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Tressell Blogwritten by Cllr Peter Chowney
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November 2009:
30th November: Cabinet meeting this evening. The Council's Housing Strategy was on the agenda. Labour Cabinet members moved an amendment to strengthen the Council's commitment to deal with empty properties (which hardly features in the strategy) but this was rejected by the Tory majority on the Cabinet, once again showing their lack of commitment to this issue. Amendments were also moved by Labour on dealing with the large number of homes with dangerous defects in the town (the Council has a legal requirement to do this, but there's a big backlog) and to investigate a licensing scheme for houses in multiple occupation, but both these were rejected too, again showing the Tories' unwillingness to deal with private landlords effectively. Once again, we see that the Tories are committed to the interests of bad private landlords, but not to the interests of tenants.
26th November: Two important meetings today. Firstly, a meeting of the Millennium Community Stakeholders' Group. The planning application for the Phase 1 site (51 homes, around Ore Station) will be considered at the December Planning Committee. And the announcement about whether we've got the Government 'Kickstart' money will be made on December 15th. If all that works out, work should start in April. Not that it's actually in Tressell - it's in Baird, but neither of the two Tory councillors for Baird ever go to the meetings! Secondly, we had a Traffic Management Sub-Committee. Far too much on the agenda - it went on until 9.30pm (from 6pm). There were quite a few petitions and objectors to traffic orders, plus a big one to set up coach parking at Falaise Road and Sea Road, after the coach park closes. This was agreed, although we'll have to keep an eye n that one ...
20th November: Went on a trip to Newham to look at how they use CPOs to deal with empty properties. They use a lot more stick and a lot less carrot - don't give grants at all, just concentrate on giving owners of empty properties a clear timetable for when they'll lose their property if they don't do something. Nine times out of ten, the threat is enough - because property owners know that the council will go through with it. We need the same approach in Hastings ... Peter Chowney
19th November: Out door knocking in Hurrell Road. Again, people are concerned about the Broomgrove allotments development site. The Council has at least made the site more secure, but the footpath across it is closed again.
17th November: A meeting of the Worklessness Scrutiny Panel today. We've looked at loads of statistics about worklessness in Hastings now, but what we really need to see is a summary of all the actions taken and money spent by the council and other agencies on doing something about it - and whether (or not) that's been effective ...
16th November: A meeting of the Ore Community Land Trust, the local body set up to manage the unregistered land in the Upper Ore Valley. More land tidying sessions planned, and we're also going to look at notice boards and fencing, as well as setting up a website.
12th November: Went our knocking on doors in Broomgrove Road. There's a lot of concern about the abandoned building site, understandably. We had a look at this - the path is still unusable and the site is very dangerous. We will try to get the council to do something about this, although it's a tricky one, with a lot of buck-passing going on amongst various agencies . With the site owners behaving so irresponsibly, it seems only a matter of time before an accident happens. We might have to go to the press about it.
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