Local views on highways spending wanted

New county council rules mean that Rob Prowse now has £90,000 to allocate on local highways works from 1 April. While this is only 15% of the total amount of your money spent on roads, it does give the opportunity for a greater local say over which roads and pavements matter most.
Rob’s initial suggestions are set out in below. If you would like to suggest alternatives, please let us know.

London Road, pedestrian refuge.
Cell Barnes Lane, plane & inlay.
Cell Barnes lane verge reconstruction
Royston Road, footway reconstruction.
Maxwell Road, footway reconstruction.
Nelson Avenue, footway reconstruction.
Thirlmere Drive, footway reconstruction.
General Locations on Whitecroft Estate, footway reconstruction.

Please note that this list will cost rather more than £90,000.

£488 for disadvantaged pupils in St Albans schools

Liberal Democrats have always believed that education is the engine of social mobility, now we are making it happen.

Today the Government released the final Pupil Premium figures for every English local authority, constituency and school. The Government announced that every school this year will receive an extra £488 for each child on free school meals they have on their roll.

Schools in St Albans are getting an extra £655,000 from the Pupil Premium to improve the education of the most disadvantaged children.

The Pupil Premium is a policy the Lib dems devised and campaigned for, and put at the heart of our Coalition negotiations. Now it is more than good policy, it is a reality making a difference to the school down your road. It goes directly into classrooms and will benefit all pupils.

It is also a milestone in breaking the link between poverty and achievement, tackling Labour’s shocking legacy where the richest 16-year olds are three times as likely to get five good GCSEs as the poorest.

This is just the start. We know that some families eligible for free school meals don’t claim them, for example, because some don’t know they can, and so their schools are missing out on funding. We also need to find out what schools are doing that’s really making a difference.

If you’d like to help, you could contact your local school to find out how they are using their Pupil Premium funding, and how they are making sure they are reaching every child.

IS IT REALLY TOO COLD TO REPAIR OUR ROADS?

Herts Highways are under fire again – for ending the road repair season with 20% of planned works not carried out on the grounds it was too cold to continue, just as we had the hottest late September in a century.

Stephen Giles-Medhurst, the LibDem spokesperson on Highways and Transport, said ‘You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. We were recently told that the season for laying tar had finished because it was too cold. 20% of planned works were missed and damaged roads will have to wait till next spring. Yet the weather has been as hot as any time in the year. Clearly, the plans had no flexibility to allow for warm weather.

‘It’s just like the school caretaker who turns on the central heating on a fixed date, regardless of the temperature,’ continued Stephen. ‘We need to urgently review the way this work is planned, so that we don’t just stop on a fixed date and send everyone away. It’s not as if we can do without these road repairs – our roads and footpaths are crumbling!’

Westminster Lodge Leisure Centre starts to take shape

The erection of steelwork at the new Westminster Lodge Leisure Centre in St Albans has begun.

One of the main steel beams is 17m long, 1m deep, weighs 17 tonnes and is one of the heaviest that building contractor Willmott Dixon has ever installed.

Simon Ramage, Willmott Dixon’s on site Operations Manager said: “Installation of the steel frame is always a major milestone on any project, but we are especially pleased to have commenced the frame at Westminster Lodge as it is particularly complex. Our design team have spent many months detailing the frame, which contains a number of curves, radius elevations and several unusual oversized beams. So it’s great to see the final product being installed on site.”

To get the main beam into place, Willmott Dixon had to use a 100 ton crane to lift it. The beam is required both to give a clear span over the children’s confidence water to avoid having columns within this area, and to carry the load from the first floor over the training pool and café/bistro. All of the leisure centre steelwork is due to be completed by the middle of December, culminating with the installation of the 35m long timber Glulam roof beams over the main swimming pool.

Green Party slammed for running scare stories

St Albans only Green councillor, who announced this week that the county council was planning to shut the household waste recycling facility in St Albans, has been sharply criticised for running scare stories.

Local Lib Dem county councillor Chris White said: ‘Clearly he’s losing the plot. There was indeed a meeting at county hall last week but he wasn’t there – nor was anyone else from the Green Party. The Panel of councillors looked at moving or expanding the existing facility in St Albans – not closing it. In fact the position has not changed for many months so his story is not news at all.

‘I am no fan of the Tory regime at county hall – but local residents can be assured that any attempt by the county council to close any local facility will, as ever, be vigorously resisted. But I at least am not going to make up closures or other changes which are not on the cards in order to frighten people.’

Residents wishing to influence what it is really on the cards can complete the following short survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KS2K2Z2

Part Night Time Lighting

It takes a lot of electricity to power the county’s street lighting. Currently, the annual energy bill is running at £3.4m- and energy prices are rising. On 29 November 2010, the council’s cabinet approved plans for changes to street lighting designed to reduce the street lighting energy bill by up to £1.3m per year (at current prices).
The decision was to convert the majority of the county’s street lights to
part-night operation. In the future, most street lights will be on from dusk through to late evening and, during the winter, in the morning rush hour. They will, however, be extinguished during the late hours of the night when road and pedestrian traffic volumes are lower. The changes will be implemented over 18 months, starting in June-July 2011, with St Albans being converted in spring 2012. Most of the lights in the county will be converted to part-night operation. However, there are some exceptions where, lights will remain on all night. In agreeing the exceptions, discussions will be held with local county councillors, the county’s police force and road safety experts. It seems strange therefore that St Albans residents will not be consulted about this change that many will have concerns about.
Rob says, “Whilst I agree with the principle I do feel it strange that the County Council is not allowing the public to bring their questions and concerns forward. I have asked for a report to come to the next St Albans Highways Joint Members Panel on the 28th July and to the St Albans City Forum so that they can hear the details of the scheme”.

Lib Dem welcome for government action on 20 mph zones

Hertfordshire Lib Dems have welcomed the announcement last week by the
Coalition Government of measures to reduce the bureaucracy for councils
wanting to implement 20mph schemes.

Lib Dem Transport Minister Norman Baker has said that if councils and
local communities want to put in place 20 mph schemes on residential
roads or use common-sense measures such as variable speed limits outside
schools, then they should be able to do so without spending time and
money satisfying unnecessary Whitehall diktats.

The key changes in the process:

– Many of the current restrictions and obstacles to rolling out 20mph
zones are being removed so that they can be implemented on residential roads
with cheaper and fewer signs.
– Importantly councils will no longer require approval from Government
to introduce 20 mph zones.

In Hertfordshire Liberal Democrat councillors have actively campaigned
for 20mph zones and have asked the county council to support them and promise
funding for such schemes.

Lib Dem Highways Opposition Spokesperson Cllr Stephen
Giles-Medhurst has led the calls locally and hassuccessfully got two such schemes introduced in his own area.

Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst said: “Given the action by the Lib Dems in
the Coalition government, I hope the county council will now review its
current very restrictive policy on this and move quickly to
implement 20mph zones where residents want them.

“This is an important step forward in removing some of the red tape and
costs that make putting in 20 mph zones such an onerous task.

“20 mph zones are one of the key issues in making residential roads safer
for all their users, pedestrians, cyclists and motorists alike.”

County Council fails to meet target by £42m

New figures show the Conservative administration at county hall has managed to underspend its capital programme by a staggering £45m, of which £42m is ‘slippage’ – namely planned projects not being delivered.
Malcolm Cowan, LibDem spokesperson for finance, said: ‘This may sound dry, but what it means is that over £40m of improvements to classrooms, libraries and fire stations did not happen. So right across the county there are children being taught in mobile classrooms far longer than they need be.
‘It is unavoidable that some projects will fall behind, for good reasons and bad. What is not acceptable is that, once it is known a scheme cannot be delivered to the original timetable there are not other schemes ready to take their place.
‘With a backlog of building work that is costed in hundreds of millions of pounds, they need to be getting on with work as quickly as possible. Instead the Tories just claim that nothing can be done.’

Birklands Meadow Part 3

On Monday 13th June the woodland preservation order came back to the committee for discussion. Cllrs were surprised to see that there were no different proposals on the agenda. That the woodland should be removed from the preservation order until a new preservation order could be developed over the next few weeks. This would naturally be objected to by the County Council so that they had complete control over which trees they could fell. Again this was overturned, the committee confirming that the original preservation order be made permanent. Council officers were told clearly that a new order must be drawn up and agreed before the existing order could be modified.

Birklands Meadow Part 2

Last month the district council came up with a plan to remove another area of woodland in Birklands from a preservation order. This was successfully overturned by Lib Dem Cllrs at a planning meeting who argued that the reasons for protecting the trees had not changes and they were still worthy of protection. They persuaded the committee that rather than removing this area from the order officers should come back to the mext meeting with further proposals to protect the trees from any possible county council felling.