Broxtowe Enews 6th October 2012

Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, the leader of the Lib-Dems on Broxtowe Borough Council. May I give a special welcome to the new readers that we have this week.  We’ve got quite a number of new readers this week and I hope you find this a useful service.

To start with this week there are a number of significant planning matters.

1. Toton
A planning application has now been submitted by Peverill Homes to build 775 homes, offices and a hotel on land to the north of Toton, diagonally opposite Bardill’s garden centre. This is currently green belt land and last year I proposed a motion to the council removing it from a list of preferred sites for future development, which had unanimous support in the meeting. You can view this application at www.broxtowe.gov.uk and the reference for it is 12/00585/OUT.

2. Hempshill Vale
An application has been submitted to build 125 houses on land next to Hempshill Hall. Readers may recall that a scheme here was withdrawn earlier this year and the developers have done extra work to it and now brought it back. This is also on the Broxtowe website and the reference number is 12/00539/OUT. Both of these applications are outline schemes which means that much of the detail is not yet there, and the developers are trying to establish the principle of whether development will be permitted. If the council says yes to this then the developers need to submit a further application with all the details.

3. Land by Junction 26 of M1
This is an application that is yet to be submitted, but Oxylane, the firm who own Decathlon, gave a presentation to councillors last week explaining an application that they are going to be submitting to build a sports village next to junction 26 of the M1. They have a number of these villages across France but this is the first time that they have looked to build one in the UK. The idea is that they have a number of different sporting activities arranged around a new Decathlon store. Again this is on green belt land although sports pitches may retain the green feel of the site, and they are offering significant investment in infrastructure (including major alterations to Nuthall Island) and 250 jobs. When the application is submitted we will be able to examine the detail in more depth and I’ll be able to form a better view of it then.

4. Twenty’s Plenty
Moving away from planning applications now Chilwell Liberal Democrats have launched a scheme to have 20mph speed limits on non-arterial routes. A number of towns and cities have now introduced schemes like this and the results have been very clear, that the number of accidents and in particular the number of accidents involving injuries drops significantly. I’ve written to the County Council asking for action and am awaiting a reply at the moment.

5. Beeston Police Station
At the Borough Council’s cabinet meeting last week we agreed a deal with the police where they will move out of the current Beeston Police Station on Chilwell Road and will move into the ground floor of the council offices. The council have spare space and the police wanted to vacate their current building and so this is a win-win situation, which will also help save money all round. It ensures that we keep a police station in the centre of town, which I think is extremely important.

6. New County Council contact number
From 5th November the County Council will have a new contact telephone number. This will be 0300 500 80 80.

7. Tram award
The expanding tram network in Nottingham, which of course includes the line through Beeston and Chilwell to Toton, was named as the joint UK Project of the Year at the Light Rail Awards in London. The judges commented on the workplace parking levy as being something worthy of praise for the way it contributes to the trams funding. I know not everyone will agree with this but that it was the judges felt. As work on the tram continues to cause congestion the Broxtowe Lib-Dem website at www.broxtoweliberaldemocrats.org.uk carries a six week schedule for what work will be coming on, and this is updated each week or so.

8. Wind Turbine application
This coming Wednesday the council’s development control committee will meet to consider a number of applications, including the application by Nottingham University to install some extremely high wind turbines in the Trent Valley near Beeston Rylands. This is something that has been discussed at length by the planning officers and after much consideration they are recommending that the application be refused. I will let people know next week whether this was the outcome or not.

9. Apprentices
The Department for Education released figures this week which showed that Nottinghamshire has more 16 and 17 year olds taking apprenticeships than anywhere else in the country. One of the big successes of the Lib-Dems in Government has been to hugely increase the number of apprenticeships available and I’m delighted that we are benefitting from them so well here.

10. Superfast Broadband
BT have announced that they will be upgrading a number of exchanges across Nottinghamshire over the next few months to provide super-fast broadband, and Kimberley is one of the areas to benefit from this. Hopefully residents and businesses there will soon see better broadband speeds.

11. Confidence in  the Police
New figures released last week show that Notts police have moved up from 20th to 7th in the table of confidence in the police by victims of crime. 87% of victims said that they were happy with the service that they received from the police.

12. Rare Bird At Attenborough
Staff at Attenborough Nature reserve were delighted last week to spot a bittern amongst the reads. These are amongst the UK’s rarest birds so it’s great to have one here.

13. Feedback from the last newsletter
In the last newsletter I asked for people’s views on a couple of issues. First was the traffic lights at the M1/A52 roundabout at junction 25. The unanimous view of those who responded was that the roundabout works far better without the lights, which had been off for a number of days after an accident. I will write to the Highways Agency, who are responsible for the road, to ask them to look at whether the lights can be removed permanently. The second issue I asked about was whether we should provide sites for travellers here in Broxtowe. Here people expressed the full range of views from a passionate yes to a determined no!

As ever thank you for your support for this newsletter, and any feedback is gratefully received.

Best wishes
David
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