Entries Tagged 'Maidenhall Estate' ↓

The leaked document has found its way to me, with details on the Maidenhall Residents’ Assocation’s rent:

Address    Maidenhall Green, 21
Type     Shop
Tenant     Maidenhall Res Assoc
Rent Review    None
Lease Term and expiry 3 yrs 21.1.03
Market Value                  40,000
Current rent                   Peppercorn
Market Rent                     7,000
Discounted Market         3,500
Rent under the policy  
Increase or decrease      3,500
in current rent 
Change in Year One      875
Change in Year Two      1,750
Change in Year Three   2,625
Change in Year Four     3,500

So the MRA will have to find £3,500 after four years.  From where?  This is going to be a real hole in the budget of a totally volunteer run group for a shop which the council would not be able to find a tenant – as they haven’t with the old Proctor’s sausage shop on the same row.

Are Labour really claiming that they could get a 17.5% yield from an otherwise empty shop?  Seems like Labour once again prove why they will always mess up the economy.  Their sums never add up.

The Maidenhall Residents Association is without a doubt a model of community engagement, a model of the Big Society.  Labour may very well come along to their meetings, but you can see that they hate them.  And so it proved.

The idea that people work in their own communities withoug relying on Lords or Lady Bountiful from the other side of the Borough really, really sticks in their craw, as Kevin Algar correctly points out.

This is surely a big part of the reason why they have tried to shut the Association down.  Ipswich Spy has done a commendable job (and its not often I say that) in tracking down a leaked document that will raise rents to unaffordable levels for a number of community groups on their premises.  In the case of the Maidenhall Residents Association it is the shop in the Maidenhall Approach.  One does wonder what a market rent would be when a shop in the same row, the Proctors sausage shop, has been closed for at least the last five years.

I first got in touch with the MRA over the port noise and they bent over backwards to help on this issue and they have been a massive part of the community spirit that stops the Maidenhall Estate becoming just another sattelite of Chantry. 

As Ben Gummer said in their newsletter when he was elected:

Finally, I’d like to commend the Residents’ Association on the work it has done is running the shop on Maidenhall Green. I know that this is a lifeline to many people and I would like to take the opportunity to let everyone who helps keep this shop going that it is a service others elsewhere in Ipswich would love to see in their area. So I hope to encourage others to take up your idea!

Labour councillors seem dead set against it.

From the Suffolk Constabulary:

On Saturday 13th August at 3.50am on Maidenhall Green, Ipswich offenders have set fire to a wheelie bin and then placed the bin inside a telephone kiosk, causing extensive damage. Were you in the area at the time, did you see anything suspicious? Do you know the name of the offender or offenders? If you have any information please contact Suffolk Police on 01473 613500 quoting reference IW/11/3718. Or Please use the following link to pass any useful information to Suffolk Police about this incident. http://www.suffolk.police.uk/News+And+Appeals/Report+Information+To+The+Police/Tell+The+Police.htm DO NOT USE THIS LINK IN AN EMERGENCY OR IN A SITUATION THAT REQUIRES AN IMMEDIATE POLICE RESPONSE WHEN YOU SHOULD RING 999. Police Direct Team

From the Suffolk Police:

A man is seriously ill in hospital following a disturbance in Ipswich.
Police were contacted at approximately 12:15am on Sunday 17 April following reports of a fight outside The Smock Public House on Maidenhall Approach.
Officers arrived and found a man with a serious head injury. He was conveyed to the Ipswich Hospital by paramedics but has since been transferred to Addenbrooks Hospital where he remains in a critical condition.
A 35-year-old man and a 44-year-old man, both from Ipswich, have been arrested in connection with the assault and are currently in custody at Ipswich police station pending further enquiries.
Anyone with any information in relation to the incident is asked to contact Ipswich CID on 01473 613500. Police are particularly interested in speaking to people who were in The Smock Public House last night.

Or

Please use the following link to pass any useful information to Suffolk Police about this incident.

http://www.suffolk.police.uk/News+And+Appeals/Report+Information+To+The+Police/Tell+The+Police.htm

DO NOT USE THIS LINK IN AN EMERGENCY OR IN A SITUATION THAT REQUIRES AN IMMEDIATE POLICE RESPONSE WHEN YOU SHOULD RING 999.

Police Direct Team

The BBC have also picked up on this.

Some good news, the Smock has failed to get an adult entertainment licence. 

I really hope that this is the end to the story although my fear is that is will come back in another guise.  I think it’s fair to point out that this was spotted by a sitting councillor (even if they are the wrong party) who ran a good campaign.

It’s time that all political parties started to look seriously at just what is killing off the community pubs (the EUR, the Bell, the Silver Star, the Live and Let Live just to name the pubs in Bridge ward that have closed since I’ve moved here, and here is a list of closed Ipswich pubs.   There is going to be some natural attrition as communities change and there is also stiff competition from supermarkets just as there had been from the off licences and booze cruises.  Life means change, and we have to accept that there will be some closures.

But the reactions of governments has been to make the situation worse.  The smoking ban is an obviously damaging piece of legislation which has had all the predicted effects, but also entertainment licences for live music have hurt the community pubs. 

It’s easy to pay lip service to saving the community local, but we need to tackle the regulations and taxes that have strangled these businesses at the heart of the community and tell the health and safety crowd that we’d rather have our smoky local pub than the pseudo-nightclub “vertical drinking establishments” that have grown up under New Labour.

There’s nothing like a councillor in trouble to jump on a bandwagon.

The Smock on Maidenhall Road, right in the heart of the Maidenhall Estate and next to Stoke High School, has an entirely inappropriate licencing application that will make this pub in the middle of the estate into a night club.  Phil Smart is opposing this, which is quite nice of him as it will not affect him in the slightest as he lives as far outside the ward as he has for all the two and a half decades that he has been the absentee councillor for Bridge.

But there’s something strange here. 

Who completely overhauled the licencing laws at the behest of the alcohol lobby?  Phil Smart’s Labour Party.

Who sent a text message to younger voters in the 2001 election saying “couldn’t give a ‘four x’ for last orders? Vote Labour on Thursday for extra time“.  Phil Smart’s Labour Party.

Who imposed the utterly non-sensical smoking ban that made the community pub unsustainable, putting all night drinking as the only way for many pubs to avoid closing?  Phil Smart’s Labour Party.

Now it is certainly the case that all political parties make mistakes.  The Tories have made more than their share of mistakes from the Maastricht treaty to the threatened closure of the Stoke Park library.  The difference between a decent representative and a party hack is not whether you mean well, but whether you put your constituents before your party.  I live in Bridge, it’s easy for me to make the choice.  But what about the present Labour councillors?

I feel strongly about it because I live in Belstead Avenue, literally up the road from the Smock.  I remember from when I was living in Rectory Road the Friday and Saturday nights (and early mornings) in summer that we had to endure, and I don’t want them repeated here with an all night drinking den down the street.

Phil Smart is not a bad man.  He may be socially awkward and find it hard to accept constituents’ opinions that differ from his own but he means well.  He is not weirdly and coldly ambitious unlike another Bridge Ward councillor (although let’s be fair she could represent anywhere, if it already had a large Labour majority).  He looks vaguely human and you imagine that he would not sell his mother to get up another political rung, unlike his group leader.  And he doesn’t get drunk and blurt out absurd death threats as yet another Labour councillor does.  By the admittedly low standards of the Ipswich Labour party he’s just about OK.

However the question is when it comes to the crunch will he stand by his party or his, admittedly distant, constituents?  So here’s a test by which he can redeem himself:

Will he admit that his party made a complete hash of licencing reform at the behest of the alcohol lobby?

Will he praise Ben Gummer for voting for a partial relaxation of the smoking ban in pubs and condemn Chris Mole for his wholehearted support of the destruction of community pubs?

Will he condemn the 2001 Labour campaign, of which he was a key part in Ipswich, for so enthusiastically calling for all night drinking?

I would love to be wrong on this, but I don’t think he will.

Of course she doesn’t use it so you can understand why it’s not on her radar (although it is on the Labour leaflet’s radar, oddly) but as our County Councillor you would expect her to make a stink about Stoke Library being at risk of closure.

But according to Ipswich Spy it really wasn’t an issue to her, and she made no effort to try to keep it open.  Obviously winning the Ipswich Labour nomination is more important to her.

I have no doubt that the Labour councillors mean well, but the reason why they are so ineffective in representing us is because they have their eye on different issues.  As a ward we’re necesarry for their career, but we’re hardly sufficient.

That’s why, regardless of party this ward needs a local person who is going to take pride in upsetting the applecart rather than simply talking about north Ipswich bus routes or Evening Star columns.

I was at the South West area forum today and it was a subdued affair, rather to be expected when you have it in the middle of the day.  I had to plead quite a lot to change my hours and work at home to accommodate it.  As it was in Austin Street it was great to see some old faces (including the Larters) and a couple of new people as well.

Anyway the meeting had a presentation about the Big Society, and I had a chance to buttonhole one of the decision makers who decided to decommission the Iceni project.  That deserves its own post.  It makes me angrier each time I learn something new about it.

The next presentation was on the gritting operation, and some of the earliest readers of this blog know that I have something to say on that.  Again there will be a separate post on how to get a grit bin in your road if you are not on the gritter route.  Proper Big Society stuff.

Finally there was a talk from the Police about the crime.  I really appreciate the police involvement in these meetings.  After the meeting I tackled the police on the issue about the vandalism in the public spaces in the Maidenhall Estate, including the Stoke Green Baptist church and the Community gardens.   I was relieved to find out that this was something that the police were aware of (although it’s not one of their priorities) and that they were both treating it as more than a collection of separate incidents and they also shared my concern that this could get more serious – indeed it was already very serious.

A surprisingly productive hour and a quarter.

It is very dispiriting to read about the recurring vandalism in the Town and Bridge Community gardens at the Maidenhall Allotments.

This part of the article is quite important, so I’ll repeat it:

Anyone with information should call Police Community Support Officer Rebecca Hillyard at the South West Ipswich Safer Neighbourhood Team on 01473 613500.

I’ve written about the vandalism in that part of Maidenhall before and talked to the police about it.  Last year it was one of the Southwest Area Neighbourhood Team’s priorities and action was done to at least damp it down.  This year it is not, and that is directly related to the fact that not one councillor appeared at the meeting where police priorities were set this year.

That’s what comes of being seen as a safe ward.

There is currently a suggestion to close the Maidenhall Sports Centre that have been put in front of the Borough Council.  While the borough does need to save money, this could have a terrible effect locally.

We need to run a realistic campaign (and not simply drop a couple of leaflets before going back to Severn Road) to stop any closure.  This needs to look at items such as some voluntarily manning and encouraging our neighbours to use it or lose it.  Joint ventures with the school should also be explored.  It is sadly the case that it costs the council more per visit than other centres do, and any saving of the centre needs to focus on this.

It would be sad considering the money that was given to the politically connected, and hardly well run, Ipswich Caribbean Club, if this were to go without a fight.

I’ve talked with Andrew Cann on this and he has promised me that closure would be a last resort and that all options to keep it open within the cost constraints will be looked at.