Greenridge Action Group Launch

The Daily Echo is carrying a report about the Greenridge Action Group's launch in Lytchett Minster and Upton here.

Greenridge, Upton - Public Meeting

I spoke last night at the public meeting at the Upton Community Centre about the campaign to persuade Hall and Woodhouse to work with the community to provide an acceptable use for the site.  The meeting was very well attended with some really good points made.

I had already written to the Lytchett Minster and Upton Community Association (LUCA) about the situation with the pub and this formed the basis of what I said:

The market for the night-time economy and social drinking has been declining for some time. Most people blame the smoking ban. In my opinion, that’s simply an easy answer. In fact it’s been a combination of factors; the increase in mortgage rates from eighteen months ago onwards, the cheap availability of alcohol through supermarkets which has encouraged people to drink at home and the changes in the licensing act making it much easier to obtain alcohol have all played their part. My thoughts on all of this and particularly the availability of ridiculously cheap alcohol are well documented elsewhere.

The one thing we have learnt over the past couple of years is that in order for the business to survive we have had to invest in it. Improve our premises, improve our entertainment and improve the ambience of the venue in general. For Hall and Woodhouse to be giving you the answers they have is, I have to say, something of a cop out. The Greenridge may well be too large a premises to sustain profitably for them. However, to propose the plans for disposal of the site altogether smacks, to me, of their ignoring the potential of the site and following what their marketing people have told them should be their demographic.

Having seen the investment they have put in elsewhere, I am afraid that Upton probably doesn’t match that for them. Trying to get them to change their mind about pulling out is therefore going to be relatively fruitless. Ideally the course should be to suggest they look for a purchaser from the sector who would be happier to trade from the site. It may be that they needed to be persuaded of this course of action by opposition to their various plans for the site. Your campaign to shame them over the loss of such an important local amenity is also an excellent course to take. I firmly believe that once we allow local amenities to disappear, such as pubs, post offices and libraries then we are condemning our communities to sterility and slow decline. A very short sighted approach given that I think economic stringency is likely to force many of us to a much more local view of things in the coming years.

Let's hope Hall and Woodhouse recognise their social responsibility and look for a use for the site that includes some kind of hospitality venue.

The Greenridge Pub, Upton

The Greenridge public house has an iconic status in the centre of Upton.  It's also the only public house in this town of 6,000 people.

The owners of the property, Hall and Woodhouse closed it some time ago, citing declining trade and anti social behavioural problems with some customers.

They now plan to sell the site, possibly for a care home or alternatively a largely residential development.  

We took Theresa May to see the site when she visited Mid Dorset last month.

The Lytchett Minster and Upton Community Association (LUCA) are opposing the plans, hoping to persuade Hall and Woodhouse to retain a pub, restaurant or coffee shop in the middle of the town, there being no other place for people to meet and socialise.

A public meeting to discuss the plans and public opposition will be held on Friday evening (May 30th) at 8pm in the Upton Community Centre.  I'll be there to say a few words.  Come along if you can.

Roy calls for affordable homes for local people

Chairman of Purbeck District Council, Roy Anderson, is most concerned about the provision of affordable housing for local people.

“These development plans make no provision for ensuring that local people are given preferential consideration when they are built,” says Roy.

The Government inspectors are recommending that 2,400 homes should be built throughout Purbeck in addition to the proposed development between Lytchett Minster and Lytchett Matravers.

“If the profile of buyers for these homes remains similar to those for the new developments in many locations around Purbeck, up to 60% of the purchasers could be people from outside the area looking for a second, holiday, home,” says Roy.

“The Government must ensure that local people are able to decide where these developments are placed, what kind of housing they provide and, most importantly, that incentives can be offered to ensure that they are available to local people.”

Gardeners' Question Time and Council Funding

Not normally found together in the same sentence, I fully admit.

I quite enjoy listening to Gardeners' Question Time on Radio 4.  Invariably their are questions asked that apply equally to my own gardening experience.

I was listening last week and heard a question from a member of the audience in Durham about what to do with the plastic plant pots she obtained from the garden centre when buying new plants.  She complained that her local authority, Durham City Council, did not offer a plastic recycling service and wanted some ideas from the panel as to other uses to which the pots could be put.

The panel comprised members who mostly lived in the South and expressed surprise that Durham didn't offer a plastic recylcing services as all their local councils did.

It dawned on me that this is a symptom of the imbalance in funding for local government which we suffer from so severely here in Dorset.

Presumably, Durham City Council don't have the same cost pressures that our local councils do and therfore have not been 'encouraged' to bring in a wider recycling scheme to cut their land fill waste.  The logical conclusion must therefore be that not only is the Government's financial settlement for local authorities unfair, it's also not very green. 

Family Farms

Iain Dale has a great post about how the changes to UK Farming have effected he and his family here. I highly recommend it to you.

My family are remarkably similar, my mother's family were in farming in North Herfordshire on the Essex border and we subsequently moved to North Devon. The changes Iain talks about and, particularly in the Torridge area, Foot and Mouth, have changed farming and the countryside for ever, and not for the better.

Bournemouth Mobile Phone Mast refused on appeal

I've just posted this on my Bournemouth Councillor's blog:

I have received the result of the Inspector’s report about the O2 mast at the back of the houses in Southwick Road.

I’m absolutely delighted to report that it has been turned down and the Inspector has basically told O2 to go and look again at a site on Iford Meadows.

I really thought we might lose this one and can’t tell you how pleased I am that it’s been turned down.

What's remarkable about the decision is that the Inspector based it upon quality of life issues. Our campaign majored on planning grounds, but also highlighted that the stress of having a mast in this location and it not being clear whether there was or was not a health risk effected the local residents quality of life and therefore breached their human rights.

I hope that we might be able to bring the same arguments in to play to help the residents fighting the mast at The Clump in Broadstone and elsewhere in Mid Dorset and North Poole.

Bournemouth Borough Council Post Offices Meeting

Straight off the plane this afternoon and down to the Town Hall to attend a meeting of the Developing Communities and Tackling Crime Scrutiny and Review Panel. The meeting was about the Post Office closure programme in Dorset and a number of councillors and members of the public attended.

I'm delighted to report that a motion deploring the closure programme was passed by the panel unanimously. They also called for Bournemouth Council to approach Poole and Christchurch to organise a joint approach to any proposed closures, starting with Bournemouth offering support to Poole over their opposition to the closure of the Post Office at Adastral Square, Canford Heath.

The motion now goes to Bournemouth's Cabinet for their approval and action.

Police Community Support Officers

My comments about the Government not funding the increase in Police Community Support Officers promised in their election manifesto has raised some interesting comment, I've recieved a number of e-mails and a couple of comments have been posted here.

These clearly come from people who know more than I do about the issue.

I fully realise that the greatest benefit of the PCSO's is their deterrent effect. The posters seem to be suggesting however that the money would be better spent in funding fewer, but fully trained, police officers. I'd be interested in your comments.

A salutory lesson from the US

I have been to Florida before, but never to the part where I am currently staying, which is the coastal strip to the north of Miami. My previous trip was limited to the Keys and Miami itself.

The one thing that has struck me is that there really are no facilities for pedestrians in this area. The communities to the north of Miami create one huge strip of suburbia, strung out along the beaches. The beach fronts themselves are not disimilar to similar areas in Spain or France, however there any similarity ends.

Unless you have a car I can't see how you can reach facilities. It took us some time to find a grocery store yesterday. There are the odd Seven - 11s, however these don't sell fresh fruit, vegetables or bread. Unless you are able to take your car to the local out of town supermarket there are no facilities to buy food. There are of course the ubiquitous malls, however even these have no food shops in them. How do the elderly and vulnerable manage?

The announcement of the closure of the Adastral Square Post Office in Canford Heath this week brings home again how fragile our local services are. If we're not to become like Florida we need to ensure our local communities retain these services.

We announced on Tuesday the extension of our petition to specifically cover the Adastral Square closure, asking the post office to ensure that the service is retained in this area of the Heath. Local facilities have to be fought for these days, I'm determined we'll lead that fight.

A salutory lesson from the US

I have been to Florida before, but never to the part where I am currently staying, which is the coastal strip to the north of Miami. My previous trip was limited to the Keys and Miami itself.

The one thing that has struck me is that there really are no facilities for pedestrians in this area. The communities to the north of Miami create one huge strip of suburbia, strung out along the beaches. The beach fronts themselves are not disimilar to similar areas in Spain or France, however there any similarity ends.

Unless you have a car I can't see how you can reach facilities. It took us some time to find a grocery store yesterday. There are the odd Seven - 11s, however these don't sell fresh fruit, vegetables or bread. Unless you are able to take your car to the local out of town supermarket there are no facilities to buy food. There are of course the ubiquitous malls, however even these have no food shops in them. How do the elderly and vulnerable manage?

The announcement of the closure of the Adastral Square Post Office in Canford Heath this week brings home again how fragile our local services are. If we're not to become like Florida we need to ensure our local communities retain these services.

We announced on Tuesday the extension of our petition to specifically cover the Adastral Square closure, asking the post office to ensure that the service is retained in this area of the Heath. Local facilities have to be fought for these days, I'm determined we'll lead that fight.

Competition Commissioners and supermarket chains

The Competition Commission are carrying out a report in to UK Supermarkets. The initial report is about to be published, a full report is due out next year. The BBC have the full story here.

Publicity is concentrating on the supermarkets holding on to 'land banks'; land they have bought for possible development but that they have not begun building on as yet.

For me a much more important issue is the effect that supermarkets are having on local retail markets. The Commission is looking in to how large supermarkets can effect the economy of their surrounding area, with particular reference to grocery shopping and local shops and shopping centres.

I welcome their investigation, I've blogged before about my concern over the power of out of town stores to neutralise smaller businesses in their surrounding area and local town centres, thereby forming a monopoly.

Support for small town, suburban and village businesses is going to be vital if we are to truly retain and create sustainable and vibrant local communities.

Adastral Square Post Office Closure

I've been contacted by a number of very concerned residents of Canford Heath this evening. It appears that the Post Office in Adastral Square has announced it will be closing at the end of next month.

I'm not sure if this is the first of the closures we anticipated as a result of the Government's restructuring announcement last month. I'm attempting to find out more detail at the moment and will keep you abreast of developments.

Youth Crime

Attending the Crime Reduction Parnership meeting made me think about one of the common concerns raised there, that of youth crime.

I therefore have spent some time today looking out some information from the party and elsewhere about the issue. The figures are quite astounding. The shocking statistics were obtained by Conservatives under the Freedom of Information Act.

· Across the country, a third of all muggings last year were on 11-16 year olds. They are seen as easy targets by muggers seeking mobile phones and MP3 players. In turn, 11-16 year olds were responsible for 40 per cent of all robberies.

· The Government, despite claiming street crime is a top priority, does not properly monitor the level of youth muggings.

· There were a projected 113,000 robberies on 11 to 16-year-olds last year across England & Wales. This is equivalent to over 600 muggings a day for each of the 195 school days.

· In Dorset 23%, or 55 of 239 personal robberies reported were on 11 to 16 year olds.

These new statistics reveal a worrying area of crime that has gone unrecognised. This is likely to be the tip off the iceberg given how few crimes are actually reported.

Secondary school students and their parents will immediately recognise the picture of life these crime figures paint. Having mobiles and ipods routinely stolen, being marched to the cashpoint, seeing their friends mugged – this is the everyday life for too many of our teenagers. Too often these crimes are carried out by people of their own age.

Youth-on-youth crime could be a serious long-term problem and the Government are not properly monitoring it. I believe young people have a right to expect violent crime against them to be taken seriously by this Government.

For that reason I want to work with our local Crime Reduction Partnerships to identify both the victims and perpetrators of these crimes. We should be offering support to the victims and looking for Community involvement in the identification of those who carry out the attacks.

Upton Crime Reduction Partnership

I attended a meeting of the Lytchett Minster and Upton Crime Reduction Partnership this week.

I've mentioned before on the blog how, so often, Conservatives take an unsung lead in local communities. This was a perfect example of this kind of positive action.

Certainly not everyone at the meeting was a Conservative. Indeed, I would suspect that we might have been in a minority, however, Cllr Paul Johns, former Cllr Pam Hindley and Bill Pipe take an active role in the group.

What is apparent is that the group consists of people who are completely committed to their community and its improvement. I have enormous respect for them all and I hope that I might be able to go along to some of their future meetings.

Just being able to sit in and ask questions on occasion gave me a great insight in to the problems facing local people. Most of their issues result from anti social behaviour by young people. Some of the more serious crime is drug related, however the majority consists of vandalism, criminal damage, graffiti and the like.

It has, on occasion, created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty for some local residents. The volunteers of the Crime Reduction Partnership are making a great contribution to dealing with these issues. They tie local residents groups, youth groups, Purbeck District Council, Dorset County Council, Upton Town Council and local businesses together.

The work of the local youth club and the County's youth workers has been particularly dedicated in dealing with many of these issues.

I spent some time in London on Thursday talking about community involvement and ideas for linking communities in to local improvement initiatives. I think there may well be opportunities to assist the Crime Reduction Partnership by organising community help in, for example, youth mentoring schemes. It's something I'll be looking in to over the coming weeks.

Merley and Bearwood

I know the Mid Dorset and North Poole constituency quite well, however there is no substitute for being shown around by someone who knows the area really well.

In Merley and Bearwood there is no one better than Katie Hives, who with Leo Belcham provides a superb service as borough councillors for the ward. Katie has lived in the ward, with her husband Richard, for many years. Katie is totally committed to her community and really knows it inside out, down to naming people at different addresses and giving background to the issues she has helped them with.

Yesterday morning Katie took the time to drive me around her area. What a diverse and interesting one it is, from the rural areas of Ashington, to Merley and Canford Magna and then Bearwood, which intermingles with Kinson as the boundary between Bournemouth and Poole is staggered along it's north edge.

We had a cup of coffee in the Bearwood Community Centre. The local church there have done a brilliant job renovating the centre and providing a drop in coffee room for the local community. The centre serves the residents of both Bournemouth and Poole, and while it is in Poole I think it deserves support from Bournemouth too as it's providing support to Bournemouth residents who live within a few hundred yards.

I hope the ward councillors for Kinson South might be able to find some support from their ward improvement fund for the centre.

Huge thanks to Katie for spending her morning with me, there really is no substitute to being shown around by someone so steeped in the area.

Helping with the cost of living

The official inflation rate at the moment is 2.7%, I think it's pretty clear to all of us that this doesn't reflect the true increase in the cost of living in the past twelve months.

I've certainly found that the combination of increases in utility costs, the mortgage rate, council tax and fuel duty have hit my pocket.

As many of you may know, I'm one of the owners of Rubyz, the cabaret restaurants in Bournemouth. A night out with us is one of those luxuries people tend to cut out if money is tight, and we've noticed in the last six months that many of our regular customers aren't coming as often as before. The answer from most is that money is tight and therefore they simply don't have the spare cash to go out as much as possible.

Talking to other people with small businesses this seems to be fairly common.

I'm therefore very pleased that the party is recognising this fact with the second update of their 'Sort it' web site. The publicity for the site says:

Life is expensive and the cost of living is increasing faster than our salaries, making our pockets feel ever emptier.

But don’t panic, there are ways to cut the cost of living and live your life for less.

Just click below to check out the sort-it website’s latest issue – ‘live life for less.’

http://www.sort-it.co.uk

The site has links to a number of different web addresses where you can compare the cost of utility companies, find out where the cheapest petrol is in your area and even compare the cost of your weekly shop between supermarkets.

Save Dorset's Post Offices - Update from Oliver Letwin

Oliver Letwin MP, who of course represents West Dorset, is in the process of establishing a task force to look at ways by which sub post office incomes can be increased, thereby enabling them to stay open.

Here's what his office has to say:

Oliver Letwin, who has campaigned vigorously against post office closures both locally (at Toller Porcorum and Bradpole) and nationally, is now seeking to establish a task force. This will consist of representatives of all levels of local government and local bodies, others with expertise in the field, and volunteers willing to lend their support. Their role will be to prepare plans to increase revenues or find imaginative ways of sharing costs for sub-post offices that are threatened as a result of the Government’s new proposals.

It's an excellent initiative and one that hopefully can be extended to the rest of the County.

Community Action

At a dinner party the other evening a friend said to me: ‘Now don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not really the right type of person to be a Tory candidate; you’re too nice and too caring.’ I took this somewhat back handed compliment in the positive light it was meant.

It started me thinking however, particularly in light of our efforts this Christmas Day, swimming in aid of the Mayor of Bournemouth’s charities.

The perception my friend carries with him, that Conservatives are traditionally uncaring and disinterested in those less fortunate than themselves is plainly wrong.

Conservatives have so often been at the forefront of community action. The problem is that they don’t shout about it. How many times have I spoken to Conservative activists who are heavily involved in charitable activities.

In my short time getting to know the members of Mid Dorset and North Poole Conservatives, I am already aware that we have members who are very much involved with the Citizens Advice Bureaux, Guide Dogs for the Blind, Julia’s House, Help the Aged and various cancer charities.

With local authority grants being so tightly squeezed the way ahead in provision of effective community and social support must be through greater cooperation between public sector and voluntary agencies. This could be as complex as social services using the great work that the CAB’s or Relate carry out to enhance their activities. Or as simple as encouragement of the In Bloom committees throughout the area to take over and enhance our roadsides.

Our government, particularly local government, should be playing a proactive role in encouraging and linking in the services of voluntary organisations to their own. There is an enormous pool of good will and support from the voluntary sector on hand in our area. I’d like to see our local authorities sitting down, as a group, with our local voluntary agencies. They should be discussing how our volunteers can assist in further supporting their efforts. Just as importantly, our local authorities should be asking our voluntary services what assistance they need.

The support can be as straight forward as reducing the barriers to collections for their charities. It’s a shame that this doesn’t currently happen in Bournemouth; hopefully a new administration will address this issue after next May.

It's an issue I'm passionate about and one I'll be returning to over time. If you're involved in a voluntary agency in Mid Dorset and North Poole then do please get in touch with me, I'm very keen to find out what you're doing and how I, and the local Conservatives, might help you.

Lessons from Reviving Small Town America

The Christmas and New Year edition of The Economist had a fascinating article about attempts to revive small town America.

The problem is perfectly summarized in this paragraph:

Most small towns are still struggling, as a tour of boarded-up Main Streets and closed John Deere dealerships in the rural heartland will show. “Outmigration” has drained their populations over the past century. Agri-businesses have replaced small farms, and shopping malls an hour away (not to mention Wal-Mart and the internet) have undercut local shops. In many small towns only old people are for the most part left, as there is little to attract the young. Just 17% of America's population today lives outside metropolitan areas. Some surviving small towns have simply become bedroom communities for large cities, and have lost their character.

Thank goodness we don't face that kind of problem as yet and probably never will to the same extent. However, the movement of younger people in to our larger towns, forced there not least by the cost of housing (a subject I'll come back to in a separate post later), is having the knock on effect of removing new businesses and entrepreneurialism from our smaller towns and villages.

The really interesting part of the Economist article was here:

Some organisations are trying to help small towns along. One of the most important is the National Trust Main Street Centre, which aims to revitalise central streets by preserving historic buildings. Volunteers staff its local branches; most states have them. Funding is local, but the national organisation provides training and know-how.

One of the biggest challenges, according to Doug Loescher, the centre's director, is that many towns have been trying for years to revive themselves, with little success. “There's usually a lot of scepticism that another approach can really make a difference,” he says. Local officials also have to realise that downtowns have changed for ever. Clothing and hardware stores will never return to the town centre. Rather, says Mr Loescher, restaurants and bars, government offices and even private houses should be given a place near Main Street.

State aid for small entrepreneurs also helps. Montana, which has a notably populist governor, has been pushing especially hard. In its last legislative session, the state legislature made even the tiniest of businesses eligible for aid. But Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Centre for Rural Affairs in Nebraska, says it is expensive to provide small business development services in rural America, even if there is a good return on investment. Rather appealingly, he proposes that the federal government shave 5% off its enormous farm-subsidy programme—which goes mostly to mega-farms—and give it to small businesses. “You could quadruple what the federal government spends on entrepreneurial rural development,” he says.

You can read the full story here.

I think there are lessons in that statement for the UK, for farm subsidy payments read the Common Agricultural Policy. Funding for start up and small business in rural areas would bring dynamism and life back in to our rural and suburban economy. There are very many people doing great things in business in Dorset. Just think how much more they could do, how many more people they could employ, how much more money they could inject in to our local economy if they were given a little more help.

I think that's a goal worth fighting for, I'm committed to doing that.