komadori’s green corner

Reading through the political ya–boo–ery over the University of the West of England’s plans (such as they are) for a campus in Swindon, the argument — when it isn’t descending into petty jibes — seems to be not just about whether there should be a university in Swindon, but about what sort of town Swindon should be.

Mr Buckland’s concern that the plans are sketchy is reasonable enough. His point that “Great Universities don’t just appear, they evolve.” is also worth remembering amidst the University of the West of England’s hype for its plans. It’s disappointing, though wholly in character, that in response the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove feels the need to go for a cheap political jibe about Mr Buckland not being a local (though coming from Wokingham, she’s clearly not a local herself).

Where Mr Buckland’s argument goes astray, in my view, is in his attempts to defend, repeatedly, Mr Tomlinson’s view that having a larger student population in Swindon is a bad thing. Yes there will be an impact on the availability of low-cost housing, but his arguments go beyond that.

Having lived in a small city (Swansea) with a large student population, I well know the often baleful effects that too much student housing can have on a neighbourhood. Noise, rubbish and a deserted feeling during holidays cause real problems for long standing local residents…. I can tell you that local residents had their lives made a misery by noise, rubbish and poorly maintained homes of multiple occupation in their midst. If that’s what you want for Swindon, then be honest about it.

That’s not what anybody would want. It’s not what a university initially targeting the local market and adult learners is likely to produce. And as Mr Buckland admits, his comparisons exaggerate the problems Swindon could face.

Swansea now has two Universities and over 20,000 students, so actually the comparison is misleading.

So don’t make the comparison!

Any large employer that develops — regardless of whether it’s a university, car manufacturer, insurance company, or railway works — changes the nature of the population in the surrounding area. The changes are rarely welcome. Communities are never static, changing with the circumstances that surround them. If the politicians want a university, which it seems that they all, except for Mr Tomlinson, they have to accept the changes — bad as well as good — that may bring.

I’ll end this rather rambling piece with a quote from Mr Leakey

Swindon has always been a town built and expanded simply because of it’s one great asset and draw over the years – work. That’s the main reason most of the people of this town have come here since the railway works started the ball rolling back in the 1840s. It’s not and never has been a centre for high class shopping, culture, history or any of the other things many other towns and cities have to offer…. It’s an honest to goodness practical and working town, Swindon should stick to doing what Swindon always has and still does best – employment.

If there is to be a university in Swindon, let it be one focused clearly on supporting Swindon’s wider employment potential, rather than its own wellbeing and the more esoteric aspects of learning.

Swindon Borough Council’s Mr Martin is clearly no statistician. His social analysis skills aren’t too hot either. According to Mr Martin, a league table of wards based on levels of outstanding council tax debt will help them to ‘identify areas that may have problems’

The idea of breaking it down into wards is to help us identify areas that may have problems and see what we can do to help.

He does seem to have a few doubts though.

We have to look more carefully at these figures because for example, Abbey Meads is not one of the places with a lot of benefit claimants

Quite. As Mr Martin clearly hasn’t bothered, I’ll do the analysis for him. Here are the figures – and spin – from the Adver.

Abbey Meads comes in at fifth in the league of council tax dodgers – with over £572,000 owed from 904 court orders. The worst area is Central ward, which is £688,000 in the red with 1,390 court orders. Gorse Hill & Pinehurst, Eastcott and Parks are close behind, each owing in excess of £600,000. The most punctual payers evidently live in Ridgeway ward, where just under £44,000 is outstanding from 71 court orders.

Let’s concentrate on just the three wards for which full figures have been given. In the council’s chosen ranking, they are:

• Central — £688,000 from 1,390 court orders
• Abbey Meads — £572,000 from 904 court orders
• Ridgeway — £44,000 from 71 court orders

I can’t find figures for how many taxable properties there are in each ward. The best indicator of ward size I can find is the electorate (i.e. those registered to vote) at the last local elections.

• Central — 7777 electors
• Abbey Meads — 10,713 electors
• Ridgeway — 2464 electors

With the population of Abbey Meads four times as large as that of Ridgeway, any analysis based on totals per ward is going to be heavily skewed in favour of Ridgeway and against Abbey Meads. There are various sums one can do to try to remove that effect.

From that analysis you could say that it’s not the wards with high numbers of benefit claimants that have the problem, but the more affluent ones, as there the amounts owed – the last column in the table – are, on average, much higher.

Of course, if you pick the other columns in the table, the conclusion is different… but not more correct.

The headline on the Adver’s website claims the police were giving safety advice to shoppers… the story says the police weren’t there at all.

The ability to proof-read is a very undervalued skill….

(To see the text in the screenshot clearly, click on the image.)

Mr Tomlinson seem rather poorly informed about his own council’s plans for the town centre. The University of the West of England has long-term plans for a campus of up to 10,000 students in Swindon. Those plans are very long term according to the university’s Mr Rushforth, quoted in the Adver.

Ideally we would like to see some headway on [a town centre site] within the next year. Obviously within such a short time period that would be in the form of something like a drop-in centre. It would take around three to four years before we could open the site, and we would be looking at around 1,000 students to begin with, rising to five or six thousand. Given our ambitions we would hope over a 20-year or so period to get something like 10,000 students.

Assuming some of those students are local, it would be an equally long time before there would need to be overspill from a North Star campus, which Swindon Borough Council’s Central Area Action Plan estimates could provide a campus for 7,000. At the alternative site near Coate there’s even more space. Even if the estimate for North Star is rather generous, which it seems to be, so are most universities’ estimates of their own growth potential. The University of the West of England’s ambitions correspond to it growing by 33% from its current 30,000 students — not much evidence of modest predictions there.

So why is Mr Tomlinson worrying about the effect a university might have on housing?

I am concerned about affordable accommodation being hoovered up by landlords wanting to attract students. One of the things that makes Swindon attractive… is the cost of housing and I am worried about the effect a university would have on that, and whether we would see businesses leaving Swindon. If they could build a campus for 10,000 students I would have less concern.

That looks like a bad case of compassionate ignorance to me. Being concerned for the socially disadvantaged may be a virtue; ignorance of the plans of an administration that he was, until the end of last week, a member, is not.

There’s no pleasing some people. Take Mr Montaut for example. First he complains that a Christmas tree in the Magic Roundabout might be too distracting to drivers. Now that the tree’s in place, he’s complaining that it’s too dull!

Still, if nothing else he’s given us yet another montyism*:

I was disappointed, but not in a negative way.

*Montyism n Statement that is so illogical and contradictory as to be humorous.

komadori was amongst an un-select few that met the chief executive and two directors of the New Swindon Company yesterday at their first Local Forum. I’ve posted my recollection of what was said at length elsewhere. Overall, they gave the impression of being sincere in their wish to listen to the local community (even if their comment on how much they value the dialogue is riddled with empty management-speak). They even noted a couple of suggestions made as being good things to do, though these were related to their website rather than the more substantive matters of the regeneration planning itself.

What was most apparent from the meeting — apart from how protracted the regeneration would now be — was that New Swindon Company is an organisation with responsibility but little power. Anything requiring action on the ground seemed to be either in the remit of the developers or Swindon Borough Council.

It was very nice — and informative — to talk, but to make these fora really worthwhile requires Swindon Borough Council and the developers to engage in the discussion too.

It really is time that Mr Montaut remembered that he is a councillor for Central ward and should be representing the interests of the people that live there. Not for the first time, central Swindon’s clown councillor seems to be putting political interests before those of his ward. Given the choice of putting a Christmas tree on the Magic Roundabout, or putting it somewhere else, Mr Montaut prefers the somewhere else option.

There are other parts of the town that could benefit from something like this and I think the money would be better spent in those areas.

With representatives like this, who needs enemies? Mr Montaut also seems to know some giant football hooligans.

There is also the possible problems you could have with the sad minority of people who go to football matches to cause trouble – it could be seen as a trophy to opposing fans.

It’d take a rather substantially built hooligan to carry away a 49 ft tree as a trophy… but apparently in Monty’s fantasy world, anything is possible.

When I started investigating the story in the Adver about a failed bid for Highworth to get some regeneration funds from the South West Regional Development Agency, I soon found myself going round in circles. A quick look at the Highworth Community Partnership Group’s website revealed that it’s not really a partnership at all. The steering group seem to be self-appointed. There doesn’t even seem to be a representative from Highworth Town Council, though it is closely linked (the council takes care of the partnership’s finances).

Highworth Community Partnership Group is supported by Wiltshire Market Towns Partnership, which seems to be indistinguishable from the Wiltshire Forum of Community Area Partnerships. The latter is funded by the European Union Social Fund, the South West Regional Development Agency, Wiltshire County Council and what was the Market and Coastal Towns Association of which it is also a member. The Market and Coastal Towns Association is now the South West Market and Coastal Towns Network, which was created by the Market and Coastal Towns Initiative which is — if you believe the spin and have not yet got totally lost in the tangle of bureaucracy —

‘a community-led initiative which helps local people to prepare and implement a plan for the future of their town and surrounding area’.

Allowing the community to lead themselves apparently requires the financial support of not only the South West Regional Development Agency, but also the Government Office for the South West, the South West Regional Assembly, the Countryside Agency (now Natural England), English Heritage, the Housing Corporation (replaced by the Homes and Communities Agency), the South West Network of Rural Community Councils (itself funded by the South West Regional Development Agency and the Government Office for the South West) and Lottery Funds South West.

So, at the end of all that, a group funded by the South West Regional Development Agency via numerous intermediaries has been unsuccessful in obtaining funds from… the South West Regional Development Agency… and have strangled themselves with red tape in the process.

Swindon Borough Council must design their plant pots very precisely. It’s a pity that those delivering a Christmas tree to the magic roundabout didn’t weren’t so careful.

What’s an extra 10 ft of Christmas tree between friends? Enough to convert a good idea into a farce. No doubt the critics of this bit of decoration are sharpening their prose already….

The entrance to Il Capricorno on the High Street of Swindon’s Old Town does not look impressive. It is a narrow and inconspicuous. However, inside the restaurant widens out behind the frontage and seats around eighty people. The food served is equally unpretentious. A starter of Pate Campagnola was well presented and the taste delicious, though the lightly-toasted bread was a little late in arriving. The berry covering was perfectly done too, strong enough to balance the liver in the pate without overpowering it. The main course arrived promptly and in appearance was unpretentious to the point of plainness. The flavour fully made up for that. There was a generous quantity of well matured bacon in the Penne Amatriciana and, with a sprinkling of Parmesan and pepper, it was the most flavoursome pasta dish I have tasted for a long time.

With a soft drink to accompany the meal and a cappuccino to finish, the total bill came to £16 excluding tip, though a different choice and a few extras from the menu could easily double that.

According to their website, Il Capricorno offers ‘The finest authentic Italian food in Wiltshire’. It’s certainly the finest in Swindon.