twowheelsgood

Staggering - and how much did this 'study' cost us? No doubt councillors, many of whom will be beginning to stir from their extended hibernation to emerge in time for the elections next May, will roll over and quietly let this through, as they seem to do for most things. Actually getting BBLP to do anything is increasingly frustrating - it took me two months of nagging to get offensive graffiti removed from the Greenway bridge - the Council website says it will be done within 24 hours. Other graffiti has just been left. I waited nearly 3 months for a street light on busy pedestrian route to be fixed. I've reported numerous blocked gullies, none of which have been cleared. So it goes on and on, no one in charge cares, too busy shuffling job titles to notice BBLP trousering tens of millions of our money for very little perceivable benefit.

£273K buys a lot of grab rails from Nottingham Rehab - what on earth are they buying from them? Presumably the redacted £98k was someone's leaving bonus ...

Agreed, it's a very odd situation, especially given the spin we had when the Bath Street scheme was proposed, when we were told Edgar St was out of the question due to response times and a shared station with the Police was absolutely out of the question (which I was told personally by one of the team at the consultation event). Still, probably an opportunity for yet more traffic lights at that junction with the A49 ...

If this isn't a 'key decision' then what is? As the cost of Blueschool House doubled from £1m to £2m (that we know of) with no explanation as yet, I think we can safely assume that the £10m will soon double to £20m, following which, a 'here today, gone tomorrow' suit will trot out the usual 'lessons will be learned'.

What a petty, sniping stance by the Councillor. This childish point scoring between the City Council and the District Council has gone on since the day that Herefordshire Council came about and the City Council was demoted to a Parish. Both sides are equally guilty - I've seen it time and again in meetings and is partly a product of poor leadership and partly far too many Councillors with entrenched views in position for far too long - time for a huge clear-out in the elections next May please. In the meantime, the Councillor's time would be better spent by challenging the £1m overspend on Blueschool House, which is in her ward and which she supported at the Planning application stage.

Similarly, planning meetings seem to be getting cancelled/withdrawn/moved at an alarming rate in the past few months.

The ones necessary to provide the information to discharge the conditions.

It comes as no surprise to see dozens of complaints about elected members’ bad behaviour and yet more closed door meetings reported in the HT. Why are members not asking questions about these contracts, it's all too cosy. Perhaps bad behaviour is involved. It's hard not to think that way when this Council's cult of secrecy shows no sign of going away.

For this application for 'approval of details reserved by conditions 4 10 11 14 15 16 19 & 20 on planning permission P151314', the Council think it acceptable not to have any documents available for public viewing. Why would that be?

It's not a park, it's a graveyard, formerly used by St Peter's Church, now decommissioned but still consecrated. As such, although it is still owned by St Peter's Church (technically the Vicar is the freeholder), the maintenance is the responsibility of Herefordshire Council, which explains the very run down condition and the demolished wall that has never been rebuilt. The archway off Commercial Street is Grade 2 Listed. John Venn is buried in the graveyard and his grave was restored a few years ago by the Hereford Society for Aiding the Industrious, the charity that carries on his good works. As to the campsite, it's a sad indictment of our society that people have to live like that, and it won't be any fun at all as the temperatures drop. There are other tents around the City. I suspect the Council won't do much with this one, hoping that it will go away, but at some point it becomes unhygienic and a health risk.

They must have been impacted by the neighbouring burnt out shell and hoarding butting up to the edge of their shop for years on end.

Although the application states ‘student accommodation’, you have to drill quite deeply to find the justification for this application. The Design and Access Statement offers no explanation. The Planning Statement eventually reveals; • The site is primarily to serve as accommodation for students of the Hereford College of Arts and as such the scheme has been designed to achieve a high quality of internal light and space both internally and externally for the display of artwork. (They explain the HCA is planned to double in size by 2022). • The proposed development would meet the needs of Hereford, as it would provide much needed purpose-built student accommodation commensurate with, and to serve, the on-going expansion of the Hereford College of Arts and also potentially students of the new NMiTE University. In so doing, and in any event, the proposals will contribute towards the wider regeneration of Hereford City Centre, and would enable the release of houses which are currently in use as Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) by students back to much needed family accommodation. • One of the main design drivers has been keeping the sense of travel from the railway station towards the town centre through the heart of the scheme.(!)

This looks like a PFI as 'engie' are the only party with any money - Wikipedia says they are a French multinational electric utility company, headquartered in La Défense, Courbevoie, which operates in the fields of electricity generation and distribution, natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy. I don't see any partnership with the Council indicated, save that they own the land. Which begs the question, will they be selling it to to at least recover the £x million they paid for it?

Hereford boldly moves forward ... into the 1960's. Tragic.

The scheme was designed and presented such that a proportion of them (500?, I can't remember) could be built without a bypass, which will run alongside the site. I went to the exhibition and studied the proposals in some detail at the time. Access via simple t junction off Three Elms Road just past Annetts Furniture. No doubt BBLP will insist on traffic lights to boost their income.

P180927/XA2

Seems unlikely that such a large scheme on such a sensitive site can start without any checks and balances from the controlling authorities, not the least planning permission. I recall a large strawberry grower building a similar new road to serve a new caravan shanty town the size of Kington on the edge of Leominster, all without planning permission, which then took several years, and a lot of our money, to get removed through legislation (and the road remains, albeit through not such a sensitive site). The Council need to jump on this immediately - I'll be raising a query with the ward councillor. Edit - I see that planning permission was granted in 2015, and an application was submitted in March of this year to deal with the conditions and this is undetermined. As such, the applicant is not entitled to start work and has in fact rendered his planning permission null and void by doing so. The Planning Officer is Rebecca Jenman - I urge readers to express any concerns directly to her.

I'll bite ... b47, get yer claw hammer out ... UKIP, can't be bothered to read this as they're a tainted and spent force. There is a desperate need for a new middle ground party, a dystopian future under Corbyn's Labour (with Abbott!) is threatened and fills me with dread. The alternative under back stabbing and devious Tories doesn't seem much better and the Lib-Dems continue to sail rudderless. Brexit has well and truly put the nails in the coffin of modern politics and exposed all factions for the devious self-serving liars they are and it's left the general public completely disenchanted with the whole damned thing. We need a benevolent dictatorship to straighten things out ...

Bravo b47. Just 4 years ago, they spent £4m on Plough Lane and £3m on the Shire Hall, plus unspecified amounts on the Bath Street offices (now apparently needing £3.4m to be spent for the Uni) and the Bulmers Lab (Nelson House) plus of course £2m on Blueschool House. Back in the day when Herefordshire Council wasn’t infested with self-serving managers in cahoots with preferred providers and looked after itself reasonably well, when building work was required, it went down the time proven route of inviting builders to tender and all costs were managed by an independent Quantity Surveyor. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Now it seems (in fact we know, following Blueschool House) that there are no controls in place and contractors seemingly charge whatever they think they can get away with. In the wake of Blueschool House, I asked why were the costs not being independently analysed by a Quantity Surveyor to see if we were getting what we were paying for ('best value' in their speak)- I had no response. It does not cost £250k to fix a bloody roof! We are being robbed - Councillors, do something about it!!

Absolutely terrible - what on earth are Architype thinking?! When they put so much effort into the adjacent former Boys Home, this is baffling - it looks like a first year architectural student's doodle's and it should never have been let out their office. It does nothing, quite literally, save for blocking the views out of the building and screening the front elevation, which is a quite attractive modern classical design (with the centre entrance panel completely buggered by the Council over the years, obviously, but that can be put right). When it rains, water will stream down the boards onto anyone or anything below and then splash, stain and wear away the pavement. Just ridiculous and a complete waste of money to even get to this stage. Why is the current planning application for change of use saying there will be alterations to the building?

Agreed, the building is hideous, and far removed from the expensive design guide and masterplan the council commisioned to give Rotherwas some cohesiveness. That said most of what has been built recently is pretty basic/grim/pedestrian, so we should not be surprised. The last 'joint venture' the Council did was Blueschool House, and look how that turned out (and still no report on where the money went). We're endlessly told there is no money for essential services (despite having paid for them through Council Tax) and yet £3.5m is seemingly found for this. Skewed priorities methinks - the market should pay for this if they want it, not the Council Tax payer.

Given the planning application confirms no external extension or alterations, and the building was extensively refurbished in 2013 by C J Bayliss for the Council, it begs the question what on earth are they going to spend £3.4m on? Is the gravy train already rolling?

Slightly off topic, but the Northern Magazine building at Rotherwas has been surrounded with Heras fencing recently and I noted today that 'Integral' signs were going up - next, S C Joseph vans no doubt. Something very odd about this ongoing and very lucrative arrangement.

Wrong, Coldwells is a care home, hence being listed on the carehome site linked above.

My mother in law has been at Coldwells for several years - it is widely regarded as the best in the area and was recommended to us by our GP, whose own father was there. We've been very pleased - the staff are local, fantastic and can't do enough to help and they will take dementia sufferers (not all will). The accommodation and facilities, following an extensive overhaul last year, are better than ever and there's a busy calendar of activities and events.