You Councillors Say

Your Councillors say...

All your local councillors have been busy since the election and our priority is to continue to work together with residents and officers to ensure the needs of our constituents are met. For the newbies, Councillors Wye and Cole the training has been key to the orientation of council systems and structures.

There has been a lot of case work to catch up on which we have been working hard on with some success. A lot of these are about waste, fly tipping and housing. We have had some good outcomes with individual cases with the Council’s Private Housing team. We have also been working with Planning Enforcement on a few local issues. Regarding case work we have been holding surgeries where you can meet your local councillors and discuss your concerns. Surgeries take place on the third Friday of the month from 12-2pm. From September we will be looking to use different venues in Ashley so if you intend to attend a surgery please check the venue. There are also several large developments in the area. The Brookes Dye works is obviously the largest and is well underway but there are other schemes. For example, there is a new development behind Stokes Croft between the carriage works and Hepburn Road. We have met with developers to hear their proposed plans; we have argued for some further community engagement and a commitment to meaningful ‘social value’.

Anti-Social behaviour is another issue that residents come to us with. Amirah, Tim and Jude recently met with the new Police Commissioner on Albany Green to talk through some of the issues and the importance of good local community policing.

Covid is also a priority as the pandemic has clearly not yet ended. The council is putting a lot of effort into pop up testing centres and there are various dates and times for members of the public to attend. The vaccination programme, whilst having generally great uptake still needs to be promote. In particular, we would remind anyone working in care that they will now shortly be required to be vaccinated.

Thank you again for voting for us.

Traffic and pollution continue to be big issues and we are starting to have discussions with Council Officers about plans to set up ‘liveable Neighbourhoods’. This can cause a lot of strong feelings (and the recent results of the Picton Street pedestrianisation consultation show this) but during the campaign people continually told us about traffic and air quality so that is a priority for residents. Your Ashley Councillors Tim, Jude, Amirah