Review of community cricket in Birmingham announced.
Here is the Birmingham Post report - a useful update on the controversies over the summer over Perry Hall Park.
"Council to review grass roots cricket
Sep 10 2009 by John Marsden, Birmingham Post
Carnival update and details of some summer activities...
Ward committee – meet your councillors!
Updates on the carnival, speedway and parks are due to be given at the Perry Barr ward committee to be held at 7pm on Monday July 13th at the Methodist Church on Rocky Lane (by junction of Lavendon Road).
Speedway
An application for permanent planning permission has been submitted for this. Residents who live in the vicinity of the stadium will receive further details from us. As ward councillors we recognise the event has many fans but also that the noise disruption from racing is currently intolerable for many people living close by.
This may be the last chance for residents to do anything about the noise.
You can comment on-line at: http://tiny.cc/speedway1 or by writing to: Planning Management, Birmingham City Council, PO Box 28, Alpha Tower, Suffolk Street Queensway, Birmingham B1 1TU .
quoting application number: N/02660/09/FUL. Deadline July 29th
Last posting on this
Birmingham Carnival
A reminder that this is due to be held on Sunday August 2nd . The event’s in Perry Park with parking in Perry Hall Park.
There is to be a licensing hearing on July 20th and many residents have made submissions – so there may be last minute alterations. We have submitted strong evidence that there needs to be better control of noise and that the Carnival Procession needs to keep to time (because of the disruption to traffic lateness causes).
If you live are in the usual “exclusion zone”, you should receive a residents’ access pass the week beforehand. The official residents’ hotline is 303 3008.
If you have additional problems, Karen Hamilton is on stand-by to assist in the run-up to the event on 507 1047.
Last posting on this topic
Perry Hall Park
Two petitions have recently been submitted to the council about issues over this park. The local councillors are fighting a proposal to remove the park warden, who has done excellent work with the Friends of the Park and other volunteers to improve things.
We’ve also followed up complaints about access to cricket pitches and rubbish left following cricket games. The park keeper has mowed practice pitches for people who’d like to try their hand at cricket (but please don’t use hard balls!). In addition we’ve agreed to develop two community playing fields on this side of the river. New football posts will be erected (paid for from community chest), the ground surface checked and repaired to remove hazards and the grass mowed short over the area of a football pitch. A third pitch will go in by Perry Park Crescent on Perry Park when the grassing of this area is finally complete (following mistakes made by the contractors)
Previous postings on this here and here.
Letting Boards
Following complaints from residents and the local councillors, the planning department has launched a crackdown on “TO LET” signs. It’s become clear these are being left up for advertising purposes even when properties have been rented. Please let us know if you think this is happening in your neighbourhood.
Skips
Many thanks to the civic-minded individuals who have ordered skips for neighbourhood clean-ups. If a City Council skip appears on your back-land it is there to enable you to clear the shared land and drive areas. Please do not use them for personal use!
Church Road – will be closed for through traffic July 13th for eight weeks for water mains work.
Birmingham Carnival's licence application to run the event in Perry Park on August 2nd has now been submitted.
We checked today and notices of the application have not been posted around the park and on the Walsall Road as is required. We've spoken to licensing and have been assured this will be put right (It's up to the organisers to do it, not the licensing department).
One of our major concerns this year has been that the noise problem from 2007 is put right. The second is that traffic and parking management is got right.
This is the first time the Carnival has had to submit a separate application for this event and there is likely to be a hearing in mid-July.
Residents have until June 30th to submit comments. They have to write to the Licensing Section, Crystal Court, Aston Cross Business Village, 50 Rocky Lane, Aston, Birmingham B6 5RQ.
We are currently working on our response and will publish details soon.
Today the friends of Perry Hall Park held an open day in the park.
This was a chance to show off some of the progress made recently in this park under the supervision of park warden Jez Lilley. The park was set up by a group of young people who are becoming junior park wardens.
The first picture shows the friends, the second the Swan Rescue Centre and the third the Historical Society which had a fascinating exhibition on the history of Perry Hall.
The fourth is Norman Ball, popularly known as the "moatman", the hard-working volunteer who has landscaped the moat over a number of years. Norman is shown in the park's new welcome garden.
We launched a petition at this event calling for the retention of the park warden's post. The warden has made a big difference to the park in recent years, working with community groups and establishing the Friends and enabling bids for various funds.
Some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that our campaign to restrict opening hours at the new Clifton Cinema restaurant has been successful. Planners have refused permission for it to stay open, offering dancing and drink until 2.30am.
Throughout we've stressed we welcome the conversion of this historic cinema building and the investors that the Chinese businesspeople are putting into it. But opening in the early hours was too much and we had to resist it.
The bad news is that they have a right of appeal - and sometimes that can lead to things going pear-shaped.
For inst
ance, close to this site, we were celebrating two years ago when permission was refused for a phone mast and base station outside the Co-op cinema. We were astonished and dismayed when this self-same structure was installed.
Upon inquiry, it emerged the phone company had quietly gone to a government inspector to appeal and won. Outrageous! The structure isn't as bad as we feared but our original arguments stand - that it's clutter in a shopping area which has just been renovated with new bus stops and public access.
Sadly the big event planned for this weekend in Great Barr is going to be postponed because of the dreadful weather forecast.
The event is the Cars in the Park, to be held in Turnberry Park, Great Barr. This is an ambitious fun day organised by the Booths Farm Neighbourhood Forum and was to include a parade of classic cars and motorbikes on Sunday 17th.
The weather forecasts suggest rain every day between now and Sunday. It could be wrong but stopping the event now prevents thousands of pounds being lost through a wash-out and keeps cancellation costs to a minimum.
It is now hoped to run the event on Sunday June 21st.
Although not many people will have heard of Turnberry Park (it runs alongside the M6 and access is from an entrance facing Calshot School or via a path from Trehurst Avenue), it used to hold big neighbourhood watch fun days.
So we've been pleased to support the reinvigorated Neighbourhood Forum in organising this event - which, we hope will eventually be great fun - and the Perry Barr Ward Committee has voted to approve substantial funding.
The council's annual meeting takes place on Tuesday and it looks as though the three councillors may have changing roles.
Karen Hamilton is being nominated as chair of the highways and transportation scrutiny committee. If successful, she will effectively be number 2 in the highways department.
Jon Hunt continues as Lib Dem group leader on the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority and will be nominated to continue as chair of the children and education scrutiny committee.
Ray Hassall will be joining the public protection committee after stepping down as cabinet member for the leisure department.
It's worth recording some of Ray's achievements over the three years he has held his post. Quite a lot of work has impacted on Perry Barr with its two major parks and the Alexander Stadium and sometimes he has faced criticism for being responsible for major decisions. However his knowledge of the department is going to continue to be invaluable to local people, precisely because we have so many issues.
Ray brought the half-marathon to Birmingham, setting a great example by taking part himself.
He's been involved in hard negotiations to bring top Olympics teams to Birmingham for 2012. It's no secret we are talking about the US Track Team.
He got park wardens back in the parks - look at the impact Jez Lilley has had on Perry Hall Park.
Talk to him and he can reel off a long list of what he's been involved with!
Jon Hunt writes:
several significant things that I was involved in getting through the transport authority (Centro) on Monday.
1/ there's an agreement to review the cost of child and young people's concessionary passes. This budget has been under-spending by more than £1 million because of declining numbers of children and young people. There's been quite a lot of pressure to look at London's free pass system and the UK Youth Parliament has organised several events recently. In fact the West Midlands has a very good pass system which allows students up to the age of 18 to get discounted travel. However more work needs to be done to encourage young people to use public transport (rather than family cars) to get to school. And an annual pass does cost several hundred pounds.
2/ Saving bus routes. I steered through an agreement with National Express (former TWM) which will now cover the whole region. The deal seeks to encourage more bus use. We've had some good local deals recently but often they've been undermined by axing of other bus routes. Under this deal, Centro and local councils will get plenty of notice and a chance to save threatened bus routes before they are withdrawn. Ray O'Toole, MD of National Express, joined us to sign the deal on Monday.
3/ Our Lib Dem group continues to keep up the pressure to get local rail lines reopened in Birmingham. This hardly affects Perry Barr very much at all but I need to mention it! The plan is to put two new routes into Moor Street Station, enabling half a dozen new local stations to open. We're disappointed that regional spending plans of Network Rail and the regional local authorities and AWM do not envisage work starting until 2014 - especially when they want to put hundreds of millions into road schemes around the region.
The users of this lovely park are up in arms about a request from the cricket league to take on more pitches.
A local campaign has been launched and it's great to see that people care.
However we need to make clear that this is not an agreed council plan. Several years ago when a strategy for the parks was agreed we made it clear that in our view the cricket should stay the west side of the river and the east side should continue to be enhanced for general leisure. Under park warden Jez Lilley there have been some terrific improvements and a lot of work by volunteers also.
Ray Hassall is cabinet member for leisure and he confirmed to the Ward Advisory Board on Monday night that he has put a block on any cricket pitches returning to what is known as the "air field", a large green south of Rocky Lane where people used to fly model planes and where football pitches are located. The site was used for cricket five years ago when work was under way on the River Tame and we had a bit of a battle to get it reinstated. (A classic example was two years ago when some cricketers hijacked it on Carnival Day causing major traffic chaos).
So we support the bulk of the aims of the campaigners but wish to make it clear that this is not an agreed plan! Our position as ward councillors has not changed - the Park is a Park, not just a Playing Field! Here's a link to their site.
* More park news. On May 30th the Friends of Perry Hall Park are planning an open day to celebrate the work they have done. There's a plan for a local history exhibition. They're having one or two problems with red-tape which need to be resolved and Ray has offered to help ensure that no jobsworth gets in the way!
Link back to winter pictures of the park.
The plan to convert the historic Clifton Cinema at Tower Hill to a Chinese buffet has been welcomed by most people in the local community following its closure as a bingo hall. The new owners are promising considerable investment for a tasteful conversion and many people are looking forward to their tasty menus.
Sadly a new proposal is antagonising the local community. This is to extend opening and licensed hours until 230 in the morning. Applications have been placed with both the licensing committee and the planning committee.
Licensing laws mean that only direct neighbours can object to the licensing committee and by the time licensing applications are circulated not many comments can be submitted.
However the planning application has now arrived and is likely to meet opposition. We know that immediate neighbours on Tower Hill and Law Cliff Road are concerned about car doors banging into the early hours. The problem we have is we don't know what the hours will be used for - if there is any suggestion of holding large parties with large amounts of alcohol into the early hours the wider community will also be affected - it's not a good place for a night-club! If it's just for the sake of a few late-night diners, it's hard to complain.
In the meantime we can report that ten days has been added to the consultation time for the planning application - taking it into early May. The consultation letter that went out earlier this week originally stated the application was until 14.30 hrs - it should have read 2.30am! So we are now awaiting a new consultation letter.
Jon Hunt reports:
There are still fading posters in houses on the Walsall Road from 2003-4 when proposals to run the Metro up the road were first announced and created major opposition from residents adjoining the route (most of our ward).
A lot has happened since then but this week I think has seen a major development.
To recap: the original proposal, which Centro and the then City Council administration kept secret until the last minute was to run trams up to the Scott Arms with a view to creating a park and ride from the motorway.
Apart from the environmental impact on the Walsall Road, I quickly established that the plans would rapidly undermine local bus services. The Metro was only commercially viable if most bus passengers transferred to it. Our preferred alternative, which the city council finally agreed to support, was to end the Metro at Perry Barr so it could also pick up through passengers from Kingstanding, New Oscott and Sutton Coldfield.
However the Metro plan was never deleted from the maps or from the Local Transport Plan. What did happen was that the city council changed its priorities for Metro - putting in an A45 route to the Airport ahead of the Walsall Road. The practical impact has been there has been very very little prospect of the A34 route ever happening - and in fact the red route and bus showcase scheme has delivered massively improved bus services.
At a recent constituency committee meeting at Tower Hill Library I had a go at city planners who had yet again put the so-called Varsity Route into the Big City Plan. The reality is that the plan is unlikely ever to happen in anyone's lifetime.
However since I've been on the Passenger Transport Authority, since 2004, new thinking has permeated Centro.
So on Monday the PTA (now the Integrated Transport Authority) approved a draft of a new "Integrated Public Transport Prospectus" with some big changes proposed on the A34 plans.
This for the first time proposes to take "rapid transit" all the way to Walsall but with a big difference. What is proposed is bus rapid transit and/or Metro.
This I understand would mean taking Metro to Perry Barr - as always seemed sensible - and then building on the existing bus improvements to create new style fast bus services- bus rapid transit - to Walsall. Who knows it might even find a solution to the Scott Arms!
It is still a long, long way away, whatever happens, but this seems to me more in keeping with what the community wanted - fast bus access in both directions and a Metro serving the whole of north Birmingham at Perry Barr.
The last meeting of the ward committee heard that it is proposed that the Birmingham International Carnival be held in Perry Barr Park on August 2nd this year.
Ward councillors have asked in the past for better consultation about the event, which could be a great event but usually poses big organisational headaches and provokes a lot of complaints from local residents.
Karen Hamilton was able to attend the last meeting of the city council's planning group. However we were dismayed to learn that the carnival committee has stated it will not have a Perry Barr ward councillor on its committee.
Our inquiries suggest the event is by no means guaranteed. For a start the council has not agreed its grant and is unlikely to until it is satisfied the organisation of the carnival is up to scratch.
Secondly the carnival needs a specific licence from the licensing committee to operate. Last time it breached its noise limits big time and we had a lot of complaints from some roads. We would hope the committee would require cast iron guarantees that noise will be controlled ie by limiting the number of sound systems on site.
In general this should be a cause for celebration and could be a great community event. The carnival procession is always magnificent. So why do the ward councillors receive the news with dread? Because something always goes wrong.
In 2007 the Carnival was held on a blistering hot day and attracted record crowds. That put pressure on the local roads but in truth quite a few problems were caused by simple human error. Each time we work with the organisers to put these errors right - and each time something else happens!
Last time there were problems with parking, noise and non-delivery of resident passes.
Starting with noise, in the Perry Villa Estate this reached 85 decibels which is about 25dbs more than the acceptable limt. So we're pressing for two things this year; 1/ to move the funfair away from the built up side of the park 2/ to limit the sound systems to the two mainstages. We do not believe the private DJ systems that come with the Carnival are acceptable. Last time speakers were pointed across the valley and blasted the Beeches estate for a period of up to six hours causing a raft of complaints from families in Curbar Road and beyond.
2/ Parking. Something very simple went wrong last time. A parking area was designated in Perry Hall Park. Stewards turned up and found a cricket match being played on the area - in spite of the fact that we had asked organisers to check cricket was cancelled. The stewards didn't consult anyone and closed the car park, just as the roads were closed for the procession. Chaos!! There was in fact still plenty of space in the park but nobody had told the stewards they could use it. It was Jon Hunt who went down with department manager Kevin Brown and found out what had happened and got the car park reopened. But by that time hundreds of cars had parked in semi-legal locations around Perry Barr and Great Barr.
The truth is that getting previous problems sorted is relatively easy. Anticipating what will go wrong this time is much harder. For years weve been asking about the quality of stewarding - proper briefings and good communication could make a real difference, as could ensuring that officials pay attention when they are told about problems on the day.
A couple of developments in the Witton area ahead of our ward committee meeting on Monday (9th) which will be at Witton community centre at 7pm.
First planning permission has been given for a large housing development on the former Siemens site, by Tame Road and Brookvale Road. We've welcomed this as we want to bring this derelict site into use. The plans have been developed by Villa, the site owners, and of course it remains to be seen whether developers can be attracted.
The proposals look very attractive and would improve the environment around Witton station, creating riverside walks. The two issues are flooding and the loss of villa parking spaces. Everybody has been satisfied that the plans involve adequate flood defences and preparation.
In addition the revise Villa parking scheme is now bedding down after some months of confusion. This means that both householders and a limited number of their visitors can now park on match days in the residential areas - but fans cannot.
The second issue has been raised in the press today and that is the possible move of the wholesale markets to the IMI site off Brookvale Road. This would obviously be good for the local economy but we would want to look carefully at any plans as it would mean a significant increase in traffic on Brookvale Road.
For years the pavements around Calshot School, Great Barr, have been blighted by regular deposits of dog mess.
This year we've agreed with the police and the environmental warden service to have a major drive to tackle this problem.
We've been building up the environmental warden service over the last six years - and one of the reasons the newly-elected Liberal Democrat councillors back in 2003 and 2004 were keen to hire wardens was because of this problem of fouling.
Any dog fouling is an environmental hazard. However to do it on the pavement by the gates of an infant school or a nursery is nothing less than a crime.
Most dog-owners are responsible. They carry dog-bags and trowels and pick up the mess. A minority are giving others a bad name.
So we are sorry to report that in spite of the campaign that has been launched the problem is getting no better. So far the police have circulated households in the area of the school and attached prominent signs to the school fences.
The Walsall Road police welcome calls and information about the problem. They can be contacted directly on 428 6140
One mother told Jon Hunt last night that she had challenged a dog-owner directly in sight of one of these signs over the last few days. The dog-owner declined to accept responsibility for the mess being created.
It's becoming clear the only answer to the problem will be prosecutions. Residents in one neighbouring road are complaining their verges have been turned into a canine convenience.
Dog-owners who persist in abusing the pavements and putting the health of children at risk need to be aware that both the neighbourhood police team and the warden service are committed to dealing with this problem - as are we!
Here's some more pictures of the parks in the snow today with the sun out. A view of the moat at Perry Hall and the lake on the River Tame, with a swan centre stage.
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A Birmingham-wide review of grass roots cricket is being launched in a bid to build on the huge enthusiasm for the game following England’s Ashes success this summer......."