Bathwick’s beat police officers hold a PaCT meeting every six months to “give you the opportunity to influence what happens in your neighbourhood”. A panel of police and council staff, plus me, is chaired by Rev Prothero of Bathwick St Mary’s. This month we were out of his parish in the Claverton Down Community Hall.

The three priorities of the previous meeting were reviewed, the first two mostly pertaining to the police. Their patrols in Sydney Gardens have been regular and productive. Noise complaints are down and, after one successful confrontation, graffitti attacks are also much reduced. However, it is acknowledged that all uses of the park reduce seasonally due to the cold weather and dark nights. Regarding speeding, the police run an hour or so of speed checks from their van at different points around the ward every month.

The final priority, to install a zebra crossing on Bathwick Hill near Tesco, was a council issue. Unfortunately no member of council staff was at the meeting, but I was able to report the success of our petition with the crossing allocated funding for this financial year (ie before April next year).

Following discussion, the three new priorities are (also shown on the police website):

1. to investigate road safety on Sham Castle Lane, looking at speeding, signage and closure
2. to continue to enforce speed limits on Claverton Down Road and to accelerate the provision on double yellow lines
3. to provide a zebra crossing on Bathwick Hill, monitored by the police for its first few days.

I hope that in future BathNES council staff will also be able to attaned these meetings. I am a representative to the council, not of the council; I am as unable to understand or explain the many failings of the organisation as any other member of the public!

The latest Police and Communities Together meeting is tomorrow (Tuesday 8th December) at 6:30pm in the Clavteron Down Community Hall.

This is the first time that the PaCT meeting will be held on Claverton Down, so a new audience is welcomed. Residents are invited to the open meeting to share their views about policing, council services and local issues. To close the meeting, a public vote of the issues raised will decide the top priorities.

Cllr Nicholas Coombes will be sitting on the panel, as ever, joined by representatives from the police and council.

Lime Grove School was seriously considered as a suitable location for a ‘wet house’ - a hostel in which homeless alcoholics may continue to drink.

The Conservative cabinet member for community safety let slip that Lime Grove was his second choice location during a council meeting last week.

Following outrage in Kingsmead, he has now agreed to re-consider his first choice of James Street West. The Chronicle has the story here.

While Cllr Vic Pritchard was considering using the old school building as a home for alcoholics, no local people were consulted and neither Bathwick or Widcombe councillors were involved. His accidental statement in council was the first public acknowledgement of the plan.

Bathwick councillor Nicholas Coombes has now submitted a written question to the cabinet member asking for clarification of the situation, now that his prefered hostel location is under review. Cllr Coombes has requested that local people be kept fully informed this time if the Lime Grove site is to be reconsidered as a ‘wet house’.

Police and parking wardens are patrolling schools across Bath as the new school year begins.

Bathwick residents and councillors have long urged action against poor parking at our local schools, St Mary’s and King Edward’s. Both have been inluded in a list of twenty four across BathNES targeted for attention. Aside from the frustration caused to neighbours, inconsiderate parking near schools is often of danger to the pupils attending.

At King Edward’s School on North Road, I’ve been part of the school travel plan group looking at bus, cycle and car share schemes as well as parking outside the school. While the current parking arrangements on North Road and Cleveland Walk should be improved, parked parents who break the rules should expect a ticket. This especially includes the four wheel drive which parks on the corner of the juntion every afternoon - you know who you are!

I’ve also joined the Sustainable Routes to School project at Bathwick St Mary’s which promotes alternatives to driving. Key to this is the set of crossings around the Warminster and Sydney Road junction which I have raised with the council highways department several times.

Hopefully pupils and parents can take the opportunity of a new school year with (so far) reasonable weather to explore walking, biking or busing to school. If not, watch out for the parking inspectors!

Disappointingly I’ve been revisiting some old issues this week, fixed once, which need fixing again.

The railway bridge over Pulteney Road has been tagged again, this time with “MY TEAM”. This doesn’t make much more sense than the previous tag, “THICK”, but could take as long to clean off. See previous entries  here and here; it took the best part of a year to have the bridge re-painted last time. Again, Network Rail have confirmed to me that Pulteney Road will have to be closed for the tag to be painted out. A correspondant suggests “use the bridge space for a more useful and innovative purpose”. Does anyone else have any suggestions? A mural or a display board? As my photo shows, no matter how hard you try, anything looks nice on a sunny Spring day in Bath.

Also this week, the bollard on George Street (Bathwick Hill) at the junction with Darlington Street has come unstuck. I suspect that it will be repaired again, but I know a few people pushing for its removal.

This month, the Bathwick Police and Communities Together meeting re-affirmed their commitment to the previous priorities:

- tackling speeding

- mnaging anti-social behaviour in Sydney Gardens

- getting a zebra crossing over Bathwick Hill

Although there has been improvement in all of these areas since the previous meeting, the meeting decided to retain the priorities. There were very few attendees this time, so any new priorities would have been unrepresentative of the wider area. Thank you though to those who did take the time to participate.

In the last few months, our beat manager (local policeman) has moved on and his position had been filled temporarily. Avon and Somerset Police have now appointed a new beat manager and expect him to be transferred to Bathwick in the new year.

Nocturnal use of Sydney Gardens has decreased rceently, mainly due to the cold weather. However, the police have been following a new management plan recently which sees the park patrolled a lot more frequently at its ‘busy times’ ie late evenings on Friday and Saturdays. Our PCSO and supporting officers intercept alcohol as necessary from those who should not be drinking it.

Your councillors Armand Edwards and Nicholas Coombes have been pushing for the zebra crossing over the canal bridge. Since the last meeting, BathNES council have conducted a traffic survey which prove a statistical justification for the crossing, but the Conservative administration failed to include it in the spending plan. Cllr Edwards presented our petition for the zebra crossing to the cabinet member at the last meeting of the full council.

Bathwick’s next PaCT meeting is on Tuesday 16th December at 7:30pm in Bathwick St Mary’s Primary School.

PaCT meetings are hosted by the police with representatives of the council, councillors and other agencies. Residents are invited along to the public meeting to share their experiences and decide the top priorities for the area for the next six months. Priorities agreed at the last meeting were anti-social behaviour in Sydney Gardens, speeding and the need for pedestrian crossings.

Since the last meeting, Bathwick has had an interim police beat manager, with a new one due to start in the new year.

I expect that you will have noticed Tesco’s eventual arrival, opening one week ago.

I have not yet been in; since working for a small Tesco four years ago I try not to shop with them! However, I have noticed that every time I pass the shop that there are cars parked in the loading bay outisde, in the narrow part by the bridge and even on the double yellow lines on the other side of the road. As a resident I spoke to yesterday pointed out, the legal parking bays are not even full most of the time, but shoppers are choosing to park illegally to get 10m closer to the store!

I have taken a few photos of the problem which I have sent to BathNES parking services to alert them of this new hot spot. However, it will have to compete with many other locations for parking warden attention.

More worryingly though, I was phoned this morning by a woman who saw Tesco lorries double parked outisde the store; one in their bay and the second on the road, blocking the cariageway. This is really not acceptable and I urge anyone who sees this sort of behaviour to record the incident as best you can. A photograph is perfect yet impractical, so numberplates and times would be very helpful. Please pass this information to me and I will present a complaint to Tesco, the council or police as appropriate.

Avon & Somerset Police held the second PaCT meeting in Bathwick this evening at St Mary’s Primary School. Our beat manager, PC Parker, and I gave an update on the previous priorities. Anti-social behaviour in Sydney Gardens is the top priority, which our PC and PCSO are regularly patroling. I hope to join them for an evening beat soon to see exactly what they tackle and how they deal with it.

Traffic work, promised some years ago by Elgar Jenkins, formed the other priorities; traffic calming on Sydney Road and a new pedestrian crossing between the school and the park. Unfortunately our investigations show that there is no money in the budget set aside for this work and that none is likely in the near future. Last year the Conservatives actually cut a number of road schemes; I signed a Liberal Democrat call-in to ask the cabinet member to reconsider, but the cuts continue regardless. This means that existing funded schemes are being delayed and new schemes like this and the Bathwick Hill crossing are even more difficult.

With a mainly different audience in attendence a new set of similar issues were raised, including parking problems on Darlington Road and Cleveland Walk relating to the schools; and the issue of HGVs through the city. Unfortunately the Conservatives have already dropped their election promise of an HGV ban saying that it now unworkable. However, before the election they ran Transport, so must have had some idea of feasibility. I found this out only by asking the Conservative cabinet member responsible at a meeting last month, whether any progress had been made on the issue.

The new top three priorities though, voted by the public, are thus:

1. Speeding, specifically on Bathwick Hill and Sydney Road but a concern throughout the area. The police are the main agency for this, who have recently launched a ’speedwatch’ campiagn further up the A36.

2. The provision of a safe crossing on Bathwick Hill. This is my main area to tackle, which I am currently doing (see other posts!)

3. Anti-social behaviour in Sydney Gardens and environs. Another policing issue, although I will try to ensure that the new park scheme is safer by design.

Finally, just to note that a representative from Tesco did not turn up despite their promises and that I got the only clap of the evening; something about community empowerment at Sham Castle…

The second Police and Communities Together meeting will take place in Bathwick St Mary’s Primary School on Wednesday 30th February from 7pm. Like the first public meeting, residents are invited to voice their concerns (or celebrations) about local matters related to the Police or BathNES Council. Cllr Nicholas Coombes and representative from the Police and council will attempt to find solutions or explanations.

In October the PaCT meeting agreed that their top priorities were the incomplete Sydney Road traffic scheme and anti-social behaviour in Sydney Gardens. This is your chance to vote for another set to be tackled.

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I met with our local policeman, PC Parker, to run through expected issues today. It’s rather odd reporting to a police station for a meeting; although I did once attend the Corporate Audit Committee (more exciting than you think) in a church crypt. Like me, he hopes that a representative from our new Tesco can explain their public safety plans to the audience.