Since a joint City and County Council site visit this summer, the wall along the green in front of the Olde Beverlie pub (near St Stephen’s church) has taken two more substantial hits, and Focus team member Nick Blake is keeping up pressure on the City Council to carry out the scheduled repairs. Rubble from the most recent collision was lying in the road as a hazard to traffic until he phoned Serco.

Guy Voizey, the Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesman for Canterbury, said: “We still favour a 20 mph speed limit to back up the repair work, and make the area safer for residents and motorists alike.”

The wall will be repaired sooner or later, but how long will it last as long as traffic races through?

The ward of St Stephen’s does not have a single public toilet! At its September meeting, the Canterbury Area Member Panel (CAMP) learnt that the only children’s play areas to have toilets were at Toddlers Cove and on Wincheap - with most surviving public loos located in the city centre, among them the imposing new block in the Dane John gardens. Sue Pratt, of the St Stephen’s Road and Close Residents’ Association, has appealed to the Council to provide a toilet block for children playing in the recreation area by St Stephen’s church. “We do need this,” agrees Cllr Jo Calvert-Mindell, “next to the Church hall would be a good place, because there is already plumbing available.”

The Tory-run council is refusing to discuss longer opening hours for existing toilets, let alone the provision of new ones.  Yet it continues with its plan to lay costly new paving in St George’s Street, regardless of the current credit crisis and the millions already committed (with all-party support) to the new Marlowe Theatre and the Beaney Institute extension.

Residents of Hanover Place are understandably reluctant to agree to proposals which will protect their parking spaces only between 8 am and 4 pm Monday to Friday, given that their road is treated as a “free car park” by inner-city residents, users of the adjacent open meadow, and university students. Richard Jenkins, of the City Council Transportation Dept., is aware of the problem, and having spoken to him lately, I would sum up the present situation like this.

Hanover Place residents liked the idea of a parking scheme covering the top end of their road, but of course they never asked for the short hours and days now proposed. The scheme in its present form will not solve evening and weekend parking problems; in fact, residents will be worse off in the short term, because they will be paying for a parking permit which does not help them at the times they most need it.

From late next year, Canterbury West station is due to be served by new trains using the Channel Tunnel rail link. The increased traffic that will be generated by those trains is too serious a problem to be ignored, and so the whole St Stephen’s zone will need to have stronger parking restrictions. The question is, how strong? As in other zones bordering the city centre, they should be in force 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The maximum period should be reduced to 2 hours. The City Council and Kent Highways must start the process of consultation in good time to have adequate restrictions in force before the start of the new rail service.

If the whole of Hanover Place is already in the St Stephen’s zone, then the new hours will automatically apply. If the top end has stayed out, then the whole consultation process has to be started up again to give it the same protection as the roads already covered in St Stephens. This would mean continuing grief for all Hanover Place residents. So my advice to them is, accept the present proposals even though they do not go far enough, and wait for them to be beefed up within the next year, when you will be inside the zone and not outside it. Jam tomorrow isn’t so good as jam today, but tomorrow will come, because we cannot afford a free for all in the roads surrounding a high speed rail station.

My job as Ward councillor is to make sure that residents in Hanover Place and the whole St Stephen’s zone are properly protected and enjoy the same rights as residents just outside the city walls on the other side of Canterbury. I will be attending, speaking and voting at the next meeting of the Joint Transportation Board at 7 pm in the Guildhall on Tuesday 2 September.

Should it be buses, cycles and taxis only towards the West Gate Towers?

Kent Highways Service (KHS – part of Tory-run Kent County Council) plans to create a bus lane in St Dunstans, from Station Road West to the Towers. Other traffic heading towards the West Gate will have to turn into Station Road West. Kirbys Lane will be closed to all traffic at the St Dunstans end. And they are keen to finish the work by the end of this year. Are they in too much of a hurry?

“The first letters from KHS contained 2 errors,” said Cllr Michael Berridge. KHS has now sent out corrected letters, stating that traffic will return through North Lane, not the narrow Pound Lane. “I am delighted that they have also extended the consultation date,” said Cllr Jo Calvert-Mindell, “and that Cllr Ida Linfield, Chair of the Canterbury Area Member Panel, has arranged for County and Canterbury Council officers to attend a special meeting of the Panel at the Guildhall on Wednesday, 18 June, at 7 p.m.”

The meeting is open to the public. Although it is not a public consultation meeting, residents will be able to raise issues of concern and address the meeting (for 3 minutes) if they contact the City Council in advance – that is to say, before midday on the last working day before the meeting, which in this case is Tuesday, 17 June.

The phone box at the St Stephen’s roundabout (at the corner of Broad Oak Road and Kingsmead Road) is facing closure - one of 20 within the Canterbury district - unless we can save it. That is, we the local people, making our views known through our local authority - the Canterbury City Council.

Research has shown that over 33% of adults sometimes use phone boxes, and 7% use them regularly. They’re popular with:
• young people;
• people on low incomes;
• people with mobiles but no home phone; and
• people who have no phone at all.
They’re most important in areas where mobiles don’t work, and in any community where there are disadvantaged people.

Even so, people aren’t using phone boxes like they used to. The money that BT took from phone boxes went down by nearly half between 2000 and 2006. BT say that six out of 10 of their boxes are losing them money, because nearly everyone has a phone at home and only 1 in 6 is still without a mobile phone, and so they’ve launched a programme to reduce the number of phone boxes.

However, unlike a normal business, BT can’t just stop services. They have a duty, known as the Universal Service Obligation (USO), to provide a reasonable number of working phone boxes where they’re most needed.

In 2005, Ofcom (the regulatory body) carried out a study of phone boxes, so as to strike the right balance between the number of call boxes that the public actually needs and BT’s wish to close phone boxes that cost them money. If BT want to remove the only payphone in a local area, they have to announce their plans. And they must consult the local authority - which in our area is the Canterbury City Council. If the Council writes to BT within 90 days to object, setting out their reasons, BT cannot remove the call box. This is known as the ‘local veto’.

This is where local residents make a difference. If we want to keep our phone box by the St Stephen’s newsagents, where it’s easy to pull in and park for a few minutes, we have to make our views known. “Local people can give me their comments,” says Michael Berridge, Liberal Democrat councillor for St Stephen’s ward, “and I will pass them on to the City Council.”

Here are some reasons to keep the box:
- it is at an important road junction and a parade of shops
- it is nearly opposite Beverley House hostel (where residents are less likely to have a phone of their own)
- it is 2 minutes from Kingsmead Leisure Centre (which lost its payphone during recent renovations)

“BT say the box is little used,” adds Cllr Berridge, “but it can’t be used at all if it is out of order. I had to report damage to the phone myself only two weeks ago. Parents will be concerned if their children - maybe coming from classes at the Leisure Centre - can’t phone because the battery is flat on their mobile or, worse still, it’s been stolen.”

We all accept that BT will have to close some phone boxes. But surely the box at St Stephen’s Road is one that should stay.

Photo:

Labour are doubling tax from 10% to 20% for those on the lowest wages. Only those earning over £18000 a year will benefit from the cut in standard rate from 22% to 20% financed by the removal of the ten per cent tax band. Announced in last year’s Budget by Gordon Brown while he was still Chancellor, his punch below the belt was aimed at simplifying the tax system. In the recent local elections in large parts of England and Wales, voters gave Gordon their verdict. Labour slumped to third place with less than a quarter of the popular vote, its worst result for forty years.

Guy Voizey, Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesman for Canterbury, said “We believe the standard rate of income tax should be cut, by 4p. We would pay for this by increasing taxes on the wealthy rather than on the poorest in society. The unacceptable reality is that in Britain today the poorest pay a higher proportion of their income in tax than the very wealthy. Low and middle income earners in this country already shoulder too heavy a tax burden. We have also attacked the unfairness of the Council Tax and would replace it with a system based on people’s ability to pay.”

Conservatives in Canterbury have been busy cutting the budget to voluntary organisations like Age Concern. Core funding for the Canterbury Credit Union, which helps the poorest pay for necessities without resorting to loan sharks, has dried up. The Canterbury Lib Dem group offered a fully funded alternative budget, but Tories turned down every proposal - though they never even spoke in the debates - they just kept quiet and voted with their party whip for a whole bunch of cuts which will reduce local services for the most vulnerable in our communities. It beggars belief!

The City Council is considering the development brief for Wincheap.  It looks as if the ruling Conservative group is going to approve the scheme. Even they have stumbled at the hurdle of a new Park and Ride terminal.  Playing fields at Thanington hardly seem an improvement on green fields at Harbledown, and both are strenuously opposed by local residents.

There would be plenty of room for a fourth Park and Ride on the Wincheap estate if the housing density was not so high.  The developers want maximum site value if they are to fund a new relief road, planned to run under the railway on the west (river) side of Wincheap.  That means 1300 dwellings or more, many of them flats in blocks of up to 6 storeys, and extra pollution from the new road - which will also serve a “retail hub” that will suck the life out of the community’s established shops and businesses.

We should expect inspiration from these proposals.  Instead we are being offered a new low quality neighbourhood.  Canterbury will be a busier city, but not a better place to live.

Liberal Democrat councillors oppose this scheme - let us know what you think.

For nearly a year, the damaged wall at Manwood Green (in front of the Olde Beverlie pub near St Stephen’s church) has not been repaired, and the rubble has not been cleared up. Local resident and Focus team member Nick Blake set out to find out why not. City Council officers couldn’t seem to agree. Was the wall listed or not? Should it be repaired only to be hit again? Should it be demolished, protected, or replaced by something stronger? It all seemed to depend who you asked.

Kent Highways has now offered a massive metal bollard - capable of stopping a 30-ton truck - for the end of the wall at the sharp corner opposite Glebe House. That leaves the rest of the brick wall as vulnerable as ever.  Guy Voizey, Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesman for Canterbury, said “One thing which would help here is a reduction in the speed limit to 20mph. This would make this area safer for residents and motorists alike.”

What do you think should be done? Let us know.

The top of Hanover Place has unrestricted parking. So the Council proposes to extend the St Stephen’s “controlled parking zone” to include the whole of this close - a plan which has now gone to formal public consultation. The bottom of the close is already in the St Stephen’s zone, limited to 4 hours during the day, residents only, Monday to Friday.  At all other times, it is free for all.

The bottleneck, a Hanover Place resident told Cllr Michael Berridge, is at evenings and weekends.  Car owners in street-frontage properties the other side of the railway line are, he concluded, “the main cause of our present problems because of council development policies which have restricted the amount of parking space in that area. The council has to realise before it congratulates itself on sustainable developments that these gains have to be real. … In summary - I would like 2 hour, seven days a week as part of the St Stephen’s zone. If extending the scheme to the end of Hanover Place is a step on the way to that then I would welcome the current proposals. If it ends there then the current proposals are a complete waste of time.”

What is your view?  Should Hanover Place have more control over its parking spaces?  Does the Station Road West development - planned round a rail station - work with hardly any parking spaces of its own?  “We all continue to rely on our cars,” says Cllr Michael Berridge, “but we are running out of road space and parking places.”

After three months of closure from Kingsmead Road to Farleigh Road – for gas main replacement and road works for the new Berkeley Homes development – Kent Highways announced that work on Broad Oak Road “should be completed by 18 April” and now, more or less on schedule, the road is a through route again. Congestion on Sturry Road has been reduced, but not eliminated, now that Broad Oak Road is open to traffic again. The past three months have shown how dependent the city of Canterbury is on the private car and how badly a wider range of public transport options is needed. There is a rail line connecting Canterbury West to Sturry – with one train an hour each way. If the Government had a rational transport policy, that line would be part of a regional rapid transport system with additional stations (one to serve the Vauxhall Road estate, for instance) and a 20-minute service.