Let's Slow Down The Traffic In Freemantle

As local councillors for Freemantle Ward, speeding traffic is one of the top issues raised with me and my colleague Brian Parnell, by local people.

Being close to the city centre many of the roads are used as rat runs to get into town and to the station and they can get very busy indeed.

Also the local schools have grown enormously. When I first became a school governor at Freemantle school it was a small infant school. Today it is a primary with 500 children. Similarly St Marks School has expanded considerably and Banister has been completely rebuilt with both schools now all through primaries. This means a lot more cars and children walking, cycling or scooting to school. Speeding traffic and dangerous parking is a big concern from parents that I talk to. 

Brian Parnell and I have surveyed hundreds of residents over the past year and the overwhelming majority favour slowing down the traffic in residential roads. The view is not universal but from the feedback we have had, about 80 per cent are in favour. 

We have been talking about this issue with the council for years and people keeping asking us when will it happen. Introducing 20mph limits is a fairly simple and cheap process. Department of Transport rules changed a few years ago to make the process much easier for councils. All that is required are the signs, the introduction of a legal order - a traffic regulation order, and a formal survey to seek residents' views. We know council budgets are very tight these days but we also know the city council is making a huge amount of money from parking charges and fines, including the new 1st permit charges which hundreds of people in Freemantle Ward now pay. It is quite proper that some of this money is spent on improving the local roads and road safety measures like 20mph limits. 

We have been talking for years about the problem and it is now time for the council to act and with so many more children now at local schools this has to be made a priority.

Sulphur Plant: Local Meetings

The city council has organised a meeting on:

Wednesday 1st May at the Freemantle CE Community Academy in Mansion Road, 7pm - 9pm. 

Representatives from the City Council, the developer - Oxbow Sulphur and Fertiliser, and local councillors including myself will be present.

In addition Oxbow are holding their own drop in session:

Monday 29 April 2013 at the Freemantle CE Community Academy, between 6:00 pm until 9:00 pm

My Written Submission to Helius

I have just made my written submission to Helius. The deadline for responses to Helius about their proposed power station is the 3rd August. All resident comments have to be in before or on 3rd August and need to be sumbitted to enquiries@southamptonbiomasspower.com.

Below is the submission sent by myself and Cllr Parnell:

Dear Sir

We are writing as local councillors for the Freemantle Ward to put on record to you our formal objection to your revised plans for a Power Station proposed for the Western Docks. We have also made representations to the City Council at the Planning and Rights of Way meeting held on 24^th July.

Consultation
We believe that your pre application consultation has been inadequate and flawed from start to finish. Your initial announcement was first made to the media rather than to the City Council and its elected representatives, appearing in the Southern Daily Echo on 6^th March 2012.

You failed to act upon the recommendations of the City Council’s Planning and Rights of Way panel, which in their meeting on 17^th July made several requests. They asked that you extend the area in which you hold consultation meetings to Shirley and Old Redbridge, You failed to do this. You also failed to produce proper information on fire safety should your scheme be built. This is again despite being asked to do this at the Planning and Rights of Way meeting and despite there actually being a huge fire at the time of the meeting at a scrap metal storage site literally next to where you propose building a wood burning power station. The fire was so significant it was visible for miles and nearby neighbourhoods were thick with smoke. The blaze took Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service a day to put out. In light of this and also in light of the fact that there was a fire at a biomass power station recently in Tilbury, to then not provide full information on fire safety is totally unacceptable. This is a significant public concern which you have chosen not to address.

Your consultation has centred on trying to encourage residents to choose between one of three designs. This is clearly an attempt to present your scheme as a fait accompli rather than directing the public debate on to the issue of whether power station on this site is welcome or not. We have attended all of the public meetings held in Southampton and we have had this complaint made to us by residents repeatedly. Indeed Paul Brighton of Helius, at the planning meeting on 24^th July, tried to make the point that one design appeared to date to be the most favoured of the three. This is a serious distortion of the true state of public opinion.

Finally we feel that the photographs of the proposed development that you have supplied do not properly reflect how the development might look if built. You have moved the buildings and site location slightly compared with your previous scheme that you consulted on in 2011. However you have not changed the locations from where you have taken photographs. This is most starkly illustrated by the photograph showing the bottom of Foundry Lane. In last year’s consultation this looked down on the huge boiler house and caused enormous upset amongst local people. You have moved the boiler house now to near the end of Regents Park Road but continue to use a photograph of the bottom of Foundry Lane rather than providing a similar view from the bottom of Regents Park Road. We feel that this is a deliberate attempt not show how large the site would look from this location.

We therefore feel that your consultation has not been open or honest and it appears to us that you have tried to pay lip service to public consultation rather than really try to engage with local people and stakeholders.

Location
The proposed site is directly opposite a residential area. Roads in Freemantle are a mere 250m from the site. Due to the site’s close proximity to housing the proposed power plant will undoubtedly have a serious detrimental impact on the lives of local residents. Anecdotally we have been advised that your plans are already beginning to blight the area with residents struggling to sell their properties or finding that their properties are being significantly devalued.

Cllr Moulton is a governor of the local school, Freemantle Academy. Hence we know first hand from many parents in the area how they are worried about the impact of the power station on their community. The worry is that families will not want to bring up children in an area over shadowed by an enormous power station and will start to move away or not move into the area. This will have a profound knock on effect on the school.

The draft Hampshire Minerals and Waste Plan specifically says that the site you have chosen for your proposed scheme is not suitable for very large developments, namely category 4 and 6 developments. Your scheme therefore directly breaches one of the council’s core planning policy documents. We would like to endorse the objection made by the City Council’s Planning and Rights of Way panel which objected to your scheme at its meeting on 24^th July citing this as a key reason for objecting.

 

Size
The proposed scale of the plant is far too large and out of context with its surrounding structures. Indeed it will be the biggest building on the city skyline, dwarfing the terraced housing opposite. Its sheer size and mass is out of character with the area. It will dominate the view of those coming into the city by road or rail from the west, the residential areas across Southampton water bordering the New Forest and the 1.4m cruise ship passengers travelling up and down Southampton water. The new police building in Southern Road, that opened last year, was meant to be a landmark gateway building. However all people will see when approaching from the west will be the power station.

Some residents have suggested to us that if the power station was much smaller, perhaps more on the scale of the District Energy Scheme in the city centre then proposals for the site would be more acceptable. However, other concerns would need to be addressed. Observations have been made that perhaps the only reason you opted for such a large scale site of 100MW capacity was not because you planned to operate at this capacity, but felt that a more favourable result would entail if you bypassed the local planning process in order to submit to the Planning Inspectorate. Hence it is important that local views are not disenfranchised to effect an unfair advantage to the applicant.

We would like to endorse the objections cited by the City Council’s Planning and Rights of Way panel which objected to your scheme at its meeting on 24^th July citing the size and scale of the proposed development as unacceptable.

Economic Impact
Neighbouring the development is the premier shopping development of West Quay with the new £150m luxury shopping development of Watermark Westquay due to open in 2013. On the waterfront is the proposed £450m development of Royal Pier by Morgan Sindell. The economic revival of Southampton will be placed in jeopardy, as developers will struggle to find tenants to occupy these premier sites with a huge eyesore dominating the surrounding skyline. Southampton is one of the most deprived urban areas in the South East and is fundamental that inward investment is secured to enable job creation in the area. There are thousands of new jobs now in jeopardy.

Design
The proposed designs of the scheme are dreadful. They are functional and lack any architectural merit. They are completely out of keeping with the Victorian terraced houses and docker cottages bordering the site or the nearby attractive 1934 Solent flour mill that greets workers and visitors entering Dock Gate 10 to the port along West Bay Road.

Pollution
A major concern of residents is the adverse impact on air quality. The area already has very low air quality with all the nearby industry and traffic. The power station will further reduce the air quality. The aim should be to improve air quality. The suggestion that it might be within particular standards, if true, does not change the fact that the air quality will be worse and this will have a heath impact on local residents. One only has to walk around the area to see the build up of soot on cars and window ledges. The city centre location is densely packed being home to thousands of people and with the local Freemantle primary school being close by. One can imagine people with asthma and other health problems will be adversely affected. To the North East of the area is Southampton Common, a site of Special Scientific Interest with a fragile habitat with the largest population of the internationally rare great crested newt. You have made reference to the possible need for mitigation measures on the Common in your Technical Document. However I cannot find any details of what these are. Would you please provide further details regarding this?

Noise

The power station will operate 24 hours a day and local residents will be subject to continuous noise pollution. It is not necessarily the operating noise of the facility itself but the conveyors carrying the fuel source onto the site and loading into the burners. There is already considerable noise pollution and over many years we have had complaints from neighbours who are affected by it.

Traffic
If a power station is to be built in the docks, then all the materials should be shipped through the docks and not brought by road. When one considers that a single lorry movement equates to 30 tonnes of load then when the proposal is for 800,000 tonne capacity, then the road impact could be enormous. The Millbrook roundabout and Millbrook Road West are already very congested. The link road into the city is recognised as one of the key roads in the country yet it remains the responsibility of the Council to maintain something that it can ill-afford. The new City Depot has recently been built off Dock Gate 4 this has added further traffic pressure to the area. This route is the main entry point into the city for tens of thousands of daily shoppers to West Quay and IKEA, commuters and visiting football fans. Your plans include no measures to mitigate the impact of traffic on the community. There are no suggestions to have a separate docks road off the M271. Measures like this would help should you bring materials by lorry.

Fuel Source
We have considerable doubts that wood bio mass on this scale is sustainable. The amount of fuel proposed is enormous in comparison to the UK output of wood. Indeed from research we understand that there is no spare capacity to meet the plant’s proposed requirements. Inevitably the vast quantity of wood will be sourced from abroad. Hence the so called green credentials of this technology are dubious to say the least. The impact on carbon emissions of transporting it from around the world will be considerable. A more locally sustainable, smaller, power station using waste wood and local coppicing would surely be more environmentally friendly. What guarantees can you provide that all your wood will come from an accredited source, indefinitely? What steps have you taken to secure viable quantities of fuel?

Heat and CO2
No firm provision has been made to recycle the heat produced from the burning of the fuel. Nor has thought been given to the release of the CO2. Hence these by-products of the combustion are being wasted. Combined heat and power plants are now common place in large glass house nurseries around the UK such as Thanet in Kent and Isle of Wight, where the green credentials of burning fuel are well known and documented with heat used to warm the glasshouses and CO2 provided to the plants.

Community Benefit
Once the construction phase has ceased, which no doubt be undertaken by specialist workers from outside the city there will only be 40 jobs created by operating the plant. Given the specialist nature of your operation it is unlikely that most of the people employed will actually live in Southampton. Hence there will be limited economic benefit to the city outside of the income earned by ABP for leasing the site and cheap power source provided. For such a major multi-million pound development, you have not offered any planning monies to benefit the local community, facilities or infrastructure improvements to the key arterial M271/Millbrook Road route into the city. This is incredibly surprising and demonstrates a complete disregard for your corporate social responsibility.

Whilst this is by no means an exhaustive list of arguments to oppose this application, we do consider that the concerns we have raised are real and warrant that this application be rejected.

Yours faithfully

Jeremy Moulton
Brian Parnell
Councillors for Freemantle Ward

Conservative Action All Year Round

Our Work This Year Alone...


April 2012
Freemantle Spring Clean underway. Attending local residents' association meetings promoting our new No Cold Calling Zones. Meeting with the police to discuss the problem of street drinking.


March 2012
Secretary of State for Education officially opens Freemantle Academy's new Junior School building. Funding secured for improvements to the Civil Service Sports Ground. Residents updated on Helius' latest Biomass plans. New planning rules for Houses in Multiple Occupation come into force.


February 2012
Civil Service Sports Ground saved from development. Council Tax frozen once again. New Play Park for Albany Road announced. Conservative action with a campaign to tackle Dog Mess on our streets.


January 2012
Banister School rebuild given the green light. Residents updated about Southern Water upgrade to Waste Water Treatment works in the docks.

Thank You to the Friends of the Field

Last night the Mayor of Southampton, Terry Matthews, hosted an event in the Mayor's Parlour at the Civic Centre to say thank you to everyone who has been involved in the 10 year campaign to save the Civil Service Sports Ground. It was great to bring together local residents, local headteachers, school governors and councillors to formally recognise all the work that has been put in over the years and a chance to plan for the future for this fantastic open space in the middle of Freemantle Ward.

Michael Gove's Visit to Freemantle Academy

The Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove MP, visited Freemantle Academy this morning, to officially open the school's brand new Junior School building.


Mr Gove met with the head, teachers, governors and pupils and heard about the fantastic work going on at the school. 


Freemantle was the city's first primary school to convert to Academy status and is taking full advantage of the extra freedoms that comes with it, makes changes to term times, its curriculum and expanding from infant to primary. 


It was a great opportunity for the school to show case its achievements to government and everyone had a great time!


It was also good to be able to share the good work being done more widely in education in the city.


In last year the city's schools have gone from strength to strength. Key Stage 2 and 4 improvements outstripped the national average. The majority of our schools are now rated as 'Good' or 'Outstanding' and we now have 14 headteachers recognised as either National or Local Leaders in Education. 


The City Council is developing a Learning Master Plan for Southampton and working with local schools, colleges and the two universities. We have already achieved a great deal working together; the new City College Studio School, a university scholarship scheme and student bus pass scheme to help young people to get to college. 


We are working with all schools in the city, have supported a number of schools in their conversion to  Academy status and assisted two local community organisations in their bids to open new Free Schools.

Boost to Pupil Premium will mean more funding for local schools

The government’s Pupil Premium to support disadvantaged children will mean a big boost to the funding of local schools. Next year the pupil premium is set to rise to £600 for each Free School Meals eligible pupil.

Taking pupil numbers for January 2011 this means that Freemantle schools will receive the following Pupil Premium next year, over and above their normal school budgets.

Regents Park Community College: £174,600
Banister Infant School: £21,000
Foundry Lane Primary School: £59,400
Freemantle Academy: £25,200
St Mark’s CofE Primary School: £77,400

The Pupil Premium is great news for Southampton Schools and the evidence is that many heads and governors are using this funding to support disadvantaged children, for instance by employing extra teachers.

Freemantle Academy's New Website

Freemantle Academy has launched its new website: http://www.freemantleacademy.com/

Good Luck Freemantle Academy

On Friday, Freemantle School officially became an Academy. This is fantastic news for the school and I have every confidence that with its new status and freedoms Freemantle will go from strength to strength.

It was great to join governors and teachers on Friday evening to celebrate the school's success and toast its bright future.

Funding Boost for Local Children

The Coalition government is keeping its promise to spend more on schools and to target extra funding towards the most deprived parts of the country.

The details of the funding settlement for Southampton schools has now been announced. On average Southampton schools will receive an extra 3.4% in funding in this coming year and this includes more than £2.7m extra in the form of the new Pupil Premium.

The Pupil Premium means that extra funding is targeted to support children who receive Free School Meals and to children whose parents serve in the Armed Forces.

This is fantastic news for Freemantle Ward with many local schools set to benefit from the Pupil Premium:

Banister Infant School + £13,760
Foundry Lane Primary School + £32,650
Freemantle C Of E Infant School + £10,750
St Mark'S C Of E Junior School + £37,840
Regents Park Community College + £80,380

Locally Conservative Councillors are protecting funding for the city’s Sure Start Centres so that, despite the tough financial times we ensure that all these valuable facilities remain assessable for local families.

Cash Boost for Freemantle Schools

Local Schools such as St Marks, Freemantle, Foundry Lane and Banister will gain a share of new funding set aside for Primary Schools by the new Conservative Council. £5.8m has been allocated to provide extra facilities for expanding local schools and to improve standards. The decision to allocate the extra funds was taken today following an extensive review of primary school provision in the Freemantle and Central areas of the city.

Tackling Crime and Anti Social Behaviour

I attended two very different meetings last week on crime and anti social behaviour.

The first was on Tuesday and was hosted by my opponent at the next General Election, Labour MP Alan Whitehead. The meeting was to highlight the launch of his new guide to anti social behaviour and peoples' rights and the law. It was held at the Central Baptist Church in Devonshire Road. The book is very useful and can be downloaded on his website. The meeting was with all the different residents' associations in the west of the city and I went along with a number of councillor colleagues to hear peoples' concerns.

It was a rather negative meeting and I was struck at just how few ideas the Labour Government and Labour locally have to tackle crime. Unfortunately they are resorting to the old argument that simply more laws are needed. Since this government came to power there have been more new offences created than the number of days they have been in office! Yet crime is still a huge issue for local people and there are no positive solutions coming forward.

The second meeting was on Wednesday, at Freemantle Infant School in Mansion Road. This was a meeting with the local beat police, the fire and rescue service and all the new neighbourhood watches in the Freemantle and Shirley area.

It was an extremely positive meeting and I am really encouraged by the excellent work that the police are doing in the area. In recent months dozens of new neighbourhood watches have been set up. At the meeting we heard some of the things the police have been doing recently:

- Extra police patrols to tackle the problem of robberies along Shirley High Street.
- Cycling proficiency work in schools to tackle the problem of bicycles being ridden on the pavements.
- Trying to reduce speeding traffic along Hill Lane.
- Tackling crime hotspots in Albany Road and Shirley Towers.
- Recent arrests of drug dealers.
- Combined police/ PCSO / special constable patrols in the local parks and around the pubs at closing time.

Just as there was a stark contrast between my two meetings there is a stark contrast between Labour, who seem to have run out of steam and the Conservatives who on the other have a range of positive measures to make a real difference:

Nationally:
1. We are looking at having elected police sheriffs to bring democratic accountability to the police.
2. We will introduce honesty in sentencing so courts set a minimum and a maximum period of incarceration.
3. We will replace automatic release with earned release.
4. We will make community sentences tough and effective, and withdraw benefits for those who don’t attend.
5. We will enforce Drug Rehabilitation Requirements.
6. Offenders will compensate victims through a Victims’ Fund. Those serving custodial sentences will pay into the Fund through work in prison.
7. Prison and Rehabilitation Trusts and private sector prisons will be paid by results - with a premium awarded if the offender is not re convicted within two years.
8. We will accelerate the deportation of foreign national prisoners.
9. We will increase prison capacity by more than 5,000 places over and above Labour’s plans, to end overcrowding by 2016.
10. We will cut the paper work and bureaucracy which is tying the hands of police officers.

Locally:
1. We are encouraging more Southampton people to sign up as special police constables to help patrol the city streets. We seeking Home Office approval allow us to scrap council tax for local people who sign up.
2. We are improving lighting in the city and will replace thousands of old street lights in Southampton in the next few years. We are also improving lighting in city centre parks as a priority.
3. We are investigating whether mobile wireless CCTV could be mounted on new street lights, so cameras can be installed in crime hotspots.
4. We are supporting the 101 anti social behaviour number after the Government withdrew its funding.
5. We are looking at how we can better organise the council's uniformed officers, city patrol and wardens and how to better co-ordinate activities with the police.
6. We are looking at opening hours and numbers of pubs and clubs in the city.
7. We have launched an after schools sports scheme to get more youngsters playing sports.
8. We are installing measures to protect areas of open space around the city from traveller incursions.
9. We are tackling the problem of dangerously parked and untaxed cars.
10. We are investing in anti crime measures on our estates including rolling out a new concierge system in the tower blocks.

Back Blogging... and Happy New Year!

It's been a very busy last few weeks and I have not had the chance to update my blog for a while. So now I am back I have plenty to update!

I was delighted to be selected as the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Southampton Test last month. Since then my work load has shot up with lots of local meetings in the city. I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Freemantle Infant School

I have signed up as a School Governor for Freemantle Infant School. I have had one Governor's meeting so far and another is set for later this month. I was really impressed by the head teacher / Centre Director, Kevin Barnett and by all the school governors. They are all doing a fantastic job, both for the school and the local community as well. I am really pleased to be working with such a great bunch of people.

St John's Infant School

I spent an enjoyable lunch time at St John's School in the old town. I had a lovely Christmas dinner with the children and had the chance to talk about the forthcoming review of primary education in the city with teachers.

Protecting Family Housing
I have been working hard with local residents in objecting to inappropriate developments across Freemantle Ward. Over the Christmas period I met up with residents in Paynes Road who are objecting to the destruction of 2 family homes next to the Spitfire Antiques shop.

The new Conservative Council is bringing forward more local planning guidance to protect family housing in the city later this month. The Conservative Cabinet are due to approve a new Supplementary Planning Document which will strengthen our local planning powers.

Kentish Road / York Road Cut Way
My colleague, Cllr Michael Ball and I have been talking with residents and council officers about the problem of teenager gangs congregating and intimidating residents in the area and are seeking the views of people about how best to sort the problem.

One suggestion made is that a gating order be sought, that would restrict access to the pedestrian cut-through between Kentish and York Road. This proposal has been raised with Rights of Way (Planning), Community Safety and the Youth Service. The general consensus at present is that it is extremely difficult to gate the pathway. This is because at present there have not been enough reported incidents to support it being gated.

The pathway provides a short cut to the health centre and other facilities for many people who live in the area, so perhaps you may not favour it being cut-off. Elderly people in particular use the cut way and any alternative route would be longer.

However, Community Safety, the Police and Youth Service are aware of the ongoing problems with gangs in the area and are conducting intensive operations and continuous work in the area and have recently had some success with ‘catching’ some of the offenders and serving various orders on them.

We have put the issue on the agenda for the next Freemantle Inter-agency meeting. Community Safety and the Youth Services have been invited to attend to give their views. The Council lighting department has also been requested to look at the lack of lighting in the area to see if they can improve facilities.