Your Councillors say...

Your councillors continue to be busy and work hard for residents in Ashley. We thought we would give you a bit of an update on some of the things we have been working on

Firstly, drop ins to talk to councillors have lapsed a bit which started during Covid. Amirah has set up for us to have a drop in on Wednesdays at 12-2 on first Wednesday of the month at Malcom X centre starting April. We may move these around but its good to get them started. You can follow us all on Facebook where we publish these dates and other useful local information

Drains: The councillor’s bread and butter!

With unusually high leaf fall, we have had lts of calls about drains. Tim managed to co-ordinate some drain clearance in Montpelier where the council came and unblocked a few. Not all because often a car is parked over the drain. Tim will be looking to repeat but we will also be looking at whether there are ways we can improve the access to drains that need un-blocking

Overton Road: Finally!

Right at the edge of Ashely, Amirah has been leading for us and keeping up the pressure to close this turn off from Gloucester Road. Its finally got approval to go out to consultation. It has been years and we mention it partly as whilst things can take a long time to happen they do eventually so don’t give up campaigning. Lots of resident want to see traffic controls some in parts of Ashley

Kernow; a partial success

Residents raised this with Jude ages ago. The council took the owner to court, mandating that he cleared up the mess and graffiti on this Mina Rd Building.

The landlords solution was to put advertising hoardings up. Not exactly what we envisaged. Jude is back on the case.

CAZ : knock on effects?

Whilst something clearly had to be done about Bristol’s appalling air quality, we are concerned about ‘dirty’ traffic avoiding the CAZ zone by driving through areas of Ashley, notably St Pauls. We want to keep this monitored. Tim is also concerned about impact of disabled people and has got officers to monitor effects and has set up a meeting to look at data with disability groups in February How long does a planning application take?

All of us have people from big developers to individuals come to us about thee delays. Its mainly due to staff shortages. In a couple of cases where there is exceptional circumstances, we have been able to speed up but it is worrying how long this is taking.

Buses

We have seen bus cuts in Ashley and continue to campaign to address this.

The no 47/5 is again at risk with the end of Covid support funding. You can write to WECA Mayor Dan Norris about this(mayor@westofengland-ca.gov.uk) One thing Green Party cllrs are calling for is for WECA to consider bus franchising which whilst would not solve all the problems like staffing would at least allow WECA to take back some control.

You can sign the open letter here https://actionnetwork.org/forms/ Franchise-WECA-Bus-Services-Now www.fairfield.excalibur.org.uk