm.
