Tag: Cheltenham

When Cheltenham Borough Council is abolished do you really want one giant super-council for the whole county?

Ministers tell us we must merge all seven of Gloucestershire’s councils into either one or two ‘unitary councils’ carrying out everything from parks and planning permission to libraries and adult social care. See more on the detail of this merger and the two other proposals (at regional and parish level) currently being considered for local government in my earlier blog here.

The reorganisation of principal councils means that Cheltenham Borough Council will be swallowed up after 150 years of local democracy, along with all the other five district councils in Gloucestershire.

That’s worrying.

How far from Cheltenham’s regency town centre or Tewkesbury’s medieval heart will decisions on planning permission be taken? What price the support Cheltenham gives to Cheltenham Festivals, the Everyman Theatre or the Cheltenham Trust that runs the Pump Room and Town Hall once Cheltenham is subsumed inside a much larger council?

The impressive Municipal Offices on Cheltenham's Promenade

At least Government is asking our view on whether one giant super-council covering the entire county is better than two smaller unitary councils. Find their consultation and respond here.

I want a smaller council for our area because I strongly believe that small is not just beautiful but usually more accountable, responsive and efficient so my strong preference is for two smaller unitaries.

Any one community will automatically have a louder voice in a smaller local authority.

Two unitary councils instead of one would be more responsive and less bureaucratic.

It’s the same pattern we see in business. Small companies are more agile, more creative and adapt faster. Grow too big and that edge soon wears off.

And if we do get two unitary councils, I’m definitely for the straightforward east/west merger of districts and county responsibilties not the proposal for a ‘Greater Gloucester’ combined with a ‘Doughnut’ containing everywhere else in Gloucestershire, including Cheltenham. I can see that would work well for Gloucester but it would leave the rest of us in the worst of all worlds – a council with fewere resources but still stretched across pretty much the whole county and almost as remote as a single super-council.

Some people worry that the two unitary model would “split” Gloucestershire.

Well, we’d all still be Gloucestershire. Just like Bath is still in Somerset and Swindon is still in Wiltshire.

But that smaller model has happened almost everywhere else that has gone down the unitary road before us. Berkshire, Shropshire, Cheshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Buckinghamshire, Cumbria, North Yorkshire and most recently Somerset – all now represented by at least two unitaries. If Bath and Swindon weren’t subsumed into giant countywide councils, why us?

I’m sure all those other counties agonised over dividing county services too.

But in their Ofsted and Care Quality Commission ratings, you find just the same variety as in any other set of councils with many achieving real excellence. Children’s services in York and in North Yorkshire – outstanding. Adult social care in Milton Keynes – outstanding. Children’s services in Telford – outstanding. And in Wiltshire outside of Swindon – outstanding.

Bigger really isn’t always better. Just look at the state of our roads – organised over many years on a countywide basis. The county’s children’s services have struggled in past years too and it has taken a huge effort to get them back up to scratch. Compared that with the consistently well run services by our local borough council, including our parks and gardens and our recycling collection.

Even the financial data shows east and west would be practically equal – an estimated variation of only £20m on combined budgets of £850m or just 2%. The latest government funding formula strongly favours less well-off councils anyway so any inequality is likely to be quickly ironed out.

EF Schumacher wrote back in 1974 that “we are generally told that gigantic organisations are inescapably necessary” but that amongst real people “there is a tremendous longing and striving to profit, if at all possible, from the convenience, humanity and manageability of smallness.”

I agree and I’d urge everyone to respond to the consultation and back two smaller councils not one giant super-council.

Thank you Leckhampton!

New Leckhampton councillor Julia Chandler and re-elected councillor Martin Horwood
Julia Chandler and Martin Horwood are Leckhampton’s two borough councillors now
  • Julia and Martin elected in Leckhampton
  • Lib Dems top the poll across Cheltenham
  • Lib Dems overtake Conservatives as the second party of local government across England

Julia Chandler has been elected as the second Lib Dem borough councillor for Leckhampton. I was also re-elected and we’d both like to say a huge thank you to everyone who supported us and to everyone else who took part in the election. We’ll do our absolute best to represent you all.

This is the first time both Leckhampton seats have been held by Liberal Democrats. Julia’s win was one of five gains by Lib Dems from the Conservatives across Cheltenham, leaving the Conservative Party with no councillors and the Lib Dems with 36. The Green Party also one won seat from the Conservatives, and Lib Dems and Green Party won and lost one seat each to the other, making the Green Party the official opposition with three seats. The last seat on the council was held by the local party People Against Bureaucracy.

Lib Dem parliamentary candidate Max Wilkinson welcomed the results which make him the hot bet to replace Tory minister Alex Chalk as Cheltenham MP when the Conservatives call the general election. Mr Chalk has voted consistently as instructed by Conservative whips in parliament – 900 times in a row in this parliament! – supporting Boris Johnson on key Brexit, sewage and sleaze votes, Suella Braverman on the Rwanda deportation policy and more recently Rishi Sunak on his reversal of key environmental policies.*

Max is the hot tip to be the next MP for Cheltenham

Across England, the Lib Dems gained over a hundred local government seats, overtaking the Conservatives as the second party of local government.

You can find the full Leckhampton result here.

  • You can look at Alex Chalk MP’s full voting record on the independent website Public Whip here. The sleaze vote was cast on 3 November 2021 when Alex Chalk voted to support Boris Johnson when he tried to park a parliamentary standards report and save disgraced Tory MP Owen Patterson who had committed an “egregious” breach of lobbying rules while earning £100,000 from private firms. He loyally backed Boris again in the key vote on sewage on 20 October 2021, defeating an amendment that would have curtailed sewage dumping by water companies.

This Thursday vote for the local team working for Leckhampton

  • Julia Chandler and myself are the local candidates in Leckhampton
  • Ex-Super Martin Surl is the candidate for Police & Crime Commissioner
  • Don’t forget to take Photo ID this time!

Julia and I are standing in the double-header local election here on Thursday 2 May. It’s expected to be another close race between the Lib Dems and the Conservative candidates. No other party has ever won in Leckhampton.

Like me, Julia lives in Leckhampton and has a strong track record of working for local people.

She worked in Cheltenham as a community midwife and campaigned tirelessly for local NHS services with the Royal College of Midwives. She’ll be an expert voice on the council at a time when local health services face unprecedented pressure.

I’ve already been your councillor for six years, winning funds for renewables, bringing in air quality and nature recovery policies at borough level, championing Leckhampton’s green spaces and insisting that when new development does take place, it should be low carbon with a decent proportion of affordable homes.

Julia and I both live locally and use local facilities so we understand local issues and know what’s going on in our community. Pictured here (with best friends Harley & Nancy) at Burrow’s Field.

Julia and I will fight for new projects like the scout hut rebuild and keep campaigning for safer walking and cycling routes like a new zebra crossing on Church Road. And we’ll keep nagging Conservative-run Shire Hall for better roads and pavements.

And we’ll keep in touch all year round not just at election time!

You’ll have another vote on Thursday too – for Gloucestershire’s Police & Crime Commissioner. The Lib Dem candidate is Martin Surl who recently visited Leckhampton with Julia and myself. Leckhampton’s crime rate is well below average but we all know it happens and Martin’s slogan is ‘Every Crime Matters’. As a former superintendent and the former independent Police & Crime Commissioner, Martin knows what he’s talking about: “The last decade has been tough for policing with budgets and officers and staff cut right to the bone. But during my time in office, we were always praised for financial stability. In the last few years that has been put at risk. Under my watch I pledge to make sure our police concentrate on the primary focus of keeping us safe – by making sure every crime matters because every victim matters.” Martin has already got up to speed with the recent increase in anti-social behaviour incidents at Burrow’s Field, the most serious of which resulted in the death of a much-loved little dog.

The polls are open from 7am until 10pm and this time you will need Photo ID to vote. To check where to vote and what Photo ID you can take go to https://www.cheltenham.gov.uk/elections2024

Leckhampton’s first zero carbon homes

I don’t always support new housing developments in Leckhampton (there’s still time to object to Redrow’s awful new plan to build right in front of the AONB here using ref 21/02750/FUL).

But last week I gave enthusiastic support to one new development. Local developer Newland Homes brought forward a plan for 22 new homes on a former nursery site in Kidnappers Lane. 9 will be affordable, meeting the Cheltenham Lib Dem target of 40% of every new development being affordable housing. They’re on a so-called ‘brownfield’ site actually suggested by the parish council as appropriate for development – a good example of how trusting local people and their representatives, instead of trying every trick in the planning playbook to override local opinion, really doesn’t mean no homes being built anywhere. Newland spoke at length to Cheltenham’s professional planning department and to parish councillors as they revised their plans.

Where Cheltenham’s first zero carbon housing estate is going to be built on Kidnappers Lane in Leckhampton

But most important of all every single house will be zero carbon when its occupied. This is going to be achieved through a combination of really good insulation, air source heat pumps and solar panels which will also send some electricity back into the grid to offset any non-zero carbon electricity that’s bought in. It’s a big step towards the Lib Dem goal of getting Cheltenham to net zero by 2030.

This is a revolutionary moment and something I’ve been campaigning for all my political career. When I was an MP the Lib Dems pushed the coalition government into setting a deadline of 2016 for all new housing to be zero carbon. As soon as the Conservatives took over on their own they got rid of that deadline despite the science surrounding the climate crisis getting more and more alarming with every passing year. So we’re struggling to persuade other developers like Miller Homes – hoping to build 350 new homes only a few hundred metres away – to build zero carbon homes because government rules still say they don’t have to.

But here in Leckhampton at least one developer is doing it anyway with our support, proving it can be done, by a private developer, with both open market and affordable housing. It’s possible and it’s commercially viable. At last, the revolution has begun. And I’m really proud that it’s happening in Leckhampton.

Gloucestershire, Covid19 and Cheltenham General – an update

Today the county’s Health Overview & Scrutiny Committee (HOSC) met in private for a joint Q&A session with the parallel scrutiny committee on adult social care and with senior local health and social care managers. I was part of this meeting as Cheltenham Borough Council’s representative but I don’t think it should have been held in private – and I said so. The county’s planning committee managed to hold a public virtual meeting last month yet the HOSC – which hasn’t met properly since January – isn’t even going to try to meet formally and in public until July. And this at a time of obviously heightened concern about public health, the NHS, care homes and the reconfiguration of local services like Cheltenham’s A&E during the crisis.

So here’s my public report back on some of the key questions raised and points made:

  • We did take time to thank the NHS, public health and social care teams and all their staff. And I added thanks to managers for innovations like mobile chemotherapy and online GP appointments that we should stick with even after the virus is defeated!
  • I questioned hospital chief executive Deborah Lee and Mary Hutton from the Gloucestershire clinical commissioning group (the NHS body that pays for local NHS services) about the planned reconfiguration of local services during the coronavirus crisis and whether or not these were genuinely temporary. The changes are aimed at separating Covid19 and non-Covid19 patients as far as possible, limiting the risk of transmission and enabling other services to return to something like normality. But they do involve temporarily downgrading Cheltenham A&E to a minor injuries unit (and possibly only a daytime one) while Gloucestershire Royal becomes the ‘front door’ for emergency admissions where Covid (‘red’) and non-Covid (‘green’) patients are separated, as well as centralising general surgery and possibly other surgical specialities in Gloucester while Cheltenham is kept clear of Covid for other intensive care cases, oncology, acute stroke care and some ‘elective’ or planned surgery.
Local Lib Dems have campaigned for years to protect the future of Cheltenham’s A&E department

What’s worrying local campaigners like REACH is that this doesn’t obviously reflect a neat red/green split and looks suspiciously like the rejected plan to downgrade Cheltenham General emergency and general surgical care that we all thought had been ditched. I was assured that the detailed changes were genuinely aimed at separating red and green patient pathways and that, yes, a full ‘Type 1’ A&E would be restored at Cheltenham in the end. I hope so.

  • Local Director of Public Health Sarah Scott reported the latest county statistics on the coronavirus. Following the national trend, they show fewer cases and deaths from Covid19 in Gloucestershire. Our total of 1369 confirmed cases (national data) and 533 deaths remains higher than more rural areas further south west but comparable to neighbouring counties and to statistically similar ones across the country. The urban areas of Gloucester (402 cases) and Cheltenham (320) are highest, again reflecting the pattern elsewhere. Questioned by Lib Dem representative from the Costwolds Paul Hodgkinson, she said there was no evidence that the Cheltenham Festival had caused extra deaths, not least because no attendees were traced or tested. The racecourse itself took the decision to carry on, following government guidance at the time.
  • Leckhampton & Warden Hill county councillor Iain Dobie raised the sharp drop in cancer treatment reported by the hospitals trust. He was told that referrals in from GPs and elsewhere were still running at only 55% of the normal rate suggesting many people with worrying symptoms are still staying away, even from their GPs. If that’s you, don’t delay.
  • I asked about the government’s test & trace strategy announced as ‘live’ on 28 May. It clearly isn’t up and running at full tilt locally with some data already coming through from national level but not yet in a format that allowed local public health teams to act on it effectively. We were told that could still be weeks away. Which makes the ongoing government lifting of lockdown measures look risky in the extreme.
  • The county council reported on the situation in care homes which is still concerning but at least testing and personal protective equipment (PPE) provision are now much better. Still, we were told some care homes had refused training in the proper use of PPE and that this training has only just started for domiciliary care workers who visit vulnerable people at home. Another alarming statistic was that there had been no great rise in hospital admissions fom care homes despite Covid. While some very frail residents wouldn’t have wanted admission regardless of illness, that still suggests to me that elderly people who should have gone to hospital didn’t. Perhaps part of the emerging national picture that government simply wasn’t on top of the lethal crisis in our care homes.

Several of the senior public health and NHS staff agreed we are not out of the woods yet. In the absence of widespread vaccination or more effective treatment, Covid19 may be a real threat for at least a year more. A second surge in infection is quite posssible. So please abide by the measures still in force including keeping your distance, regular handwashing and limiting contact with those from outside your household. More details here.

The best places for advice on the virus & how to get and offer help

These are worrying times but we need to focus on keeping those at risk safe by sticking to government guidance and looking out for anyone who needs help.

For advice on staying at home, social distancing if you’re well, self-isolating if you’re unwell, symptoms, employment advice and much more, go to https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus.

Don’t phone 111 (that’s only for people whose symptoms are really getting worse). If you are worried about your symptoms you can also go to 111 online.

In Gloucestershire there is a great Community help hub up and running where you can ask for help, volunteer to provide help or highlight a neighbour who needs help.

You can also listen to BBC Radio Gloucestershire live which is offering a running commentary on the local situation, often featuring definitive advice from our local Director of Public Health Sarah Scott and generally trying to find answers to some of the trickier questions. You do have to put up with Mark Cummings’ sense of humour but these are tough times.

This BBC Explainer gives details of where struggling businesses can get help.

I’m obviously not conducting surgeries at the moment but you can still email me on Borough council-related issues at martin@martinhorwood.net.

All the best. Keep safe & keep others safe.

Martin

Leckhampton secondary school & green fields update

There is news on the planned new secondary school at Kidnappers Lane – and it’s a mixed bag for local residents.

First of all, a government inspector, Wendy Burden, has issued her interim advice on the draft Cheltenham Local Plan – one of the key local planning documents for our area. Against the run of previous inspections and the wishes of both the Borough and Parish Councils – she concluded that the 39 hectares proposed by our local councils as protected Local Green Space at Leckhampton might be too “extensive” and not justified. This is very surprising since an enormous amount of evidence has been amassed to justify the protection of the Leckhampton green fields (alongside a substantial amount of new housing next to the Shurdington Road). Under the National Planning Policy Framework, there is no upper size limit on LGS and it should for local communities to determine this but nevertheless the opinions of this experienced inspector carry huge weight in the process and the councils have to pay attention to this or risk the whole draft plan being declared “unsound”. I have been in discussion with Cheltenham planning officers along with fellow parish councillors to see what we can salvage from this situation.

The inspector’s verdict has played right into the hands of the Conservative-led county council who want to grab some of the planned Local Green Space for their controversial new secondary school instead of building it on the land next to Shurdington Road which had been earmarked for development (see my earlier update here). The county presented plans for the Kidnappers Lane site at a recent public meeting:

The site proposed by the county council for the new secondary school between Farm Lane and Kidnappers Lane – with apologies for the poor quality of the image.
Again with apologies for the image quality, a plan of the county’s proposed school building and playing fields.

There are some positives to these plans: it’s noticeable that they retain the extensive and ancient hedgerow around the school site which will be really important in Kidnappers Lane and Farm Lane retaining some of their current charm and rural character and will make an attractive green environment for the school students themselves. The plans also set the school building right at the northern end of the site, closest to planned development and the least intrusive location in respect of the planned protected Local Green Space to the south and east. The playing fields – and in particular the all-weather Astro pitch could be important community assets for local young people, including Leckhampton Rovers Football Club.

A sketch of the proposed new school building including some natural-looking materials but little evidfence of genuinely environmentally freindly features – and the apparently small scale is pretty misleading!

But local residents still have deep and – in my view – well-founded worries about the safety and traffic implications of such a large school set amongst what are now rural lanes with already congested roads around them, not least because the county’s shifting of the site will make way for developers to try to put even more housing on the fields next to the Shurdington Road. It’s also disappointing that the building and site so close to a Local Green Space and clearly visible from the AONB seem to boast so little in the way of green features, in stark contrast to exciting low energy new developments like the two Gloucester Services on the M5 which are camouflaged so well as to be nearly invisible from any distance or even the headquarters of Gloucestershire Constabulary in Quedgeley which boasts a fantastic reneweable energy resource in the shape of a large ground-source heat pump.

Unusually the county is applying to itself for planning permission to build the school instead of to the usual planning authority, Cheltenham Borough Council. A further consultation event is planned for 4.30-7pm 27 June at Hatherley & Reddings Cricket Club (on the left of the Shurdington Road outside town down towards Shurdington). Come along and make your views known!

Leckhampton secondary school update Jan 2019

In December 2017, Gloucestershire County Council cabinet decided to establish a new 900 place 11-16 secondary school in Cheltenham, widely regarded as necessary because of a looming crisis in secondary school admissions.  They identified Kidnappers Lane in Leckhampton as their preferred site.  Funding for the school was approved in February 2018 and the school is expected to open to new Year 7s in September 2021. It is being sponsored by outstanding local secondary school Balcarras who bring a welcome reputation for high academic standards and positive engagement with their local community.

The planned Local Green Space where the county council want to build the new secondary school, instead of in the area already agreed for development.

But the site of the new school is causing real concern and controversy and not just because of the likely impact on local traffic through narrow rural lanes.

After more than ten years’ campaigning against the imposition of thousands of new houses all over Leckhampton’s green fields, local campaigners like the Leckhampton Green Land Action Group (LEGLAG) and the Parish Council accepted that the fields immediately next to the A46 Shurdington Road would be built on, principally for new homes.   The remaining fields would be protected as Local Green Space, a new designation for local green spaces important to communities which I initiated when I was MP for Cheltenham and which is now national policy.  After discussions with the county council, Cheltenham Borough Council included the new secondary school in their draft Local Plan on the land to be developed – at the corner of Shurdington Road and Kidnappers Lane.  It was accepted that the school’s playing fields could be within the planned Local Green Space area further up Kidnappers Lane.  This was agreed in writing by Gloucestershire County Council in March 2018 (as explained in these Cheltenham Borough Council minutes – see Question 10).

Then in September 2018 the county council changed its mind and announced that despite all the previous discussions, it wanted to build the school in the area further up Kidnappers Lane everyone expected to be protected Local Green Space.  Why?  To save the county money.  The new site was land they owned and would not have to buy in opposition to the housing developers.

This would be a double whammy for Leckhampton: not only would green fields be lost to the newly built school but more of the land agreed for development would then go to housing as the developer always wanted but this would now be in addition to the new school.  Local Lib Dem councillors, LEGLAG, the Parish Council and Cheltenham Borough Council have all lined up to oppose the loss of green space and likely overdevelopment.

Unfortunately, local Conservative councillor Stephen Cooke has refused to oppose the county’s plan, describing it as the “lesser of two evils” and complaining that no-one had got the agreement of the developers!

Worse, since the county council own the land proposed for the new school, they are allowed to apply to themselves for planning permission to build it instead of to the usual local planning authority, Cheltenham Borough Council.  But this decision will be carefully scrutinised by the plan’s opponents.  In law, the county council must pay proper attention to the traffic problems too much development would cause, as well as to the emerging Cheltenham Local Plan, the previous Cheltenham Local Plan and the emerging Leckhampton Neighbourhood Plan, all of which would rule out the use of the protected green field site.

The county council’s summary of the situation can be found here but it contains fake news!  It suggests that only one site was ever considered (not true, as the Cheltenham minutes show), that the site was previously identified for housing but this was “not taken up” (not true; the land had been earmarked for development until the plan for thousands of houses was ruled out by a government inspector) and that local Lib Dem councillor Iain Dobie supports the plan (not true; Iain welcomes a new school but has vociferously opposed the proposed green field site).

 

Leckhampton primary school update

There have been some important developments in Leckhampton recently relating to local schools – and there are more to come.

Leckhampton CofE Primary School in Hall Road is an outstanding local primary school currently educating just over 430 local pupils under the leadership of popular headteacher Sam Porter.

Last April, Gloucestershire County Council proposed an increase from two to three forms of entry which would gradually increase the size of the school to at least 630 pupils from September 2019.  The justification for this was increasing demand for primary school places in the local area although the actual model and assumptions behind this argument have proved infuriatingly difficult to extract from the county council.  Nevertheless they insisted it showed sufficient demand within the immediate local area and no spare capacity at other local schools either so in May 2018 the council proceeded to consult with a wide range of stakeholders including parents, teachers and governors. 215 of the 372 respondents (58%) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the proposal.  The most opposition came from parents (whether their children were at Leckhampton, pre-school or at another school).  Staff and governors, by contrast, were strongly in favour but obviously fewer in number.  Leckhampton with Warden Hill Parish Council opposed the plan.

The county council then published a statutory notice that it intended to proceed and conducted further consultation during which I took local parents concerned about the expansion to see the responsible Conservative county cabinet member, Cllr Lynden Stowe, along with education officers.  It was good of him to meet us and discuss the plans but we never did get the really detailed modelling and assumptions behind the decision.  On 23 November 2018 Cllr Stowe approved the expansion and this will now go ahead unless the necessary building to accommodate hundreds of extra pupils is frustrated by the planning process in which case a rethink will be necessary.

The usual planning authority in Cheltenham is Cheltenham Borough Council but on this occasion the county council has decided to apply to itself for planning permission.  Astonishingly, the law permits this where the county council is itself the landowner. This is not a decision which will reassure local people concerned that the impact on the local neighbourhood  – including its already very congested roads – will be adequately considered.  Local Lib Dem county councillor Iain Dobie is working hard to see if mitigating proposals can be brought forward, such as a rear access route for walking and cycling from Burrows Field where there is already a pathway almost to the back of the school.  Iain regularly updates his Facebook page with the latest school news.  Latest news from the county itself can be found here and the background documents to their decision are here (click the tab for ‘supporting documents’).

There will be an open drop-in at the school on Wednesday 30 January 3:30pm – 7pm, when members of the public can view the building plans to be submitted for planning approval later this year.

Thank you Leckhampton!

Can I say thank you to everyone who voted in Thursday’s Cheltenham Borough Council elections and particular thanks, of course, to those who generously voted for me and placed me top of the poll in Leckhampton. Two seats were being elected here this time and the second went to Conservative Stephen Cooke, just 13 votes behind.  Commiserations to the other candidates, in particular Glenn Andrews, the brilliant Lib Dem candidate who worked his socks off in the ward and has promised to keep working hard for local people, and also sitting councillor Chris Nelson who lost out to his Conservative colleague by just 2 votes.  Thanks to him and retiring independent councillor Ian Bickerton for all their work for Leckhampton.

Across the town it was a great night for the Lib Dems.  Despite already holding nearly three quarters of the Borough Council’s 40 seats, we made three gains and increased our total to 32.  The Conservatives now hold 6 seats and the People Against Bureaucracy 2.

The full result in Leckhampton was:

Martin Horwood, Liberal Democrats   1,082
Stephen Cooke, Conservative                  1,069
Chris Nelson, Conservative                       1,067
Glenn Andrews, Liberal Democrats          834
Green    302
Labour   78
Labour   56

Votes spoiled: 1          Voter turnout: 52%

For the full ward by ward results across town, see Gloucestershire Live here.  And for more comment and coverage of the elections see their site here.

Thanks again.