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Agenda and minutes

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Avenue Primary School, Avenue Road Extension, Clarendon Park

Contact: Matthew Reeves/ Francis Connolly 

Items
No. Item

1.

ELECTION OF CHAIR

Councillors will elect a Chair for the meeting.

Minutes:

Councillor Lynn Senior was elected as Chair for the meeting.

2.

APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

Minutes:

There were no apologies for absence.

3.

DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

The first main item on theagenda is Declarations of Interest where Councillors have to say if there is anything on the agenda they have a personal interest in. For example if a meeting was due to discuss a budget application put forward by a community group and one of the Councillors was a member of that group, they would not be able to take part in the decision on that budget application.

 

Councillors are asked to declare any interest they may have in the business on the agenda, and/or indicate that Section 106 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 applies to them.

 

 

Minutes:

Councillor Senior declared a personal and non-prejudicial interest in the item on the proposed new health centre as her partner was a Team Leader, in the Transport Development section of the Council and had been involved in planning discussions.

 

Councillor Senior also declared a personal and non-prejudicial interest in the item on the proposed new health centre as she used to use the student health centre.

4.

MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING pdf icon PDF 137 KB

The minutes of the previous Castle Community Meeting, held on 12 October 2009, are attached and Members are asked to confirm them as a correct record.

 

Minutes:

Minute 73 – Budget Applications

It was noted that on budget item 3, relating to funding for Queens Road Allotments, the additional funding came from Knighton Community Meeting, not Stoneygate. Further, the funding did not cover the whole of the cost of the installation of the fencing and security, therefore the wording be changed to ‘towards funding the installation of’.

 

RESOLVED:

that the minutes of the Castle Community Meeting held on 12 October 2009 were agreed as a correct record.

5.

BUDGET

Councillors are reminded that they will need to declare any interest they may have in budget applications, and/or indicate that Section 106 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 applies to them.

 

No budget applications had been received at the time of producing the agenda. The Member Support Officer will report at the meeting of any which have been received following publication of the agenda.

Minutes:

Councillor Senior reported that there would be no budget items considered at this meeting as they had only been received shortly before the meeting. Therefore there were a number of details which Councillors wished to confirm before agreeing to consider the applications.

 

Councillor Kitterick also informed the meeting that there was approximately £10,000 left in the budget and invited people to put in bids if they felt there were suitable opportunities to do so.

 

The date of next meeting had been moved to enable a meeting to take place to consider any outstanding budget applications. This would take place on 24 March.

6.

PRESENTATION ON PROPOSED NEW HEALTH CENTRE

A new health centre is proposed for Victoria Park Road. Representatives from the developer and architect will be present to give details of the proposals and get feedback from residents.

Minutes:

Residents received a presentation from Dr. Pratima Khunti and Jim Hart from the West Hart Partnership architects.

 

Pratima made the following points:-

 

- The 9 doctors and five nurses had difficulties operating successfully from the existing premises.

- There was a great deal of demand for health services in the local area which weren’t being met – the patient list size was being restricted.

- Several sites had been considered over the past 10 years.

- This site, on Victoria Park Road was the only feasible site, one on Freemens Common turned out to be unviable.

- She hoped that residents would see the benefit of moving to new premises where better services could be provided and better disabled access.

- The ‘air-raid’ bunkers were the site of the new centre and it was intended to design the new building to be ‘in keeping’ with the local area.

 

Jim made the following points:-

 

- His main role was to mitigate the visual impact of the new building, but it was also an opportunity to invigorate the area.

- The tennis courts to the south of the site would be improved ecologically.

- The building would be as small a ‘site take’ as possible and a restricted amount of parking.

- The design of the building would take advantage of the differing ground levels of the site to restrict its visual impact.

- Car parking would be on the first floor roof of the building and a land bank would surround the building.

- A ‘suds’ wetland would be created to take the water run off from the building in an ecological way.

- There would be considerable focus on the landscaping of the site to further reduce visual impact.

 

Questions on the following areas were asked:-

 

The site currently had a lot of mature trees which would need removing, the building design looked ‘plastic box’ like others in the area and there would most likely be a growth in traffic / parking and access problems as a result of the development.

 

Jim Hart commented that the landscaping and the design of the building aimed to maintain and improve the quality of the area, the services of a good quality landscape architect had been employed. The ‘seeded’ trees would be removed from the site, but they would be replaced. With regard to parking, a survey of users of the surgery had shown that only 16% of existing users drove to the site and only 7% intended to drive to the new facility which meant on average, 1 car every 15 minutes. Access would be through the university, details on this did need working out, but this was found to be preferable to an access from Victoria Park Road which would have created bottle neck problems.

 

It was queried what was meant by ecology, in terms of improvements to the site?

 

Jim explained that there would be surveys (ie wildlife survey, bat survey) undertaken of the site and measures would be put  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

7.

BINS ON STREETS

Residents have raised a number of concerns with local Councillors about people leaving bins on streets. The City Warden Manager will be attendance to discuss any concerns which residents may have.

Minutes:

Barbara Whitcombe, City Warden Manager introduced this item. She informed the meeting that the City Wardens would be undertaking an exercise to work with residents to reduce the number of bins left on streets. She asked people to nominate streets which had particular problems which could be looked into first.

 

Residents raised points on a number of issues.

 

General Waste / Local Environmental Issues

A local resident raised a number of points with regard to waste / environmental issues in general as follows:-

 

- He felt the area was becoming a ‘student ghetto’ and there were problems with absentee landlords.

- There were problems on all streets with bins on streets, recycling boxes on streets, and a lack of appropriate maintenance of houses.

- With regard to fines for bins on streets, he felt that these would be ineffective as the population was highly transient.

- He felt that publicity campaigns were largely ignored.

- Incentives should be considered to encourage responsible behaviour.

- Additional refuse collectors should be employed to place bins back in alleyways and onto property frontages.

- Recycling boxes were ugly and big and added to the problems of untidy streets, canvas bags should be used.

- Student landlords should face greater regulation.

 

Barbara Whitcombe in response explained that the Council did work with the universities to create a register of student landlords who met certain criteria. Students were encouraged to use these landlords. Environmental Health Officers and Planning Enforcement Officers could also deal with individual problems as they arose. She also suggested that bins and recycling boxes strewn on the street could be reported to the City Warden who would look into the matter.

 

The resident felt that these measures were not sufficient to deal with the problems in Clarendon Park.

 

Councillor Kitterick commented that legislation was being introduced which required much tighter regulation, such as planning permission on houses which contained more than three unrelated people. This wouldn’t however be retrospective and apply to houses which were already let to more than three persons.

 

Waste Collection

A resident commented that an issue was raised at a previous meeting with regard to the street sweepers who swept the just before the bins and recycling boxes were emptied. It was felt that it would make sense for the sweepers to go round after the bin collection to remove any detritus left over from that process. Barbara Whitcombe agreed to look into this.

 

Bin Project

 

City Warden, Craig Bodsworth explained the process being undertaken with the bin project.

 

- A letter would be delivered to all houses in the street outlining the plan to remove bins from streets and giving advice on options.

- This will be every terraced street in Clarendon Park from Victoria Park Road to Greenhill Road.

- Patrols would then be undertaken and calling cards would be delivered and residents spoken to where the bin was still on the street.

- If this didn’t work and there was still a problem, the names  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

8.

THE FUTURE JOBS FUND

The meeting will receive a brief presentation outlining the opportunities which are arising from the funding received by the Council through the Future Jobs Fund.

Minutes:

Trevor Mee, Business Development Manager was in attendance to explain about the Future Jobs Fund.

 

- Government funded scheme to provide employment opportunities.

- It would provide a minimum of 25 hours work a week, with at least the minimum wage as long as the person had been out of work for 26 weeks.

- 727 jobs would be created by the end of May 2010.

- The jobs would be across the public / private and voluntary sectors in the city and county.

- Jobs were being advertised from now onwards via Job Centreplus.

- Voluntary organisations were welcomed to contact Trevor if they had additional job opportunities.

- The support package would cover wages, national insurance and money for training.

 

Trevor was asked to provide an update on progress in six months.

 

Further details about the Future Jobs Fund can be obtained from:

 

http://www.leicester.gov.uk/your-council-services/ep/regeneration/economic-development/jobsfund/

 

futurejobs@leicester.gov.uk

 

0116 2528637

 

Future Jobs Team

Regeneration

A10 New walk Centre

Welford Place

Welford Road

Leicester

LE1 6ZG

9.

DATE OF NEXT MEETING

The date of the next meeting at 6.30pm on Wednesday 7 April.

Minutes:

The next meeting would take place on Wednesday 24 March.

10.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Minutes:

Student Noise / Anti-Social Behaviour

 

Edmund Hockley informed the meeting that he was working closely with the Police to deal with noise and anti social behaviour problems. He noted that the University was keen to have good relations with local residents and he felt that most  students were the same. Edmund provided leaflets and cards with contact details and details of the services he could help with.