twowheelsgood

Let's not turn this into a helmet debate - there are plenty of those on cycling sites - save to say, where helmets have been made compulsory, cycle use has fallen. A lot. I usually wear a helmet, but I don't want to be forced to wear one.

Indeed, hence my reference in the original post to the historic site. As for the "informal public consultation", I understand this was as low key as possible - leafletting only Harold Street at very short notice, no other publicity at all. (AV - sorry for the down arrow - my fault - clicked the wrong button!)

This project is a tragic waste of limited resources - nothing but a sea of tarmac and traffic lights - the limit of BBLP's imagination and councillors interest. As for cycling provision - pah - they must have looked in the book of really stupid designs because this is some of the worst provision in the City. In fact, it's positively dangerous. I'll get some photos and report back - and yes, the stupid little lanes are already blocked by cars (not that any half sane person on a bike would use them anyway).

Ah yes, the old 'valuable lessons will be learnt' excuse - line 1, page 1 of the bumper book of risible and contemptible excuses to throw at the public when a club member scores a bag of swag and moves on to do the same elsewhere. Where are the Councillors asking the questions as to how this happened? Same as Herefordshire - they're nowhere to be seen, silent, uncomprehending, doing as they're told or cooking up their own beneficial deals - planning permission anyone? Kudos then to Cllr Bob Matthews for daring to ask the questions about the missing £10m. Unfortunately, it will undoubtedly cost us a lot of money, but, have no fear, valuable lessons will be learnt.

I think the £200m was just for painting the names on the vans - everything else is extra. I think the £4m or so in March and April would be for 'enabling works' to allow work to start on the Link Road - if we can be charged £80k for the hoarding, it's not hard to see why we're burning through borrowed money so fast. £4m plus - what - £10m already spent on land acquisition, is leaving 'only' £13m for construction …

Yes, you're right about the surface just there - I just liked the irony of the pothole right in the middle of the cycle wheel - perhaps this should be symbol for our new pressure group. The present group, who should be campaigning to pressure the Council to address this failure by BBLP, go under the collective name of 'Councillors' I believe, but it seems that they have no interest in the cause. Interesting to read the Destination Hereford Phase 2 (DH2) bid for funding (which we don't seem to know the outcome of yet - should have been announced in April) - lots of good things in principal, yet no where does it mention the actual conduit for moving around - the road system- and how that is fundamentally failing. Until this is really sorted, its all just box ticking in my view. "Herefordshire is a great county for cyclists. It's not too hilly, our weather is mild, and, for many people, school, college, work and local shops are just a comfortable bike ride away." Choose How You Move

I think the Cathedral School complex is a separate fiscal entity to the Church Commissioners, although they probably share the same spiritual advisor.

This is the reality of cycling in and around Hereford (and the County at large). Potholes and dangerous surfaces everywhere. Take your eyes off the road for a second and, at best, you've lost a tyre (3 this year so far - £105) or, worse, you're off and costing the NHS a lot of money. This is Three Elms Road - the surface of which up by Grandstand Road can only be safely cycled by moving into the middle of the road. Potholes can't be seen when it rains, making things even more dangerous, because gullies are no longer cleared, meaning surface water builds up very quickly along the sides of roads. Still, at least this hole has a white circle around it for a passing Balfor Bodger to aim a shovel of tarmac at. Don't get me started on marked up potholes that never get filled - that must be some sort of racket. Perhaps we can use this thread to record some of the daily hazards that cyclists face - for a tiny fraction of the money spent on the SLR, for instance, we could have safer surfaces that would encourage more people to cycle and reduce car use.

Indeed - 'open market value' but not open enough for the people of Herefordshire to know what it is. This was a 'key decision' where a threshold of £0.5m is regarded as significant. So, assuming it went for at least that, where did the money, as a capital receipt, go to?

Disposal of the former Records Office in Harold Street - selling it to Cathedral School - was put to and approved by Cabinet in November last year, and we now hear that the Cathedral School are shortly to submit a planning application to clear the historic site and build a 40+ bed accommodation block for foreign students. More details when we have them!

And a bit less than 5'!

I hear that the deal to transfer ownership to Sockett has still not gone through for various reasons, principally the developers desire to get some flats into the scheme and the lack of legal access along Maylord Street (sold off by the Council in yet another short sighted desire to offload responsibility for anything and everything). He has been given a final deadline of next Thursday to seal the deal or it's all off. Whether Food for Growth are still around or would be interested is unknown - otherwise, yet another colossal waste of our money to stand still, whilst the building and the traders suffer the consequences.

You forgot Kim Jong-un ...

It was about 5' above ground (pollarded they claim) when I went past this afternoon - have they been back?

From a reliable source - it was Kier who have the A49(T) contract from Highways England for this area and who took the tree down. It is not protected and the work was emergency/H&S work. A very major limb had failed due to fungal damage and additional weight of recent rain and rapid growth. This left the whole tree unbalanced and other limbs were looking to fail and likely split the whole trunk top ground level. Due to the ‘emergency’ nature Kier had to act. It has been pollarded to about 5’ (below fungus and tearing from limb drop). This way tree has best chance of survival and stable regrowth. Kier will continue to monitor and if still proves to be an issue in future have agreed that removal is only last option and they have already offered to replace with a suitable alternative for location should this have to occur.

Well, if we decide out, as we should, I would expect Cameron to resign within 24 hours of the result, and if he doesn't he'll be forced out anyway, so I think we will see a very rapid reshuffling of a lot of posts and a lot of back pedalling by those who were in the remain camp in a desperate bid to stay on the gravy train. So that much at least will change very quickly - as to the rest, well, at least we will be deciding that and not being told what to do by the EU.

When the Council refuse to respond to legitimate press enquiries, things are going wrong. Simple cost saving exercise for the Council - be open and honest and save us all a lot of money.

Last weeks HT leader column was a scathing attack against the ongoing cult of secrecy that still operates within the Council and specifically why no one is allowed to know what's happening about Peter Robinson - is he in or out? Still no one knows or is telling. On balance it looks like he's gone. Unusually, the leader is now online and is provoking some useful comments, inc a passionate speech from the usually retiring bobby47. http://tinyurl.com/gllwwds for comments. Hereford Times opinion: Public has a right to know the facts "He was until recently one of the most important officers in Herefordshire Council – holding the purse strings of our squeezed public finances. But trying to get the facts from our own local authority, regarding the possible departure of chief financial officer Peter Robinson – our public servant, whose salary is funded from public money – is like trying to delve into the boardroom machinations of a private company. The circumstances are probably completely unremarkable – perhaps we’ve got the wrong end of the stick, but the council has insisted on maintaining a shroud of secrecy over the matter which we would argue is unreasonable. And it begs the question of why? We will get an answer, having submitted an FOI request, but you’ve got to ask – should the public have to pay for our request (for it will cost the council money), when it is a perfectly legitimate request for information which we would argue should be in the public domain? People are entitled to ask what, if anything, is our publicly funded, democratically elected council hiding? If there are ramifications for the public purse due to circumstances surrounding this matter, we, the public, have a democratic right to know."

From the Council website; How do I apply to carry out work to a tree in a conservation area? There are 64 conservation areas in Herefordshire and we process approximately 250 applications a year. You must notify us in writing on the official notification form below, six weeks in advance of all proposed tree works in conservation areas. This is so that we can consider whether to serve a Tree Preservation Order (TPO). There are no applications registered on the Council's Planning website. The application may have been submitted, but the Council are so far behind it hasn't been registered yet. Or, more likely, it's just been cut down, because that's what the Highway Authority do - they have form with the Edgar Street limes.

I never use the pool - I had to go there many years ago for physio when it was run by the Council (as opposed to Halo) and found it to be filthy, badly equipped and maintained and staffed by disinterested teenagers and malcontents. I'd like to think things have changed for the better. As for the £150k - to raise the floor? This seems excessive, but then according to the report, the Council don't care because Halo are paying, which is simplistic, because the Council are paying, and Halo repay over 25 years. As ever, something relatively simple is over-complicated to the nth degree 13 option 3 : To permanently decommission the diving boards and reduce the pool depth of the tank to 1 metre creating an additional learning pool. Construction works of £150k, creating additional income of £24k pa and cost savings of £10k on utilities pa yielding a £34k bottom line improvement for Halo pa. The Council recognise that communication will be a priority. They will hold an open customer forum to explain the preferred option.

They say this on their Facebook page "Fear not, the club and team continue. The shop was originally opened as a service course to the team; we decided to have a stab at retail but the High St is a tough business and at the end of the day, it's not commercially viable. Sparrow is planning on setting up on his own which is great news, and all news regarding the club and team will still be reported across social media networks and on the website." ​The NFTO cycle team is very successful - long may it continue. NFTO originally had a shop at Rotherwas (The Shed) and then made the move to Bridge Street - good on them for trying, but if it's not commercially viable then so be it.

Well, it's a question of priorities isn't it? We're in the process of spending more than twice that on two highly questionable and very short lengths of road - it's more than a bit out of reach for Herefordshire, whose debt is now over £300m, but it doesn't stop the road building mentality does it? It would be be interesting to know what sort of revenue that Velodrome is bringing into the Derby.

Whatever it was, it's gone already. Haven't been to look closely for damage, but I could see it from the Vicky Bridge.

Yes, I was there too - set off at the same time as the thunderstorm started - well done to Clarkester, that was a sterling effort and not much slower than me on a 'proper' bike! Shame there were not more entrants, but bad weather and football took their toll. Certainly the road surface in parts of Clehonger and Kingston is more than interesting - it's downright dangerous, but no change there. The huge puddles highlighted all the blocked gullies that haven't been cleared for years and, of course, every puddle can, and usually does, hide a pothole. Don't tell me there aren't the resources - I've just seen the Head of Highways have the pavement outside his house dug up and re-tarmaced by BBLP this morning ... and a very senior director has had the lane to his house completely resurfaced. Not that they didn't need doing, just coincidences, I'm sure.

Do you mean that huge marquee? I assumed it was a fair of some sort - there was one there a few years ago and it made an almighty mess of the grass with wheel ruts which were never made good. Looking at the weather, guess what's going to happen again? Council keen to take the money and do nothing to supervise I've no doubt.