Minutes of the meeting on 03 July 2017

Minutes of Meeting held on Monday 03 July 2017 at 8pm at the Clarion Collection Hotel, Holywell Hill.

1.    Present:  Avril Allen, Bernadette Blade, Jacqueline Briggs, Kam Cheung, Charles Davies, Mary Green, Anthony Hyde, Jennifer Johnson, Pamela Johnson, Catherine Jones, Angela King, Roger Morton

2.    Apologies: Anthony Hyde, Mary Placket, Elaine Rainsford, Cllr Chris White

3.    Minutes of previous meeting: The minutes of the meeting held on Monday 08 May 2017 had been circulated by email and a copy was made available at this meeting. The minutes were approved.

4.    Matters arising: None

5.    Finances: Anthony Hyde advised by email that the balance in the bank now stands at £319.22 after paying £70 for the bouncy castle.

6.    Our local environment:

  • Lorry ban / speed restriction / pinch-point in Sopwell Lane:  There have been no developments since our last meeting. We are still awaiting action from Herts County Council.
  • Green oasis in Sopwell Lane: John O’Connor have extended the area of grass cutting and someone has trimmed bushes. There has been no improvement to the half-completed wall backing onto the Green Oasis.
  • The void in Albert Street (in the boundary wall of Ryder Seed Mews): The working party from Ryder Seed Mews which was set up at the last meeting have planted a shrub in a large planter and placed it at the entrance to the void. So far this has proved to be a success as no further rubbish has been dumped there.
  • Markings in CPZ car park in Albert Street: Cllr Alun Davies is still chasing St Albans District Council to remark the individual bays in the car park.
  • Road markings in Keyfield Terrace: The contractor returned to complete the repainting of the on-street parking bays and double-yellow lines in Keyfield Terrace.

       7.    City Neighbourhoods Committee:

  • Roger discussed the various issues that were raised at the CNC meeting on Wednesday 28 June 2017.
  • Roger will be representing SAPHRA at the next meeting on Wednesday 27 September 2017.
  • The minutes of CNC meetings are available on the District Council website.

8.    Parking:

  • Consultation on controlled parking zones M & N: Gary Payne (Parking Officer at St Albans District Council) reported that:
    -  24% of residents responded for Zone M and 28% of residents responded for Zone N.
    -  Residents thought that the number of permits per household should be 2 not 3.
    -  Restricted parking should include Sundays.
    -  Zone M has a greater desire to extend parking times to 10pm.
     
  • Cost of visitors parking permits: Roger received an email from Cllr Alec Campbell advising that the Council were losing money on the visitors’ parking vouchers so had decided to stop offering 4 hour vouchers and increase the price of the all-day vouchers. This should help the parking scheme to break even and improve availability of parking spaces.
  • Note: The Parking Shop has now closed and parking permits and visitors’ vouchers can only be purchased on-line.

9.    Registering pubs as Assets of Community Value: New legislation that came into effect on 23 May 2017 means that planning permission is now required for a pub to undergo a change of use. The key protection offered by registering a pub as an ACV was that planning permission would be required for a change of use. Consequently CAMRA, who were assisting with our application, no longer recommend applying to register a pub as an ACV (except in the case that a local group wishes to have time to raise the money to buy it). As a result of this change in the law we have withdrawn our application to register the White Hart Tap as an ACV.

10.  Family barbeque: The Family Barbeque will be 03 September 2017 at 3pm. Roger confirmed that the White Hart Tap pub has agreed to host it and Anthony has booked the bouncy castle. Roger and Cathy will prepare invitations for the barbeque and the AGM for distribution in August 2017. Roger requested, and was offered, help with the distribution of the invitations.

11.  Any other business:

  • Street Cleaning: Roger received an email from Cllr Alec Campbell with an attached spreadsheet outlining the street cleaning schedule for the district. An officer is sent out every four weeks to inspect the streets. If the street is not too bad no action is taken. Only if it is noticeably messy will it be cleaned. Roger will check with regards to the enhanced cleaning programme which used to be in place for city centre streets. Cllr Alec Campbell suggested that 1 day a year a selected street could be cleared of cars in order to carry out a complete clean, weed clearance, line marking, drain clearance etc.
  • Elizabeth Barber: Bernadette informed the meeting that Elizabeth was progressing well with the help of physio and good general care at Lye House. Unfortunately, she is not receiving many visitors. Bernadette wondered if anybody would like to pay her a visit as she would love to see more friends.
  • Charles Davies will soon be leaving our area. The meeting wished him well and looked forward to seeing him at our barbeque this year and in future years.

      12.  Date of next meetings: Monday 04 September 2017 (AGM), 06 November 2017, 08 January 2018, 05 March 2018, 14 May 2018.

Note regarding Neighbourhood Watch: SAPHRA members are encouraged to sign up for the OWL (On-line Watch Liaison) scheme. SAPHRA can provide OWL sign-up forms to any interested party. It is also possible to sign up for OWL Messages via www.owl.co.uk. For those members who do not have email it is possible to obtain OWL Messages via a home phone (landline).