I was at the Maidenhall Residents Association on Friday to pick up some information and we got to talking about their website. It seems that when they search on Google then my website comes up first and theirs’ doesn’t come up.

They have had a bit of an issue updating this, but their website is here:

Maidenhall Residents Association

Hopefully this will help them get on the first page of Google, and if it doesn’t then anyone who’s just found the post through searching for them will find it now.

If you have come looking for their site, feel free to stay around.

There’s no meeting of the Maidenhall Residents’ Association today as the second Thursday of the month clashes with a South West Area housing panel meeting.

Malcolm Robson, who is in charge of Ipswich Buses will be at the Maidenhall Residents Association (at the bowls hut on Halifax Road) at 7.00 to answer questions about the buses.

If you are not from the Maidenhall Estate please respect the fact that this will be primarily a committee meeting of the Residents Association.

One of the biggest problems that is annoying the Maidenhall Estate has been the new door times that Ipswich Borough Council have changed due to the security problems in the Station Street flats.

There have been some succesful petitions, particularly on Cardiff Avenue.  What needs to be done is to raise a residents’ petition for the four flats in the block.  It is important that all four flats agree, so you may want to discuss this with your neighbours first.  But then raise a petition saying:

1.  Which flats are covered (number and address)

2.  What new times you’d like the the tradesman buttons to work

3.  The name, signature and address of each of the four residents in the block.

If you hand your petition into the Maidenhall Residents’ Association on Maidenhall Green they will see that it goes to the right person.

Just a reminder that Ben Gummer will be addressing the Maidenhall Residents’ Association this Thursday 12th November at the Bowls Pavillion off Halifax Road (opposite the Bourne Vale Social Club).

I was at the Maidenhall Residents Association yesterday and they have been a victim of typical bureaucratic heavy handed over-reaction.  Essentially due to out of area drug users sheltering in the flats in Station Street they’ve cut the trade access to all the flats across the ward.

This makes sense near the town, for example Station Street and Vernon Street, but the Maidenhall Estate is not in the same position.  It’s a decent walk from the town and there have been few complaints of drug users sheltering down there.  This means that there’s no post, no milkman, no visitors.  If you are out in Station Street you have around twenty neighbours to buzz you in, in Maidenhall Approach you only have three.

The solution – to petition separately for each group of flats – is not practical.  So Station Street has a genuine problem and the housing department did the right thing there.  But Maidenhall Estate was happy with the current set up.  Can’t they just get it back?

This sort of one size fits all knee jerk solution is what Labour specialises in.  A Conservative led administration should do better than this,

Isn’t it funny how the cement ship’s in the day after the public meeting?  I wonder if there was a deliberate delay?

We will be talking about this to the Maidenhall Residents’ Association at the Bowls Pavilion in Halifax Road at 7pm tonight.  (If you are not from Maidenhall then please remember that this will not be solely about the noise).

Our councillor Phil Smart appears in the Evening Star saying that “The solution to traffic congestion is through better traffic management and the reduction of demand through better public transport.”

This is all very worthy.  However when I was at the Maidenhall Residents Association there were only two people who did not walk to this very well attended meeting, and Phil Smart was one of them.

So here’s a strategy for reducing demand – represent a ward that you live in.

I was at a meeting of the Maidenhall Residents Association last night talking about the Southern Cement noise and talking about the far flung places it has been heard – Chantry Estate, Belstead Brook, Wherstead Village.  “Well I heard it down the Ipswich Hospital when I visited my daughter.”

That’s the furthest, by far