komadori’s green corner

I’m not sure what the senior management of Bach Homes, the developers of the Locarno, are on, but it seems to be very strong stuff. The housing market has nose-dived, Bach Homes are in administration, yet, if their managing director is to be believed, it is business as usual for the Locarno development.

The proposed developments at Victoria Hospital, Wootton Bassett and the Locarno are not affected by this administration and finance is being raised to allow these developments to commence early next year.

Seems he hasn’t noticed that credit is a bit difficult to get at the moment, unless your creditworthiness is perfect. A company in administration hardly fits that description.

Art is a subjective thing, so it shouldn’t be surprising that opinions vary on the ‘art’ that now adorns the hoardings surrounding the barracks in the Railway Village. What’s more surprising is that Mr Perkins seems not to be aware of these differing views.

It’s a remarkable piece of artwork. There is a difference between graffiti and street art. I haven’t heard any complaints about this art. It lightens up the area. And now the talented artists are looking for other areas to show their work. It really is very high quality work.

If he hasn’t heard any complaints, perhaps he should try listening: it’s something councillors should try from time-to-time. I’ve heard several comments about the ‘art’ and none of them have shared Mr Perkins’ view. The closest any have come to praise is to observe that it’s better than the plain white hoardings surrounding the numerous demolition sites in central Swindon.

Yes, there’s a difference between street art and graffiti, but there is similar ‘street art’ in Swindon that has been illegally produced without the permission of the owners of the walls and fences it is on. Whilst this particular example is better than the tagging that would no doubt have appeared if the hoarding had been left painted plain white, encouraging this sort of decoration needs to be done with caution to avoid similar illegal defacement elsewhere.

I’ve previously written about the Swindon Local Involvement Network (though the information on the council’s website is more informative than their new website). Swindon LINk is now progressing… to a fully fledged bureaucracy. The administrators appointed by the council to support the group are currently trying to recruit a ‘Start Up Group’. The principle task of the group during its six-month existence? To set-up another group.

Tasks of the Start up Group

• To plan the setting up of the LINk Steering group
• To agree a development and engagement policy for LINk membership
• To develop and agree a work program for the LINk
• To develop a terms of reference for the theme based working groups
• To agree expense policy
• To develop the relevant policies for Swindon LINk
• To agree a complaints policy

All that for a group with a mailing list of just over forty people. And note the mention not just of a steering group, but of talking shops working groups too. This little group seems set on creating a web of committees more akin to a government department than to small players in the provision of local health services.

If they really want to match their name and involve local people, rather less talk and more action would be a better approach: skip the Start Up Group and get straight to work.

I’ve been to Pom’s Thai Restaurant in Old Town a few times now, but this was my first visit for several years and my first time at midday. The cooking at Pom’s is refreshingly light, by which I don’t mean that the food is insubstantial, but that the greasiness experienced with the fried dishes at many oriental restaurants is absent. Another feature of their lunchtime menu is that each main course is offered with a choice of chicken, pork, beef, prawns or vegetables, giving vegetarians a wide choice. With hindsight, I’d have gone for one of their ‘spicy’ dishes, as the ‘mild’ dish that I chose was so mild as to have no hint of spice at all. Nonetheless, as stir-fried noodle dishes go, it was nicely done, with the thin slices of beef well-cooked without being over done as is often the case with similar dishes at other restaurants. At £9.99 for a starter plus main course, it was certainly good value for money.

There is one other feature of meals at Pom’s and that is the great effort they put into carving their vegetables. This wasn’t so much in evidence at lunchtime as it is in the evening, as a comparison between my photograph and that of the same dish from their website shows, but still adds some interest to what are quite large chunks of raw vegetable.

At the weekend, whilst travelling, I stopped for my midday meal at the Fountain Inn at Parkend in the Forest of Dean. The meal was very enjoyable and tasty, but didn’t quite live up to its billing on the menu. I went had the steak and ale pie, ‘A rich, old-fashioned pie, topped with puff-pastry.’ Well, rich, yes, though a little runny — it would have benefited from the gravy within being a little thicker. It’s also true to say that it was topped with puff-pastry, but that’s the problem, it was only topped, no sides nor base. For me, ‘old-fashioned’ when applied to pie construction implies that the pastry encases the filling, not just tops it off in modern mass-catering style. It was very tasty, freshly prepared stuff, but more like chunky steak-and-carrot soup with a puff-pastry lid on than a real pie.

The inn clearly does plenty of business from the local railway and the welcome was friendly and the beer good. It’s well worth a visit, just don’t expect the food to be as authentically traditional as the website menu suggests.

Having seen all the fuss in the local paper about the number of empty houses in Swindon, I had a look at the enforcement action a charity was suggesting that the council should use to get the houses occupied. The first thing I noticed was that the charity, the Empty Homes Agency, seems rather closely linked to government. I also see that despite claiming in the pages of the Adver that compulsory purchase orders and Empty Dwelling Management Orders should be used by the council in Swindon to reduce the number of empty houses, its own CEO on his blog admits they’d have little impact. In fact, it’s one of several stories on the blog suggesting that the powers it promotes aren’t much use… not least because councils seem to be amongst the worst offenders when it comes to leaving houses empty.

Good news for the elderly in North Swindon: Virgin Healthcare have abandoned plans to run a health centre in Swindon. It seems that Virgin were mainly interested in practices with large numbers of ‘young male professionals’* in their catchment, which is why they were interested in Taw Hill Practice. With their chief executive leaving too*, it looks like it’ll be quite some time before garish red starts appearing outside doctors’ surgeries.

* Links to a site that only allows ‘deep linking’ after the first visit.

You’d think that, with the housing market in the doldrums, the likes of Persimmon Homes would have better things to do with their money than going lodging planning appeals at almost the first opportunity. If a council fails to make a decision within a set time (‘non-determination’ in planning jargon) the planning laws allow six months to appeal. Persimmon have waited just one month to lodge an appeal against Swindon Borough Council’s failure to make a decision on their plans to surround Coate Water with concrete.

Just how many developments in a single town does one developer need in a falling market?

The Adver has reported that plans for building on Swindon’s front garden have been ‘shelved’.

A CONTROVERSIAL plan to build thousands of homes on Swindon’s Front Garden has been shelved due to the tough economic times. The announcement came after Swindon Council admitted its hopes to pick a developer to build 4,500 homes in Wichelstowe from a list of four companies, chosen earlier this year, will not go ahead this summer as they had hoped. However, plans to build some 200 low-cost homes on the 460-acre site will go ahead as planned.

But as the comments from councillors within the Adver’s own report indicate, that is overstating things: the plans have been delayed, not shelved, yet. There’s also something missing from the report: the selection of developers that the council has deferred is for the Middle Wichel and West Wichel developments only. Most of East Wichel is already owned by Taylor Wimpey. Development may have slowed, but with land already sold to a developer, it’s unlikely to stop for long.

As you may or may not have noticed, I have relocated this blog to a new internet address, www.komadori.me.uk, but, by the wonders of Google, links to the old blogspot address will all redirect to the new location.