Councillor Robinson - June 2017.

[Malcolm Robinson]

Well it seems it’s straight into the thick of it.  I had a Pension Fund Panel meeting to attend and there were some pretty big decisions to rubber stamp.  I had read through all the literature which came with my summons to attend and some if it was quite heavy going.  At the meeting the chair went through it all and explained what everything was about.  Seems I needn’t have read it all?  Never mind I did have some questions which I thought needed to be asked if I was to do my job and sit on the committee.  The meeting only took an hour; normally I’m told they can last all day!  The outcome was as suggested and I now have extensive pension training to do later in the year.

Next evening and this time strategic planning.  I had discussed the possibility of me having ‘interests’ in the agenda seeing as there were two large proposals for Bedlington.  The county solicitor considered my submissions and said as long as I haven’t pre judged the applications I was OK to remain in the committee when these went through.

I had also taken a call off one of the planners who wanted to know if I was going to ask the questions in public I had already put to them by email.  We had a long conversation and it’s clear we don’t see eye to eye about the details of the proposal.

Just before the meeting I had a cuppa in the members lounge with most of the rest of the committee and introduced myself to the chair.  I asked for his indulgence because I did have some salient facts I wanted to put to members concerning one of the applications.  He told me to keep it short!

The meeting started and there was quite a packed public gallery, with a lot from Bedlington.  The main application for houses in Bedlington came up first and after the officer had given an update there were several ‘public’ speakers both for and against.  When we got asked if we had any questions I had a bucketful, not least because of the explanations given by the planning team!  Seems there has been a challenge to the S106 community funding and we have seen £2M wiped out?  This left me fuming!   It hadn’t been mentioned by the officers in their presentation and I thought it was of crucial importance so I asked them outright for the current figures.  The officer said it had all been worked out to a strict formula so I asked if the same formula had been used to produce the £3.8M figure because if it had how could it now produce only £1.7M?

I also question them about the allocation of housing for Bedlington because it isn’t just for the Town it’s the surrounding area too!   The answer wasn’t unexpected, seems the Town has the necessary infrastructure to cope with the 1280 housing allocation while the periphery doesn’t!   Says who????  I also asked about how many units we have seen completed or started and the answer was shocking.  Seems we still need over 800 units because in the last 7 years we have only seen 400 new houses built.  I need to check those figures!

I started to give members what I had prepared but the chair stopped me after only a couple of paragraphs!

The application was put out for a proposer and seconder which it duly received.  I was then allowed another go at it in the debate.

Just to explain things a little there is a set criteria of objections which is applied to planning applications, these are called ‘Material Considerations’ and its only they which can be used to turn down applications, nothing else.  So if an application ticks all the right boxes members almost have to accept and pass it.

I set out my challenge on the terms of the contract and the details and asked if it could be taken away and revamped.  Planners didn’t want to do that so I mentioned some of the problems as I saw them.

The chair was keen to progress the meeting and called the vote.  I voted against it because of the contract which had been placed in front of us!  That was the only way I could challenge it.  Every other member voted for, including perhaps strangely, the other Bedlington Councillor on the committee.

This is what I tried to put to the committee but what the chair cut brief!

 

Planning meeting 06/06/2017:

“As the ward councillor I’m acutely aware of the confines and concerns some local residents have with this housing application and I would like to give members some local flavour.   

For the sake of balance and fairness let me first tell members that when I was chair of the Town Council I started a residents group and one of the first jobs they took up was to start work on a Neighbourhood Plan.   One of their initiatives was to put out a community questionnaire and one of the questions that contained was where would people suggest new housing allocations were sited, and we gave them the cardinal points as reference.  The vast majority replied that land to the North of the settlement was their preferred option or exactly where this application is for. 

Now having said that I believe we have to drive real tangible benefits for residents who will be affected by this and other applications.  I don’t suppose Bedlington is any different to other towns and villages in Northumberland or elsewhere having problems with pressure on health services, road infrastructure, leisure facilities and education, well maybe not leisure facilities in other areas but you get what I mean…. and that’s before we see what will be a massive influx in population numbers.  I believe with a little bit of applied thinking some of those problems can be alleviated somewhat.

We see this development singly in its outline form but we really need to consider it how its fits into the overall topography of Bedlington.  We have entry and exit access from the A1068 or Choppington Road, when with a little nudge we might see a link road from the New Roundabout which has gone in as part of the Broadoaks development on the B1331, to that point on Choppington Road.   Not only would it act as a relief road for the daily traffic congestion at the top end we could again with a little applied logic make it the route for vehicular access to Meadowdale School.  At present we have road congestion on the B1331 and very young children walking to and from their schools.  Again not an unusual scenario within the county but in Bedlington we have 4 different school entrances within ¼ of a mile!   This suggestion alone could take a least a third of that congestion away.  I refer members to the comment by Highways England which sadly seems to reflect the situation better than our own Highways report. 

Speaking of the access point in this application, not only is it on a bend in the road but it’s also immediately before you hit a 40MPH zone so guess what the traffic is doing.  Plus putting in a two lane access road into and out of the estate will mean very little room for houses either side.

I cannot believe the farmer who has Glebe Farm; the building to the right and adjacent to this proposed access, has not been consulted.  I went down and had quite a long chat with him and his family and they are as yet undecided whether to support or fight this application.  I would suggest someone either landowner or developer goes and sees this gentleman whilst that goodwill exists!  As it is in the proposal, his farm steading will be surrounded on three sides by housing but let me inform members what type of business he conducts from his premises, he and his workforce do contract crop spraying so again guess what is stored in those ancillary building….chemicals or exactly what we don’t want to see in the middle of a housing estate I would assume!  If there was to be a deal done with this owner then I would hope to see the worst of the bend in that road straightened out as well.  Additional cost certainly but that could easily me met with a few additional housing units! 

 

My real concern is with the S106 proposal and I have been in discussions with planners over this for a while now.  I saw the original figure for S106 had been challenged and we now have a much reduced figure which seems to have almost been agreed.  This will be earmarked for education support and I spoke very strongly about it being ring-fenced for that within the Bedlington West area.   As I said we have 4 schools within walking distance and going to one recently I saw first-hand the disgraceful state the ceilings had been left in after some remedial work had been done.  That type of work may not be possible with this fund but it should be!  Also these are the schools which by and large will be affected by the increased population figures.

More it seems we have agreed some S106 funding for sports provision out of this application and again I have asked for it to be ring fenced to the immediate area.  We do have a proposal for new sporting provision within the boundaries of this ward never mind the larger boundary of the town.  This funding would not only crystallise that development it would kick-start the project and bring in other much needed sports development funding. 

 

Whilst I’m certainly not anti-housing I am concerned about some of the details the application in its present form contains.  These may not be material considerations and so can be ignored in strict planning terms but we are not serving our constituents if we don’t at least try and improve the overall impacts this and other applications have as results.”   

 

The decision was also made at this meeting to give our Bedlington redevelopment scheme the go ahead.  That now gives the developer the legal status to proceed to the next level and sign up retailers!   It’s taken some doing but I hope this is back on track now! Speaking to the lead person on this development after the meeting he told me there was no reason to see it stall!

 

More training done and this time planning.

Friday afternoon and my phone started ringing.  Seems a young lad has been knocked down on the road just outside the Ridge Farm.  This is exactly the problem we have as a community been telling and warning NCC about for probably 8 years!  I was told it wasn’t too serious but any road accident is one too many especially on that road!  I was very concerned about reports that the ambulance took well over 40 mins to get there seeing as we live about 5 miles from the station!  I will check that out later, right now I need to speak to some people!

I had heard whispers about a light controlled crossing which was muted for this area and I wanted to push that into existence and get it fitted ASAP!  I spoke to all the contacts I had at traffic managerial level and we do have a light controlled crossing going in now!  I am now pushing to get it in Asap hopefully in the school holidays so it causes the least disruption.

I also got back in touch with the planners about that 500 houses site.  One of my suggestions was for a relief road and I had spoken to the developer’s land agent well over a year ago about this when I was the mayor. He agreed it would be a welcome addition, probably for his own reasons but as long as we got benefit……

I have pressed the planners to put this on the table in their negotiations with the land agent and have used the school access and safe traffic management as one of the reasons.  With a £2M hit now on the S106 allocation this could easily be paid for out of the savings the developer has somehow made!

After another long weekend at work I had data protection training to do.  Russ and Bill were there too this time, because it was councillor training.  Seems to me there are quite a few councillors missing these mandatory training sessions?  Anyway I had to speak to democratic services and IT support afterwards.  I took the opportunity to speak to the chair of business about the boundaries for our LAC.  He said things had been changed around with a couple moving into other areas.   I said I wanted to challenge one of those moves and he told me it would come up for ratification soon enough and I could challenge it then.  I feel this isn’t really my fight it’s another councillors area but he isn’t responding to residents so someone has to even though it’s me that’s getting all the flack for not doing anything?

I had a long chat with Christine D who is chairing our LAC.   We will be getting local planning decisions to approve and then the meetings will start at 4pm with the main meeting starting at 6pm.  Of course these are on Wednesdays so I will be at work at 6am finish at 2pm and rush back to get showered and changed before making the meeting at 4pm.  I had to see K in democratic services to give her some Bedlington venues for these meetings because we want to see them moved around the area.

The Bedlington in Bloom team asked me to build up the new planters they had just purchased but I had a problem with the e-mail address for Brenda their secretary so everything had to be organised through Christine the Mayor.    I met the team at the site where the planters were going and Straughans were soon there with the new planters and the compost etc.   I built the planters and helped the lasses fill the various tubs with compost.  I left the actual plating to the experts and as usual they made a fantastic job, well done Irene, Trish, Brenda and Sarah.

Christine T, the new Mayor of WBTC, has included a five minute segment into the Town Council next agenda for updates off the county councillors so I need to prep something for that.

I received a letter off the Leader today about the boundaries for these LAC’s.  Seems they have reconsidered the boundary issues but will not change them now.  I am still going to challenge the main premise of their argument, in that there is a physical connect between Blyth and Ashington and its called Sleekburn.  It is actually there are physical disconnects and they are called the River Wansbeck and the River Blyth!!!!

I went to the West Bedlington Town Council meeting tonight and immediately was set upon by Councillor Tyler.   Funny way to work together calling me names but hey ho why changes the habits of a lifetime!  I gave him as good back but really………

Quite a packed WBTC meeting tonight with about 8 people there to do presentations to help their funding pleas.  John K’s young grandson who had grilled me when I did the “Meet the Mayor” afternoon at his school recently was one of the applicants and spoke very well for someone of such a young age.

Christine did her update and said she now understood why mine used to be so long!  After that Russ was asked for his update and then Bill gave a short update.  I gave mine and then we had the meeting.

My update:

June update for WBTC:

Apart from various training sessions one of the main things which has taken place this month was the strategic planning meeting of which I am one of 12 committee members.   Councillor Hogg had tried to speak to me several times about one item on the agenda but sadly didn’t seem to understand why I couldn’t engage with him about it.  This was a direct recommendation off the county solicitor who gave me strict guidelines to follow if I wanted to take part in the discussion and vote on the matter when it came up.  This was the 500 house application on land to the north of the Chesters which falls within my ward.  

Most people here will know there are very strict rules which members have to use if they want to turn down an application with the only legitimate reasons being called ‘material considerations’.   With little or no material considerations in this case there was very little wriggle room but I did want to question the planners about the overall application.  One thing which wasn’t coming out until I asked outright was the fact that the S106 funding for education had been reduced from £3.8M down to £1.7M.  I did know about it but no one else seemed to be mentioning it and at a £2M+ hit it really needed highlighting.   Absolutely unforgivable in my view and I have since been back onto the planners pretty forcefully about this very subject!  The lack of foresight regarding highways, health and other fundamental needs is something I will fight them about too.   

I voted against the application based on the ‘contract’ as it was put to us because I thought it almost worthless in seeking to redress any problems these houses might well bring to our Town never mind help reduce the pressures we already see now and the fact that I don’t think the planners have cut a good enough deal whilst negotiating on our behalf!  Up to now I have got away with my vote, it could well be challenged! 

I have just been invited to a meeting next week with the head of planning and the case officer, ostensibly to discuss the S106 funding issues I raised.   In all likelihood it’s either going to be to listen to my concerns and consider them, or slap me on the wrist for voting the wrong way!  I am hoping for one but expecting the other! 

Another item on the same agenda was the Town centre redevelopment and again I was keen to take part in pushing that through!  Again very strict planning guidelines to follow to enable me to speak and vote on this issue too.  I probably did as much as I could seconding the motion! 

You will have heard about the young lad who got knocked down last Friday afternoon crossing the B1331 at the Ridge Farm.  I am not going to suggest anyone was to blame but I have used the accident to once again bring the dangers of that road to everyone’s attention up at County Hall.  Every officer with either an ‘H’ for highways or an ‘S’ for safety in their title has been contacted and lobbied!   Pleased to tell you there is a light controlled crossing going in at that point and I’m trying to get it installed during this summer holiday recess to minimise traffic disruption.   This will be in addition to the small pedestrian island which is already in that area.  As well as that there will be alterations done to the junctions at the Ridge Farm area and the Meadowdale entrance.  

I have also used the need for this contact to highlight concerns Nedderton residents have voiced about speeding through their village.   Personally I am in favour of a permanent solution to this perennial problem but I can say there is a speed assessment survey going to be carried out there and I have asked for it to be in the very near future.  What comes of it only time and the results of the survey will tell.  

I am also vice chair of our new Local Area Council and the intent is to work very closely with T&PC’s in each area.   Local Planning will be dealt with there and the meetings for that will start at 4pm with the LAC at 6pm.  First meeting is 28th June at Concordia.   Fewer planning applications will allow the planning meetings to start later at 5pm and the venues will rotate around the area with Bedlington getting it fair share! 

I have been lobbying and speaking out about the boundary for this new LAC even though it is not my ward affected and strictly speaking there is a county member responsible for it, however with the level of concern people all over the Town have voiced I took it upon myself to do what I could and at least try and resolve the situation.  Today I have received a letter from the Leader of NCC informing me that the boundary issue has been re-considered and its staying put!  I am still going to voice some concerns I have about this when it comes up at full council.  Apart from that I will be doing whatever I can to make these new Local Area Councils work for the benefit of not just my ward residents but the Town as a whole.  These are new, we need to get stuck in and make them work for us! 

I have also started enquiries about holding my surgery at Netherton Club as the last councillor for this ward did.  

 

I had asked Christine to table a motion asking WBTC to match my smalls funding of £15K per year for small infrastructure projects within my ward.  This would mean £30K per year would be available but what I hope for is to save it for a couple of years and build something like a youth facility or something else which will have major benefits to residents here. Anyway council ratified that so all of a sudden my ward has £30K a year or over £100K in the next 4 years!  Twice the hit for half the money, result!

Today a full day of training for the Pension Panel I sit on.  This is extremely complicated and I found out why.  It’s this panel which will make the investment recommendations!   That’s one hell of a responsibility and really a job in its own right!    We were given a thorough insight into the working of the panel and all aspects of the pension scheme and it seems I now have exams to take and residential courses to attend because we need to be very well trained to sit in this panel, actively.

Another weekend at work and the temperature is heating up.  Great stuck inside factories when it’s over 26 degrees outside.   I took an early finish on Sunday because I had somewhere to go for 7pm and my normal finish time of 6pm wouldn’t give me enough time to get back, shower, change and then drive over.

Monday and its Bedlington Forum tonight.      I got back into Bedlington just after lunchtime and there were apologies off Sarah on my computer and a short summary of what we have been doing as the road safety group which I will read out tonight at the Forum meeting.   There was the normal turn out for the Forum but for once 3 county councillors were there too!  I read Sarah’s update and inevitably the same concerns were expressed about this and the road in general.

Wednesday and back at work and again its clammy hot.   Finished at 2pm rushed back and Paul turned up with some fish he had just caught!  Quick shower and change and off out for a meeting with the other two county councillors.   This was necessary because we have received e-mails off the head of NCC regeneration asking about the possibility of some fine tuning for the Bedlington development. I suggested asking how far we can go before we overstep the mark and Russ and Bill agreed.   I have also had contact myself about the sports centre project I’m working on.  I then had to go up to county hall for more IT training and there was only myself there so I got two tutors and whizzed through what I needed to know and talked about other IT training which might come in handy.   I had also asked about the ambulance response time for that accident on the B1331 a couple of weeks ago.  It’s causing a bit of a stir because no one can give me the info but everyone says I should be able to access it to reassure my constituents.  It’s now gone to CeO level!

Just sorted out my monthly surgeries and I will hold them at Netherton Club where the last councillor had his.

Friday and we had Public Heath training to do.  That took nearly 5 hours and Russ and Bill were there too.  They stayed for lunch I had to shoot off.

Quite a weekend at work this weekend, thought it was never going to get done at one point!  I was pleased when Sunday night came along!

Monday morning and back to County Hall for Media training.  I had to send my apologies into the NCVA meeting which was on at Bedlington because it was on at the same time.  As it turned out our media training became little more than a who does what in NCC comms.   Quite a few members were miffed about this change and some said they had to cancel other appointments as I did.

At least I had some time to get back onto a few things when I got home.

I had asked about a litter problem which had been brought to my attention by a couple of residents on the Hazlemere Estate and I had asked the Neighbourhood services manager if he could take any necessary steps to put things right or tell me there wasn’t a problem.  I did say that this was exactly the sort of payback I had intended when during my time as Mayor we had changed the small lamppost bins to larger ones so saving Neighbourhood Services quite a bit of time on their rounds.  The manager apologised and said he thought my enquiry had been replied too.  I do believe him, in all my dealings with this manager in the past he has delivered an exemplary service for us.  I have no doubt I will be getting a message off him in the near future.

I also decided I had given the planners enough time to get back to me with a date for our meeting.  This to discuss the planning application terms for the 500 houses I had voted against at the last strategic planning meeting.  Again a reply came back with perfuse apologies citing a proposed meeting this Thursday with the officers who oversee the terms and conditions.  I accepted, better put my armour on!

I have also had word about my enquiries regarding the time taken for an ambulance to get to my ward when it was called after an accident.  This had to be escalated upwards but it looks like I am going to get an answer after all!   I am not happy and I think the majority of my constituents won’t be either if it takes over 40 minutes to get to my ward when the main A&E centre is at Cramlington, less than 5 miles up the road!

Had word confirming my surgeries will now be held at Netherton Club.

Well talk about synchronicity I’ve just had a message of someone who wants to start a swimming pool in Bedlington.  If that’s not another partner for the Sports Centre I’m working on then I’ll eat my hat!  I arranged a meeting tomorrow with them to talk about each other’s proposals.

Well I did have a meeting with this couple but their timescale is more acute than mine. They do have an interesting and quite innovative business plan and I will try and help them in whatever way I can.

Wednesday and after coming back from a shift at work I got ready for our First LAC.   Ours unlike the majority was quite packed with standing room only.   A few there just to pick holes in proceedings of course!  I didn’t expect one of the members to try and do that and his statement about the last 8 years of Area Meetings as being worthless and these will follow the same direction was something I felt I had to respond to.   Now I remember this particular member being next to me in the public seats when the Lib Dems were the administration at NCC and using the Area Meetings to propose measures and ask for answers.  Also when he became part of NCC he stood up and asked why these meetings were not better supported!  So his utterance couldn’t go unchallenged especially when, as I pointed out, there were several people in the audience who got particular networking advantages out of these meetings and I should know because I was one of them at the time!   Imagine my surprise when the same member wanted to introduce a specific policy into these meeting……….mustn’t be quite the waste of time he originally mentioned!  I did get a chance to speak to one of the managers I needed to speak to about some work I asked him to look into.  He said it had been carried out and I thanked him very much.  This was in response to a constituent’s concerns which had been expressed to me a couple of weeks ago.

Several good questions for the public as usual and each were responded to.  A couple of presentations and agreeing the format of these meetings and it was over.  Basically not a lot of content but they are very new and they haven’t got a full devolved power base yet.

Next day I had a meeting with Planners, specifically about the agreements contained in the 500 house application I had challenged when it came before Strategic Planning.  The case officer and head of planning came and met me and we sat down to discuss the ‘contract’ I felt needed to be much more robust!   They realised how strongly I felt about the lack of community gain but insisted that part of the application couldn’t be visited again!  Damm, there are so many areas where we could have gained benefits yet we are now stuck with what someone who has no clue in reality about the needs of my ward has decided to include as community payback or in this case not include!  I told them I would expect to be notified about any such applications in future so I could tell them what sort of paybacks the community needed!  I was astounded when they told me about one part of the agreement.  Seems the landowner has specified where he wants the whole of the sporting element to go and it’s not here!  Going to check that out!

We did speak at some length about the subject and it is clear the constraints the planners operate under urgently need reviewing!  I also urged them to make the other bodies take applications seriously and do proper audit rather than just tick boxes saying everything is rosy in the garden when we all know it’s not! (Especially Highways, Education and Health!)

I then just had time to call in and talk to the head of economic regeneration.  I am pressing the case for this sports centre for Bedlington and it gaining some critical weight.  He agreed to mention it to his team and ask them to look into funding opportunities for me.

On my way home I stopped off and spoke to the landowner who the planner had said specified where this S106 funding had to go.  He told me he knew nothing about it and was never involved in the minutia of the agreement at that sort of level.  He agreed we should see this money retained locally and use it to get the sports centre proposal off the ground!

Friday and after writing to tell the planners what had been said and agreed with the landowner regarding elements in the S106 funding I then wrote to the constituent who had been in touch with some problems and gave him the good news that the work had been done.  I then had to hightail it across to Cramlington and attend more training at the Fire Station.

This was about the nuts and bolts of the county council, what the public sees and the main workforce.  A very informative if quite long session and at least I have faces put to names for the heads of service deliveries.  I sat with Bill as the four managers and their director talked us through the structure and gave us some idea of budgets.  I was admonished at the end for asking too many questions!

I also had to chance to speak to Liz, a fellow councillor, who sits on the pension panel with me.  Like myself Liz is having problems with the 3 days of training we have to do in London, Cardiff or Leeds as they included Wednesdays.  I work Wednesdays and Liz has other commitments on Wednesdays too.  Leeds was all Wednesdays, so that was out for me, London had a couple of Wednesdays but Cardiff was clear of any Wednesdays so I told Liz just to book us both on those sessions.   Not only do we have these, what were residential courses, to do we also have exams to take for being members on this Local Government Pension Panel.   We have been told everyone runs away from this committee and I’m beginning to see why!  It’s going to be three very long days!

That’s June just about out and next week I have a site visit up at Alnwick on Monday morning, my surgery Monday night, Strategic planning Tuesday afternoon, work on Wednesday but I need an early finish because I have full council to attend at 3.oopm Wednesday too!

[Canny lass]

Nice bit of 'plain speak' there, Malcolm. Bedlington needs people like you. Keep up the good work.

[Maggie/915]

Good luck does not seem relevant .

You have survived some truly terrible situations and survived.

Politics needs more people like you Malcolm.

Keep on Keeping on.