komadori’s green corner

I do wonder at the quality of reporting in the national media sometimes. Under the headline ‘Train boss promises improvements’ the leading paragraph reads

The incoming managing director of First Great Western has promised more trains, less overcrowding and better services.

But listen to what he says in the associated video clip.

We are scouring the land for the right sort of rolling stock for that, but it’s not currently available.

He says a lot about promising improvements in reliability (as does the train company’s press release); he talks of increases in train capacity that have been made in the recent past, but on what First Great Western will do about the current overcrowding the message is clear: there is nothing they can do. And even if they wanted to, the restrictions in their franchise, where they will be busy paying money to the government for the privilege of providing the rail service (£1,130.5M over ten years), mean that there is little they could do to increase capacity here.

The announcement yesterday of a reduction of 200 posts at Swindon Borough Council has received very little comment beyond the Adver and BBC articles that carried the story, and rightly so. Two hundred out of 4,500 jobs is less than 4.5%. Even if everyone worked from the age of eighteen to retirement without ever changing jobs, natural wastage in one year from just retirements would be almost 2.4% In the modern world where, even in the public sector, a ‘job for life’ is very much a thing of the past, unless these reductions are very concentrated it is difficult to see that there would be any need for compulsory redundancies. So Mr Small’s comment

I would be very surprised if they managed to shed these jobs with voluntary redundancies.

seems to be a very bad case of crying wolf. As for the comments of Ms Snelgrove, well where to start.

I am deeply disturbed that so many hard-working members of staff are threatened with redundancy and I question how the council can be more efficient by cutting jobs.

Well, no actually the council have said they will look at ‘remov[ing] posts which are currently vacant, and reduce the numbers of short-term contract staff.’ Redundancy is never pleasant for anyone (and having once worked for a company that shed 70% of its staff in one year I speak from personal experience), but this is more a case of ‘so few’ rather than ‘so many’. Ms Snelgrove also seems to have an over-inflated view of her own importance.

I am extremely surprised at this and there has been no discussion with the town’s MPs.

I can think of no reason why there should have been. For once, in comparison, Mr Wills’ comments seem quite rational!

The co-op store in Old Town has had a change of colour. From the old blue and white that have been the corporate colours of the consumer co-ops in Britain for as long as I can remember, to something much more to my liking, except for the travel section, which has turned from yellow to an equally bright orange.

One would hope that someone who once worked in education would know a little about the effect of demographics on school numbers. It would seem not. Our illustrious MP, commenting on Swindon Borough Council’s plans for eleven new schools in new housing developments.

I ask has the number crunching been done correctly we don’t want a situation as in West Swindon where too many places were created that weren’t necessary, I’m not entirely persuaded that three are necessary.

Err, no. They were necessary, but not anymore. To quote from the council’s Core Strategy.

It is a feature of major new residential areas that initially they are composed primarily of younger people – families with children. Future development proposed at Swindon is considerable, and includes several major new development areas. There will an early requirement for schools, nurseries, and health centres in these areas…. At the same time, the needs of the existing urban area will need to be protected, as the ageing population causes a reduction, or change, in the need for schools in some areas.

Seems as though Ms Snelgrove could do with some more time in the classroom herself.

The latest document for consultation from Swindon Borough Council is their Swindon Houses in Multiple Occupancy Strategy — bedsits in common parlance. (In passing, I find it strange how selective the council is about which consultations actually get listed on their Have Your Say page.) The document is a masterpiece of padding. It runs to thirty five pages but the strategy itself appears in a table that is contained within a table that occupies just a little over two pages. It’s very informative about what the council does to try and regulate houses in multiple occupation but, except for those two pages, ’tis not a strategy. The most interesting parts are the maps showing the concentration of these properties in the Radnor Street, Tennyson Street and Broadgreen areas. Given how weak the council’s powers are (licensing only becomes necessary for houses with more than five unrelated occupants and of three or more storeys; planning controls only apply for houses with more than six unrelated occupants) and the brevity of the actual strategy and the verbosity of the document, it’s not worth the read for much else.

I’m not sure which I find more ridiculous: the leader of the New Mechanics Preservation Trust, bewailing the loss of some sarsen stones at Wharf Green, that were barely noticeable to most shoppers. (She does seem to have a fixation with large stones in parks.)

In trying to create new Swindon they are trashing old Swindon. I feel quite sad and disappointed this has happened. Apparently they were too heavy to move. They are a local material and they had tremendous presence. They could have been used in a car park or put in a park.

Or our council leader, eulogising on the return of the facade of the Baptist Tabernacle that will be nothing more than an out-of-place token gesture to the past in a modern development.

It is nice to see the stone back. I did see the stones all jumbled up in Northampton. But to see them here, sorted, in boxes, and being put into slots, has been quite a moment for me. Of course now it’s just a gigantic jigsaw puzzle for someone to start putting back together. I wanted to get the stone back because I thought it could be an important symbol in the regeneration of Swindon, but all along I have thought that to bring this off would be nothing short of a miracle.

Between them, they illustrate why the preservation of Swindon’s industrial past has fared so badly.

I’ve been testing my powers of endurance by reading Swindon Borough Council’s new draft Revised Residential Parking Standards. Amongst all the rather dull staff, such as specifications for how big a parking space should be at angles of 90°, 60° and 45°, there are some rather more important things. In particular, the central areas of Swindon (Sector 1 in the highly imaginative terminology of the document) will have different standards from the rest of the borough. The main difference is that parking spaces will neither be required not permitted for new flats in the central area, whereas at least one or two parking spaces will have to be provided in the rest of Swindon. That’ll put a lot of pressure on the already limited on-street parking spaces amongst the terraced houses, you might think. You’d be wrong. To quote paragraph 8.1.

In order to keep the ratio of spaces and permits to its current level the council will expect new developments to become permit-free. This will mean that developments within Residential Parking Zones will be expected to enter into a legal agreement denying future residents access to parking permits, therefore ensuring a “Permit Free Development”.

Hmm… any predictions as to how long that one will last before being challenged by a developer? The draft is open for consultation until 17^th October.

It is difficult sometimes to understand the reasoning of those running consultations for Swindon Borough Council. For the consultation on the North Swindon Transport Strategy, which is actually about transport between North Swindon and the town centre, of the three days Halcrow have selected for exhibitions, the only one at a time when many will be able to attend (i.e. at the weekend) is in North Swindon. The exhibitions in the areas most affected by the proposals (Gorse Hill and West Swindon) were on ‘working’ days. Not that the strategy actually seems to amount to much: the only major proposal is two extend Thamesdown Drive along a line near to the River Ray to a junction with Great Western Way, and the whole strategy is dependent on the government contributing &pound100 million. Perhaps those stuck in the jams should consider hitching a lift on the back of one of the pigs flying overhead.

Even harder to understand is the Adver’s choice of a photograph of current congestion in South Swindon to illustrate their story.

With a big fanfare (okay, just a press release — ‘Plans for a major university in Swindon have moved a step closer’ — a news article and a short leader article), Swindon Borough Council has announced that The University of the West of England has firmed up its interest in opening a branch in Swindon. We are told that it will be ‘a unique learning institution in the town centre.’ We are also told that it will offer about 3000 places, probably in North Star, primarily for vocational training.

It is intended that the new university will focus on the strengths of the Swindon economy, such as advanced engineering, financial services, ICT, health and social care and the heritage industry.

We will deliver teaching to employees while they work. The courses will be bespoke to the individual needs of employers like Honda and Intel. We are also looking at delivering heritage courses, which aren’t available elsewhere.

That’s about a third of the size of the existing University of Bath in Swindon and covering a very similar range of subjects. It is difficult to see what will be unique about the new campus apart from its minute size. It is quite a feat of exaggeration to describe it as ‘a major university in Swindon’.
Presumably this should mean that the Gateway plans are now dead… unless someone can be persuaded to provide a proper university for Swindon.

So much for the proposed green spine of the Central Area Action Plan. Walking through Wharf Green today I see that the first action of the regeneration there is to cut down most of the trees.