Albrighton Civic Society

Albrighton & District Civic Society

held at 31/32 High St, Albrighton,

on Friday 5^th November 2010 at 2pm

Present :

Peter Woodman - Chairman

Rod Smith – Secretary

David Hughes - Treasurer

John Bulmer

Hugh Hughes

Peter Leigh

Malcolm G Pate (MGP)

Mike Pitchford (MP)

David Beechey – ex-officio, representing Donington-with-Boscobel PC

David Murray – ex-officio, representing Tong PC

Michael Ward – ex-officio, representing Albrighton PC

1. Apologies received from Ron Kidson. The Chairman welcomed Mike Pitchford to the committee.

2. Minutes of Meeting on 1^st October 2010 were approved.

3. Visit of Brian Bennett (Shrop Council Highways Manager, South East)

A letter from Glen McGrindle, Street Scene Manager (SE) SC to Alb PC which MW had been forwarded to the Society – a “deep clean”, including weed removal from footpaths, will be carried out on 24^th November. JB advised that to avoid the weeds coming back quickly they should not just be “top cut”- the roots need to be either removed or killed with herbicide - MW will ask SC to do this.

Mr Bennett explained that he was responsible for the maintenance of the Highway (road and footpaths). Glen McGrindle is responsible for cleaning of the streets and maintenance of street furniture (including litter bins, weed removal, benches) and reports to Steve Brown, Head of Street Scene for the whole county. Jason Hughes is the Manager of the street lighting team responsible for maintenance and painting of street lamp/sign posts. Thus, three teams are responsible for dealing with eyesores.

BB was taken on a short walk to view some typical eyesores. The damage to the blockwork footpath, caused by vehicles striking the bollards, will in future be repaired by blocks and not concrete. The damage to the footpath outside Nos 5 & 6 Cross Rd, caused when the new garden wall was built, is the responsibility of the owners – BB will write to each and ask for the repairs to be made and if not SC will repair and send the bill to the owners. The new owner of No. 5 came out and agreed to make the repair. BB was given a copy of the photos of many eyesores (from the Survey Report by PL & JB) - he will distribute them appropriately to the three teams as above for action. Concerning the removal of eyesores, BB said he would advise us by end of November on what can be done and when.

BB advised that his budget for the works in the Bushfield Estate was running out and so phase 1 (including the Bredon Close flooding problem) may have to be curtailed.

BB has just established a Small Works Team which will be more appropriate to tackle the eyesores; previously he had to temporarily take staff from larger projects which was disruptive to his major works programme.

PW said that the Licence to Plant in the Highway (needed for the Entrance Scheme) had still not been received. BB said that he had signed it off and that it was with the SC legal dept for issue but would press them to deal with it asap. PW said that the Society had been asked by SC to contact more than 20 statutory undertakers, some of which such as NW Water had no services anywhere near Albrighton, and that this caused a lot of unnecessary administration work. BB said that the County had sent the standard full list of all SUs which had services in some part of Shropshire. PW suggested that the list be broken down into the various areas of Shropshire so that only those SUs in a particular area were shown to avoid other bodies having the same unnecessary administration work.

BB was not aware of the Society’s Report on suggested additional areas of parking in the centre of Albrighton - as presented to the LJC18. He said that primary responsibility for such matters was with Daren Merrill (Head of Traffic Engineering) as Hugh Dannatt had been moved into the Contracts Dept. There had also been requests by residents and the Road Safety Group for a zebra crossing to be installed across the High St near the bank and chemist. APC will write to Martin Withington at SC to formalise the requests and ADCS will support this action.

MW confirmed that APC has arranged for the tree roots to be removed and the pavement to be repaired at the village green access roads. MW added that a budget price and quotation was awaited for the drainage and surfacing work to be done outside 30, 31, 32 and 33 High Street. BB's assistant was preparing this documentation and BB promised to expedite its delivery to MW.

ACTION: DB/MW to write to SC re zebra crossing. RS to write to Adrian Dean (LJC18 Support Officer) to ask that all reports and documents relating to the Parking Report as sent to and replies from LJC be sent to B Bennett.

4. Discussion paper. It was agreed that more work should be tackled by forming sub-committees (or Task Groups).

New Local Plan for Albrighton & Donington/Boscobel. APC had requested ADCS to consider carrying out the preparation of a new Parish Plan. RS reported that he had met with Andrea McWilliams last Thursday and she had provided much documentation which would help in the establishment of such a task group. She said that Shifnal had recently completed their local plan and felt that Sarah Owen (Shifnal Group Leader) would be able to provide good advice on dos and don’ts based on their experience. It was likely that about £2k to £3k would be needed to complete the task but said she did not believe that such funding was currently available but would enquire. Community Council of Shropshire was funded by SC and would be able to provide good advice and draft questionnaires and other documents to help the group. However, Andrea advised that a local plan is not usually undertaken by a group which is part on an organisation, such as a parish council or a civic society or any other organisation, and that the group doing the work should be a community group independent of other bodies (although it was desirable that parish councils and civic societies and other groups participate in the work to produce the plan). RS said that Andrea had, as usual, provided very useful information and advice.

RS then suggested it would appear that the Civic Society should not be organising a sub-committee to undertake this work as we had first been asked to do. This was agreed. RS then suggested that whoever does the work may consider looking at the recommendations of the current 10 year plan, drawn up in 2005, to check which of its recommendations had been implemented. He said that the object of the work was surely not just to produce a Report but to recommend certain actions be carried out and that most of these actions were likely to be expected of SC or the Parish Councils. He turned to the current local plan and asked which of the ten main recommendations had been carried out – DB said that 90% had been implemented. PW then questioned this and went through just the first 5 recommendations and it was agreed that only 1 of these 5 had been achieved. DB and MGP said that the current plan had not been well done and that the recommendations were questionable. RS pointed out that the 2005 Plan had the name of the two parish councils on its cover and that there was no suggestion that the parish councils were not happy to promote the plan (page 22 of the Plan states “The Parish Councils.....have adopted this Parish Plan as policy and have undertaken to oversee the implementation of the Action Plan”). PW commented it was strange that councillors were now apparently disassociating themselves from the Plan and that, however the recommendations had been arrived at, they were those being promoted by the Councils’ Plan. RS asked that if most of the recommendations of the current plan had not been implemented then why would it be useful to spend time and effort and tax payer’s money on producing another plan which in turn may end up just as a document with ignored recommendations?

ACTION: PW said that the Society would not undertake the work, as Andrea’s advice, but that if a community group was established and if that body felt that a useful plan should be drawn up then ADCS would help & participate as one of the various local organisations. DM said that he would undertake to set up a Community Group to prepare a new plan and put an announcement in the parish magazine. DB & MGP said they would enquire if any funding was available and that APC may have some funding.

5. Treasurer’s Report from the AGM.

DH reported that the following surplus over expenditure was taken at the meeting: Bar £28.40, Raffle £59.00 9 (thanks to Chris Pitchford and friends), Subscriptions £51.00. Hire of the hall to be paid from this income. Renewals of subscriptions were: 9 Individual, 5 Family, 2 Life Members. New Members recruited were: 10 Individual and 1 Family membership. Thanks were also due to Geoff Page and the Broadplace for the loan of their projector equipment and to all those volunteers who helped prior to and at the meeting.

6. Updates on continuing projects

a) Entrance Scheme. (Task Group: JB/HH/PW)

Bulb planting at 12 of the sites had now ended for this year and some 3000 daffodils and hundreds of primroses had been planted. Shrub planting is yet to be done - session was planned for 9am at Patshull Rd/A464. Boningale Nursery offered to carry out work at three sites for a discounted price of £1000 during November. We await the Licence from SC to enable us to plant shrubs/trees at Kingswood Rd/A41. JB had given Nick Smith (Chairman of Tong PC) many bulbs for their proposed enhancement scheme at Tong. All expressed their thanks to JB for his excellent work organising (and undertaking much of) the planting so far.

b) Albrighton Station. (Task Group: PL/DB/PW/RS)

It would appear from correspondence with PL that Cllr Peter Illes had issued only an early draft of the minutes of the Meeting held with NR, LMT & SC on 12^th May 2010 and he said he would now circulate the final version to all. The final version also includes “actions”.

ACTION: DB will speak to Cllr Illes in order to set up a brief meeting of the Albrighton participants (Cllr Illes, Cllr Beechey, PL, PW & RS) at 31/32 High St to enable an Albrighton consensus to be reached prior to a further meeting in Birmingham with NR/LMT/SC. APC is the lead on this issue and will be supported by ADCS.

7. Any Other Business

a) Blue Plaques

DH proposed that the Society should consider a Blue Plaque system – placed on buildings which are associated with a famous person who lived or visited there......or even an event ......or an historically interesting place. Some members felt that there may not be enough suitable historical connections but others felt that we should research to see if there were enough for a system. Possible sites were the Old Jail, the Old Workhouse in Station Rd, Clockmills Clock making industry. We heard that the Nature Reserve group were intending to have guided walks and if this was extended to also see blue plaques it may make both ventures even more viable and interesting.

ACTION: DH would discuss with Ernie Howells of the Historical Society to get an initial view of the possibilities but that this project, if decided upon, would not be undertaken until we have completed the current ones, such as Dealing with Eyesores and the Entrances Scheme.

b) Local Heroes

PW tabled an article for the Express & Star describing Tipton Civic Society’s awards scheme to honour local people who have given commendable service to local services/charities/causes. Most members were not enthusiastic about copying the scheme. It was suggested we should come back to review this again after we have completed our current projects.

Date of next meeting:

All thanked MW/DB who had offered the use of the APC office for ADCS Committee Meetings. It was more convenient for APC if meetings were on Mondays and so it was agreed that they will generally be on the first Monday of each month at 2pm starting on 6^th December 2010

Monda 6^th December at 2pm

at Albrighton Parish Council Office, 82B High Street, Albrighton WV7 3JA (01902 375455)

(Post Meeting Note: Chairman has decided that, due to us all being busy around the holiday period, there will not be a January meeting and so the following Committee Meeting will be 2pm Monday 6^th February 2010. Our Application for the LJC grant for the Entrance Scheme will be discussed at the next LJC18 meeting at the Red House at 7pm on Tuesday 25^th January 2010 and the Chairman asks as many members as possible to attend and we could hold a short informal review session either before or after that meeting. Any urgent business cropping up during Dec/Jan can be dealt with by ad-hoc liaison between relevant committee members and/or circulation of emails)