twowheelsgood

I would have thought a (former) councillor would at least have the correct election date to hand - Thursday 2 May - or is something else coming on 19 May?!

They've made a start, changing a perfectly good green sign for an orange one. Wonder how many meetings that took.

Blueschool House is in her ward and she supported the scheme at planning. She has been uncharacteristically silent on the subsequent ongoing and unresolved scandal of the £1m/100% overspend. She is one of many who have long overstayed their welcome, such as it was, and we can only hope that 2 May is her last day in the job. Unfortunately, the Council is so tainted by mis-management and corruption that the chances of decent up standing citizens coming forward to serve their community must be rather compromised.

Most if not all of our Council tips are now privately run as part of the 25 year integrated waste management PFI contract with Worcestershire County Council and Spanish owned Urbaser.

Urbaser are Spanish owned, so tens of millions of pounds of UK council tax payers money is leaving the country instead of being put back into the local economy, much as happened with the disastrous Amey contract Herefordshire Council took on, Amey being a subsidiary of Spanish company Ferrovial. I'm not sure Herefordshire Council are involved in the Javelin Park facility in Gloucester, but they certainly are up to their necks (in debt) to the PFI Severn Waste one at Evesham (where Herefordshire waste is driven to) and the 25 year integrated waste management PFI contract with Worcestershire County Council (both schemes run by, you guessed, Urbaser). Are Councillors getting cheap holidays in the sun?

I see that Architype have been bumped off the former Boys Home scheme next door in favour of Quattro Design Architects of Gloucester, presumably to 'value engineer' it. There is some hope then that this absurd manifestation will not go ahead, especially as September is barely 9 months away and there is no sign of any work starting on site. Given they're no requisitioning the Robert Owen buildings, will it even be needed, in the short term at least?

Priority Space Ltd comprises three chartered surveyors with 66 directorships between them but only £51 of capital and reserves and £21k of assets to front a £6m development ... you really HAVE to ask how much due diligence has been done by our very expensive council officers!

According to the HT from 2014, "Herefordshire Council owns the freehold for Maylord which is worth more than £33k a year in rent." I recall that they originally had a share in the development along with original developers Norwich Union, both of whom subsequently sold out.

Hard to say anything about these cases other than they're truly appalling, even more so that the abuse, for that it was it amounts to, has gone on for 10 years in the one case. According to the HT, "council officers will today brief councillors 'in secret' about two recent fiascos affecting the county’s children’s services". It must surely be the case that those responsible for ruining these children's lives and mentally scarring them for life have to be brought to book. Jumping ship to another authority and just carrying on isn't acceptable.

Perhaps they were taking the red 'Join us' sign too literally ...

But that arrangement requires a strong 'client side' management from council officers who (should) have a wider overview on how the service fits into the wider delivery of council services and councillor requirements. Unfortunately, that's where it falls over - we pay for the best, but really, what are we getting? The system clearly is not working - BBLP focus appears to be on high value/high profit work and routine maintenance is constantly pushed back, creating larger problems down the road, so to speak. Councillor Summers spoke last week about about poor security at the flagship Skylon Park and cited the graffiti on the Greenway as an indication of this - as I said above, I've reported it, but nothing happens. When left, it becomes the start of a rapid decline into vandalism and anti-social behaviour.

Staggering - and how much did this 'study' cost us? No doubt councillors, many of whom will be beginning to stir from their extended hibernation to emerge in time for the elections next May, will roll over and quietly let this through, as they seem to do for most things. Actually getting BBLP to do anything is increasingly frustrating - it took me two months of nagging to get offensive graffiti removed from the Greenway bridge - the Council website says it will be done within 24 hours. Other graffiti has just been left. I waited nearly 3 months for a street light on busy pedestrian route to be fixed. I've reported numerous blocked gullies, none of which have been cleared. So it goes on and on, no one in charge cares, too busy shuffling job titles to notice BBLP trousering tens of millions of our money for very little perceivable benefit.

£273K buys a lot of grab rails from Nottingham Rehab - what on earth are they buying from them? Presumably the redacted £98k was someone's leaving bonus ...

Agreed, it's a very odd situation, especially given the spin we had when the Bath Street scheme was proposed, when we were told Edgar St was out of the question due to response times and a shared station with the Police was absolutely out of the question (which I was told personally by one of the team at the consultation event). Still, probably an opportunity for yet more traffic lights at that junction with the A49 ...

If this isn't a 'key decision' then what is? As the cost of Blueschool House doubled from £1m to £2m (that we know of) with no explanation as yet, I think we can safely assume that the £10m will soon double to £20m, following which, a 'here today, gone tomorrow' suit will trot out the usual 'lessons will be learned'.

What a petty, sniping stance by the Councillor. This childish point scoring between the City Council and the District Council has gone on since the day that Herefordshire Council came about and the City Council was demoted to a Parish. Both sides are equally guilty - I've seen it time and again in meetings and is partly a product of poor leadership and partly far too many Councillors with entrenched views in position for far too long - time for a huge clear-out in the elections next May please. In the meantime, the Councillor's time would be better spent by challenging the £1m overspend on Blueschool House, which is in her ward and which she supported at the Planning application stage.

Similarly, planning meetings seem to be getting cancelled/withdrawn/moved at an alarming rate in the past few months.

The ones necessary to provide the information to discharge the conditions.

It comes as no surprise to see dozens of complaints about elected members’ bad behaviour and yet more closed door meetings reported in the HT. Why are members not asking questions about these contracts, it's all too cosy. Perhaps bad behaviour is involved. It's hard not to think that way when this Council's cult of secrecy shows no sign of going away.

For this application for 'approval of details reserved by conditions 4 10 11 14 15 16 19 & 20 on planning permission P151314', the Council think it acceptable not to have any documents available for public viewing. Why would that be?

It's not a park, it's a graveyard, formerly used by St Peter's Church, now decommissioned but still consecrated. As such, although it is still owned by St Peter's Church (technically the Vicar is the freeholder), the maintenance is the responsibility of Herefordshire Council, which explains the very run down condition and the demolished wall that has never been rebuilt. The archway off Commercial Street is Grade 2 Listed. John Venn is buried in the graveyard and his grave was restored a few years ago by the Hereford Society for Aiding the Industrious, the charity that carries on his good works. As to the campsite, it's a sad indictment of our society that people have to live like that, and it won't be any fun at all as the temperatures drop. There are other tents around the City. I suspect the Council won't do much with this one, hoping that it will go away, but at some point it becomes unhygienic and a health risk.

They must have been impacted by the neighbouring burnt out shell and hoarding butting up to the edge of their shop for years on end.

Although the application states ‘student accommodation’, you have to drill quite deeply to find the justification for this application. The Design and Access Statement offers no explanation. The Planning Statement eventually reveals; • The site is primarily to serve as accommodation for students of the Hereford College of Arts and as such the scheme has been designed to achieve a high quality of internal light and space both internally and externally for the display of artwork. (They explain the HCA is planned to double in size by 2022). • The proposed development would meet the needs of Hereford, as it would provide much needed purpose-built student accommodation commensurate with, and to serve, the on-going expansion of the Hereford College of Arts and also potentially students of the new NMiTE University. In so doing, and in any event, the proposals will contribute towards the wider regeneration of Hereford City Centre, and would enable the release of houses which are currently in use as Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) by students back to much needed family accommodation. • One of the main design drivers has been keeping the sense of travel from the railway station towards the town centre through the heart of the scheme.(!)

This looks like a PFI as 'engie' are the only party with any money - Wikipedia says they are a French multinational electric utility company, headquartered in La Défense, Courbevoie, which operates in the fields of electricity generation and distribution, natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy. I don't see any partnership with the Council indicated, save that they own the land. Which begs the question, will they be selling it to to at least recover the £x million they paid for it?

Hereford boldly moves forward ... into the 1960's. Tragic.