A chance to rehearse policing and warden matters, and finding that the progress made on tackling dealing of drugs in public is continuing.
Further progress on tackling problems at Henry Court.
This walk covered from Portland Leisure Centre to the church on Collygate Road, via Turney and Woodward – which looked pretty clean – and the car park off Green Street – where Police intervention has been needed to mitigate anti-social behaviour in the car park in the evenings.
TO BE REVIEWED and UPDATED
Time was when Bridge ward had 2 staff performing these roles but austerity has got a grip.
Reduced some time ago to one member of staff.
More recently one member of staff covering 2 wards – and termed a Residents Development Officer.
And now with sickness and the new financial regime, emergency part-time cover.
There has also been tenants groups supports officers supplied by housing services – again much less visible.
The major innovation (in 2004) of neighbourhood wardens (or community support officers) is also down in numbers.
Community Development enabled local groups to be created and in turn projects developed, such as Arkwright Meadows Community Gardens.
Most notably Meadows Partnership Trust – now Bridges Community Trust.
The lack of community development has been part of why our existing community groups are getting weaker.
Trying to keep up with the work that RDOs are meant to cover, or to be fed in, has led to 10 pages of notes for the last 2 weeks alone. Serving 2 progress meetings and drawing upon a Meadows Ward Walks (publicised and accompanied by officers) and 4 or 5 Meadows Wanders (unaccompanied). A fair deal of the notes has been published on this web-site. However, care is taken on what is published, it’s taking longer to commit to the internet cos it’s taking longer to get issues verified (or even found to be wrong).
Eunice and I are changing our ways of working a tad; and may do more direct inputting of “FirmStep” jobs.
Picked up a range of issues in the west of the Old Meadows:
Also –
— the replacement of the 70 year old link box along Bathley Street
— the poor state of Mundella play area
— vehicles abusing the grass bank to the west of Bathley Street;
— requesting a replacement of the cycling sign at the Wilford Grove / Bathley Street junction.
Two days of delivering cards to nearly 400 cards – to some 20 friends and the rest acquaintances – oh yes.
Quite a lot of ground works have been done, but a lot of streets have piles of leaves and mulch where cars have compressed the leaves.
Delivering cards around The Meadows for 2 days. (Photos available on Facebook )
Rain on the Sunday morning – the kinda rain that reminds you of those British Summer holiday days when you have to get out of the caravan, and the light rain is the best it’s gonna be that day, but still a bit miserable anyway. Was mild though.
Cheered up by Santa trying to deliver presents through a bedroom window, the renewed. Meadow Lane Canal lock and a squirrel looking for nuts in the leaves piled near a pub.
Went to join the ward walk from the Bridgeway Shopping Centre and bumped into Jeremy Ball, Social Affairs Correspondent for BBC East Midlands, who’d come to The Meadows for local residents’ take on the announcements on the finances of Nottingham City Council.
(End-up on tele – twice in 2 days.)
Went to check issues associated with tipping from a house re-development and plans for a possible closure of an alleyway; and picked up a number of other concerns.
MORE ANON.
Walking from Saffron Gardens to the precinct via Henry Court and QWCC, have reported a number of issues including poor front gardens, a passageway with dog mess, some instances of tipping at rear of Beardsley Gardens; one new site of heavy litter; an overgrown pavement.
Also received further reports of sites from which drug dealing is taking place.
Bridgeway centre’s alleyways between the housing have drains that need proper clear out and instances of heavy moss growth.
A number of issues were logged on a walk through Henry Court, Queens Walk, Launder Street, Oxbow Close and Osier Road – including, tipping, poor management of bins, poor front yard mgmt. tolerance of poor property security.
The walk ended up starting from Bridgeway Shopping Centre car park, following a review of the site there proposed for more e-car charging and a corral for e-bikes and e-scooters.
All this building on the long progress report (which was sent to community activists in advance of the Meadows Voluntary Sector Forum and Community Network meeting the day before).
The walk was followed by visits to Meadows Advice Group, the Queens Walk Dinner Club and NeMTRA at the Queens Walk Rec.
A number of walks and wanders to support issues rehearsed in meetings with city council officers looking out for neighbourhoods, and the forthcoming neighbourhood action team. (More on this anon).
Advice surgeries at Meadows Library are busier than before – Wednesday mornings seems to suit more people that the previous practice of using the long weekends.
Stories of people seeking homes and families seeking secondary school places continues to hurt.
Surgery was followed by a planning meeting for a proposed mobility hub.
And at teatime, a review with new City Councillors of problems in the central part of the Lace Market (part of the old Bridge ward) – mainly coming for commercial organisations not managing their waste and their bins properly, leaving properties insecure and not attending alarms.
Despite having attended the Riverside Festival 5 times to check on any impact on and issued a number of e-mails to improve arrangements from the perspective of residents, when answering a concern from one anonymous critic, I got ticked off for not showing I cared.
The concern had been the bins along the Embankment not being cleared after the Festival on Sunday I undertook one last check – job had been done (a few days back).
Only on the way home to find overfilled public bins and heavy litter near the shop on Wilford Grove (opposite the library) and at Bridgeway Shopping Centre – which has now been cleared.
But it was striking to see how bad it got from missing street bin collections on a Friday.
The bins were missed cos of staff sickness.
But it’s another reminder of how vulnerable the council in in this time of cuts to national grant of £97 million a year.
The Council will also be following up businesses who have been using street bins for their own waste. Not acceptable.
Walked Mundella Road, Collygate Road, Wilford Crescent East and quickly checked the passageway between Bunbury Street and Orange Gardens where a new camera has reduced ASB and litter.
Mundella Road does need a better litter pick and the play area needs a particular treatment after a bag of polystyrene balls has been tipped over the play area. Requests to some private owners has seen bushes cut back from the pavement but there is more work to be expected. A tree on the street has died.
Concerning Meadows Recreation Ground, we are having strong grass growth due to the warm and wet conditions. The cricket field is scheduled to be cut regularly, but equipment has failed so works are expected to be done as staff recover. The lack of confirmed bookings for the cricket has not helped understanding to there being an imperative to recover the situation.
Since the mid-month progress report, Eunice and I have submitted some 22 “FirmStep” jobs.
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