28/4/2008

Local News in Aldershot

Town centres, airport and mega-depot dominate year

A year that has included the beginnings of great change for Rushmoor’s residents concludes with another fight on the political battleground at this week’s local elections.

It appears unlikely that the Conservative hold on the borough will change, with the group currently holding 26 of the 42 council seats.

The Liberal Democrats have seven councillors at the top table, while six representatives wear the Labour red rose, with three seats currently lying vacant.

The political community mourned the sad death of St John’s Tory Graham Tucker in January, who died after illness.

His seat and the ones vacated by Cove and Southwood Lib Dem John Matthews and Empress Tory Patricia Hodge, both of whom moved away from Rushmoor, are currently unoccupied and promise to be where some of the fiercest campaigning will take place.

While the long-awaited redevelopments of Farnborough and Aldershot town centres got underway, not all proposals to change Rushmoor’s landscape have been welcomed by the community this year.

The plan to build a ‘mega-depot’ on the former Pyestock test site on land between Farnborough and Fleet has proved particularly controversial.

The community has placed more than 12,000 objections to the proposal from joint developers Prupim and Astral.

The fight against their plans, which campaigners say will put pressure on roads and create pollution, looks set to continue, despite the rejection of the proposals by Hart District Council.

The authority’s planning committee refused planning permission during a meeting at Aldershot’s Princes Hall, which was attended by hundreds of concerned members of the public.

Central government announced in March that Farnborough Airport owners TAG would be allowed to double its number of weekend flights.

TAG’s application to have 5,000 weekend flights was roundly rejected by Rushmoor bosses in June 2006.

That decision was overturned jointly by the secretaries of state for local government, Hazel Blears, and transport, Ruth Kelly.

TAG plans to host even more flights, currently set at 28,000 yearly.

Any expansion of the airport’s capabilities have been fiercely opposed by people living in the area, led by the Farnborough Airport Residents’ Association.

The council’s cross-party planning committee approved a huge 399-property development in south Farnborough in October, despite fierce opposition from residents.

The Queensgate development, consisting of 137 houses and 262 flats, caused controversy because of worries that the area’s infrastructure would be unable to cope.

The long-awaited Aldershot Westgate leisure development finally won planning permission in February, with work on a seven-screen cinema and a plethora of restaurants and cafes expected to begin in the summer.

The development, which will also include an 87-bedroom hotel, a 643-space car park and 131 residential flats, is widely seen as a catalyst for prosperity in the Home of the British Army.

A plan to change the face of the town’s high street should take place following the construction of Westgate, which is expected to conclude in the autumn of 2009.

Farnborough’s town centre also began to take shape as the bulldozers moved in to begin a complete overhaul of the area.

There was less good news for the Aldershot Centre for Health  in January, with revelations that it would not open until August — a six-month delay — because of inclement weather and a shortage of builders.

The centre, which will lack a minor injuries unit despite space being built for it because of insufficient funding, will be the biggest of its type nationally and is seen as an NHS flagship project.

Britain’s Olympians could be a common sight on Rushmoor’s streets when the Games come to London in 2012. The British Olympic Association (BOA) selected the garrison town of Aldershot above the universities of Bath and Loughborough to be the host and training camp for athletes in the run-up to the games. The facilities at the Army Garrison Sports Centre will be used by more than 750 athletes who will be vying for gold medals.

One of the reasons given by BOA chief executive Simon Clegg, who was stationed in Aldershot during his time in the Army, for the choice was the partnership between the Army and Rushmoor Borough Council. Mr Clegg said at a March press conference that Rushmoor’s businesspeople had a golden opportunity to prosper financially from the BOA’s decision. 

There was no conclusive answer from Rushmoor’s public to the six-month alternate weekly bin collection (AWC) trial — undoubtably a key issue in the 2007 elections. The controversial programme, designed to reduce the amount of rubbish going to landfill and to increase recycling, took place from January-July.

National tabloids ran scare stories of vermin infestation from rotting rubbish, but such problems never materialised in Rushmoor.

However, fewer than half of the 6,500 households involved in the trial bothered to respond to a questionnaire about the pilot, with around half saying they thought it should be rolled out across the borough.

Cllr Peter Moyle, leader of the council, kept his word to listen to what the public wanted, and scrapped any plans to have household rubbish collected fortnightly.

Recycling rates soared from 23% to 36%, but those newspaper headlines that predicted rat infestations were declared as a possible reason why residents failed to back the plan.

Live music lovers in the borough were dealt a blow earlier this year when the Tumbledown Dick pub in Farnborough shut its doors after a visit from environ-mental health officers.

The venue had been a Mecca for unsigned musicians wanting to play their work to an audience. Inspectors found that the pub was in a poor state of cleanliness and that there was asbestos in a cellar door.

However, gigs should reappear at the Tumbledown later in the year following a £1m refit.

A closely fought July by-election in Heron Wood saw Labour’s Terry Bridgeman defeat 19-year-old Tory Simon Poole and Lib Dem Paul Bowers, with just 93 votes splitting the victor and wooden spoon holder.

The same three candidates will fight for the traditionally politically divided ward next week, with battlelines drawn on the issues of antisocial behaviour, housing and youth facilities.

Anti-social behaviour has again been one of the biggest issues in the past year.

Police have begun a crackdown on alcohol-related violence in the borough by tightening up their stance towards licensing applications.

But they were not helped by the actions of some parents, who chose to drop their children off by parks in Aldershot and Farnborough with crates of booze.

In one instance, teenagers descended on Beta Road in Farnborough in February, creating havoc for terrified residents with their drunken and rowdy behaviour.

Andrew Lloyd, Rushmoor’s chief executive and chairman of the borough Community Safety Partnership, has stressed that the scourge of antisocial behaviour is one of the council’s top priorities.

Police say that 25% of Rushmoor’s crime is committed in Aldershot town centre because of the plethora of outlets that sell alcohol.

Despite one of the lowest 2008/09 council tax share increases in Hampshire — 2.9% — Rushmoor has felt the financial pinch, with plans to shut all nine council-operated toilets in the borough, which cost £239,170 a year of the council’s £54million budget to run.

Another cost-cutting exercise was carried out by the demise of Aldershot’s visitor information centre. The facility, which had free public internet access, was deemed not financially viable and downsized across High Street to Princes Gardens.

Rushmoor Borough Council plans to cut its spending by £1m in the next year in the wake of a central government grant described by Cllr Moyle as “derisory.”

A row erupted over councillors’ expenses in February, with Labour borough leader Keith Dibble saying representatives should be setting an example by reducing the amounts of cash they claim from the council.

Rushmoor paid out £281,921 to councillors in 2006-07, a level that Cllr Dibble found unacceptable.

His comments led to a furious response from deputy council leader Cllr Roland Dibbs, who claimed that Cllr Dibble and wife Sue, both North Town ward councillors, were in well paid jobs and that money “doesn’t mean much to them.”

These are just a few of the plethora of issues that have had a say in the past 12 months in Rushmoor and are likely to be some of the subjects brought up by candidates who will be knocking on your door in the next few days.

We hope that the following pages will give you the ammunition needed to make an informed choice come May 1 over who you want to represent your views over the next four years.

First printed in: Aldershot News and Mail