Although there are still complaints from Wherstead Road, I’ve not really heard anything about the boat outside there, and even in Wherstead Road the complaints are less strident. Please let me know if you are suffering in silence as the assumption is forming among many of the councillors that there is less of an issue. Autumn is the high point of complaints historically, so there may be worse to come, although as a believer that the cement ship noise is largely wind and atmosphere dependent I think that this is a lagging indicator and that the worse noise is usually about now, high Summer. Is the silencer actually working?

In related news I hear that Southern Cement, despite applying to build their silo, have not actually been able to find the money to do so. Of course if they actually engaged with the community these rumours would be easily quashed. Shows that no matter how expensive the corporate lawyers are, sometimes their advice can be unmitigated rubbish.

(To help investors, potential customers and suppliers find this post through Google I’ll stress that this is Uniland SA, trading as Southern Cement Ltd, at Cliff Quay in the Port of Ipswich.)

I was at Ipswich Council’s Port Focus group.  At one point it was not clear if there were any councillors from Bridge who would be present (Bryony Rudkin did come in later.) I understand that the minutes will be out soon, and I will link to them.  Until then there are some pertinent points:

1.  Southern Cement have fitted on a silencer.  The Council Officers have all claimed that this reduces the noise considerably.

2.  The dust is going to be monitored partly by access to Southern Cement’s close circuit TV cameras

3.  The point was made by many of the councillors and residents that Southern Cement actually hurt their cause and made life more difficult for themselves by refusing to talk to the residents, and councillors.

4.  The Noise Action Group stated that while a silencer was welcome it was too early to declare victory on the noise and the real test will be in spring and early summer when conditions change.

5.  The port focus group leads into the port liaison group.  Yes, it is too bureaucratic but that’s what comes of not talking to residents.  Any way, we’ve elected Peter Evans, one of the founders of the Noise Action Group and by far the most radical of the prominent activists to the Port Liaison Group.

There are other issues which will be addressed later.

I’ve been officially informed by one of the councillors that the Council have postponed rather than cancelled a meeting with Southern Cement.  It was all an unfortunate (very unfortunate) turn of phrase and they are instead awaiting developments.

The ludicrously easy to meet request from the group for a direct meeting with Southern Cement is also going to be backed by all both the Conservative and Labour councillors. 

Yet Southern Cement still won’t meet with us.  The Noise Action Group does not want a single job to go with Southern Cement, but there’s one exception.  Their Public Relations consultant is clearly not up to the job.

I just got this email:

I knew something was odd this morning as they were cleaning the quay side with their mechanical sweeper lorry. It might be a new one.

Anyway as I write 8.45 they are getting the Kovak into place. That means about 11 the ship will arrive and by 12 they should be pumping.

If this is the case then all we have to keep the noise down is heavy weather, or perhaps if they are held up by the heavy weather, then they will have to pump at full tilt as I think weather will be against them. So noise levels will be interesting.

Here are some tips on how to complain:

1.  If the noise is happening outside normal office hours, phone up the emergency noise number on 433444. If the noise is happening in office hours the number is 433115.
2.  Give your name and address and state how it is bothering you
3.  State whether you will be willing to allow environment officers in the room where you are suffering the noise.  Please note that they will not measure noise from your garden or another room.  It usually takes ninety minutes from you complaining to them leaving your house.
4.  Log every instance.
5.  If the noise is still occurring wait for another four hours before complaining again.

Well the meeting was cancelled, and now I’ve been told by both the Evening Star and one of the councillors that the meeting between the council and the Noise Action Group is back on.

There will also be a meeting between Southern Cement and councillors.  Of course what would be best for both sides would be to meet directly, Southern Cement and the Noise Action Group.

So Uniland / Southern Cement, if you want to meet us then you can reach us at james@bridgeward.org.uk or through your usual channels of communication.  Email us, even if you’re not ready yet, even if you want to explain us why you’re not ready yet.

We’re quite nice really, especially when we’ve had a night’s sleep.

I got a call this afternoon from the Evening Star about the Southern Cement fiasco.  They’ve got wind of the council officers’ proposed climbdown and wanted to know what the Noise Action Group thought.  They actually sounded angry, I suppose they got a promise out of Steve Rock who saw fit to cancel the meeting as soon as he thought that no one was looking.

It’s not the refusal of a couple of council officials to meet us that rankles, councillors from both parties are keeping us up to date and the Council Officials will have to meet with residents soon in some form. What rankles is the refusal of Uniland/Southern Cement’s Ipswich manager, Barry Neale, to even talk to us.

This seems more like commercial suicide than anything else.  Who would want to deal with a company that is constantly at risk of being shut down by a private court action, council enforcement or public protest?

What better way to calm down angry residents than meeting them?

I was going through my statistics today and noticed the search Ipswich Noise Abatement Group (this blog comes first).  I rarely take these things that seriously but I thought I’d find out who’s looking at this, from the web address 80.34.174.215, and what do you know, it’s owned by Telefonica de Espana.

Looking further it seems that 11.05% of my web hits are from Spain.  Allow for the fact that this is getting low traffic (it’s a new blog, I say defensively) that’s still abnormal.  You’d expect a few people to be assigned wrongly (1.93% of my visitors are from the Republic of Moldova), but not this wrongly.

So the only people who would be interested are Uniland SA, the parent company of Southern Cement, the most offensive noise polluter in Ipswich port.

So a big Hola to all you Catalan cement makers, and please keep the noise down.

Sometimes it’s hardest to see what’s in front of your own nose. So hidden in plain view is a very important fact, Southern Cement- the people causing misery for all those people in the Hayes, in the Maidenhall Estate, on the Wherstead Road and in Chatsworth Crescent, is in fact the British subsidiary of Uniland SA, a large Spanish cement company. It was on their homepage:

http://www.southerncement.co.uk/

Southern Cement still holds itself out as quite independent saying “This gives us the benefit of independence in the UK with the support of one of Europe’s leading cement manufacturers”.

They were bought out in 2004, not long after they started, although there doesn’t seem to be any press mention of Uniland, which makes it sounds a lot more British.

In fact, according to their results, they make up rougly 1-2% of the turnover and employees of the group.

So not only are they disturbing our sleep two weeks in three they are not even the British based independent that they claim to be.

No wonder they are happy to crank up the noise pollution, they don’t just not live in this town – they don’t even live in this country.