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ast week we quoted town centre and car park portfolio holder
Councillor Derek “Knocker” Richmond’s take
on the “huge early Christmas present”
from Boston Borough Council of a few hours’ worth of free parking in the
run-up to the big event.
“This represents a Christmas present from the council to
Boston,” he blared. “The town has a tremendously varied shopping offer
– from small family-owned traditional retailers through to main
multi-nationals.
“With free parking located conveniently close there should
be no reason to want to go anywhere else.”
Whilst all local councillors are issued with rose-coloured
spectacles when they are elected, a decision to wander around and plan
our Christmas shopping based on his claim led us to conclude that Councillor Richmond’s pair had an
especially generous tint.
In last week’s bright Sunday sunshine, we got rather a
shock.
A stroll along Dolphin Lane revealed empty shop after empty
shop with “to let signs” rather than goodies in the window.
We counted six such shops – almost half of those available
in a lane that’s sometimes compared with the medieval streets of York.
A shambles it was – The Shambles it ain’t.
Dolphin Lane’s counterpart across the Market Place – Emery
Lane – is also bereft. Its biggest shop
– the former Yates and Greenhough has been empty for more than two years, and
kitchen fitters Murdoch Troon is also vacant. The rest of the street “offer”
includes Cash Generator, a sex shop, a charity shop, a nail bar, tattooist, pet
shop and jewellery shop.
A view across the Market Place, with the empty Millets at
your back and a turf accountant to your right shows the vacant Edinburgh Woollen Mill
shop, a fast food shop, a café , a charity shop, a betting shop, a vacant shop,
a health food shop, a jewellery shop and a café.
Frequently, we are told that the number of vacant shops in
Boston is no worse than the national average.
But the people telling us this fail to note how little is
actually on offer once the charity shops (there are nine in the town,) mobile phone shops … one of which is newly
vacant in Strait Bargate, which leaves only five – and food shops are
taken out of the picture.
We have Oldrids, of course, but beyond that a hotchpotch of
generic High Street stores that are barely beating the business downturn –
although with Christmas in mind, there are, at least plenty of card shops to
choose from – seven of ‘em.
If the idea seriously is to make the place attractive,
we need to spend some money on camouflaging the eyesores in our town centre in
the run up to Christmas.
Look at this picture of the Dolphin Lane window of the
former Millets which fronts on to the Market Place.
More than four years ago Boston Borough Council wasted a £52,000 government grant to make more than 25 disused shops presentable with
temporary window dressing.
In the next story you will read how easy it is for
Boston Borough Council to find £10,000 in “savings” to fund a publicity
campaign for yet another attempt to curb street drinking that it almost
certainly doomed to failure.
How about finding a similar amount to at least make our ghost
town centre look attractive for the festive season?
As far as Christmas is concerned, if your dad’s really rich and you want a cowboy outfit – why not ask him to buy you Boston Borough Council?
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f the report that follows sounds familiar, that’s because “it's
like deja-vu, all over again.”
The quote by American baseball star Yogi Berra (**see footnote) who was famed
for his malapropisms, sprang to mind as we read the agenda for yesterday’s
Environment and Performance Committee concerning the Anti-Social Behaviour,
Crime and Policing Act 2014 which comes
into force on Monday.
A main plank of the act is the Public Spaces Protection
Order – designed to stop individuals or groups committing anti-social behaviour
in a public space.
A report to the committee outlined a laborious timetable for
all of this which if it goes ahead will cost up to £10,000 to publicise
– including providing signs, information and literature about the proposed order
– a sum which our cash-strapped council can apparently find without any trouble from
savings in the current financial year.
The PSPO replaces the DPPO – the designated public place
order which came into force in Boston at the end of December 2007 and which
cost thousands of pound to publicise on
that occasion.
The waffle irons were out in force in the early days of the
DPPO – but looking back we can find no evidence of fines being issued or of
any real dent in the problem of drinking in the street.
But, of course, according to the social astrologers, all
this will change once the DPPO becomes a PSPO.
Or will it?
It was pointed out with monotonous regularity over the years
that the DPPO was not a ban on drinking in public – but if someone was seen
drinking by a police officer and asked to stop, it was an offence not to
comply, and police could also confiscate the demon drink.
But as ever, the Devil is in the detail.
If a PSPO is created, “it is an offence for a person,
without reasonable excuse, to do anything that the person is prohibited from
doing by a PSPO other than consume alcohol.”
It is not an offence to drink alcohol in a
controlled drinking zone.
But it is an offence to fail to comply with a
request to cease drinking or surrender alcohol in a controlled drinking
zone.
Are you following so far?
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e hope so, because it gets sillier from this point on.
Where drinking is concerned, the enforcing officer will be a
police officer – although in other instances of breaches of the order, fixed
penalty notices can also be issued by PCSOs, council officers, or any other Tom,
Dick or Harry designated by the council.
Whilst the DPPOs did not ban drinking in public a PSPO will
apparently adopt a tougher line.
Anyone caught drinking by a policeperson in a controlled
zone “will be requested to desist drinking forthwith.”
So, John Citizen is tipping a tinny harmlessly on a bench in
Boston Market Place – and when asked to stop, he does.
But this reasonable response will not see him emerge
unscathed.
Anyone asked to stop drinking and who immediately complies,
will have his or her details “verified” by the police officer who will pass
them to Boston Borough Council for recording on their anti-social behaviour computer blacklist,
known as Sentinel, and a warning letter will be sent to the
person “which will contain suitable narrative.”
The information on the Sentinel
system is shared with 19 local organisations, including all seven
district councils and Lincolnshire County Council – and interestingly includes
the details of anyone who witnesses an act of anti-social behaviour.
Among the organisations sharing the information are
Mayflower Housing and two other social housing trusts.
Does this mean that co-operating
with the police and handing over your drink could count against you if you apply for a house at
some future date?
Whilst enforcement officers of whatever stripe have the
discretion to issue fixed penalty notices to “offenders” in Boston, the police
will be denied this role where street drinking is concerned – instead it will
fall to the borough council.
So … where a person refuses to stop drinking, they commit an
offence “and the instructing officer from Lincolnshire Police will secure a witness
statement in an agreed form and pass to Boston Borough Council for recording on
Sentinel.”
For a first offence, Worst Street will issue a £100 fine,
and – if it is not paid – “will consider all of the recovery options open to it
in accordance with the law and its corporate enforcement policy.
If anyone is caught twice in any six month period, the
council will consider prosecution.
Stand by for the usual headlines – “Council gets tough on
street drinking” and all the other nonsense about cracking down.
The report says that Lincolnshire Police and the Police and
Crime Commissioner have been very clear that they would adopt a
zero tolerance approach to anyone caught consuming alcohol in the
controlled drinking zone.
Is there an echo in here, or have we heard all this before?
Over the years Lincolnshire Police have pledged zero
tolerance to all manner of things – most regularly the use of pavements and
pedestrianised areas by cyclists, and we all know how successful that has been.
DPPOs failed because hardly any enforcement was carried out
– the police are simply not a visible presence in Boston town centre
… or anywhere else for that matter.
And this situation seems unlikely to change just because a
shiny new law is coming in next week.
PSPOs seem likely to fail for precisely the same reason – but
with the added encumbrance of a two tier enforcement system.
Mr Plod bags himself a boozer, then has to prise sufficient
information from him for Boston Borough Council to hound him through the courts
if necessary – in a cumbersome,
top-heavy over-administered pantomime that could be avoided if policemen simply
did what they did in the old days and used some common sense to make a problem
go away.
At least PSPO is easier to say than DPPO.
The P is silent – as in pstupid – so the acronym is
pronounced Spo.
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uddenly, the impossible has become possible –
and the road works on John Adams Way and Haven Bridge which have crippled the
town for the past four weeks will be
completed overnight between 7.00pm and 6.00am to “minimise inconvenience to local residents.”
Head Highways honcho Councillor Richard “Bob the Builder”
Davies said: “Throughout this project, we’ve been doing everything we can to
reduce the inconvenience caused to area residents and businesses (really? –
Ed.)
“Although the nature of the work being done previously meant
it had to be done during the day, we’ve reassessed the work that’s still
required and have decided we’ll continue the improvements at night when there
is less congestion on the roads.
“This arrangement shows we are listening to people’s concerns
and
addressing them where possible while still improving
the town’s roads in line with the Boston Transport Strategy.”
We suspect that this is the closest we will get to seeing
Lincolnshire Clownty Council admit that it cocked things up, got them wrong and has
caved in to public opinion.
Just three weeks ago, Councillor Davies was leaving us in no
doubt that overnight working in Boston was not an option.
Repeatedly, and publicly – on local radio and in the chamber
at County Hall when questioned by our local representatives – he made his
position clear.
On the radio he told listeners that working overnight could
potentially double the cost and that with a fixed budget, this would mean that
somewhere else would miss out on road improvements.
In the council chamber costs had risen to “sometimes three
times as much” – which meant that “somewhere else wouldn’t get something.
“So my question is if any member here doesn’t want their
pothole filled or doesn’t want their particular road resurfaced, please let me
know and we can then put some more work into night-time working on occasions.”
Somehow we doubt that kind heart councillors
from elsewhere in the county sacrificed their set of road
works so that Boston’s could be done overnight.
No, this is yet another case of people who think that they
are politicians playing at what they think are politics.
After hearing people’s concerns and doing nothing for a
month, the county council has not suddenly picked the wax out of its ear and bent over backward to ease Boston’s pain.
And it seems beyond coincidence that by a strange quirk of
highways engineering that a point was suddenly reached where work that in the
main could be done overnight was all that remained.
However, as regular readers will know, working in the dark comes as
second nature to Lincolnshire County Council.
One happy coincidence that we did note is that the new working arrangements come after
Councillor Davies appears to have made more visits to Boston in recent weeks
that we suspect is usual for him – and from his comments has not been impressed
the misery that we have been suffering on a daily basis.
If nothing else, it shows that the guy took note of our problems
and has perhaps done something about it.
It’s just a pity that it has to be given a political massage
in the process.
And what a shame this this respite for Boston has come
without any hint of lobbying or pressurising County Hall from our so-called
“leadership” in Boston.
***
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o, will Boston now get something of a breather as far as road works
are concerned?
Not if Lincolnshire’s Highways Department has anything to do with it.
As an accompaniment to the John Adams Way/Haven Bridge symphony,
the Highwaymen have added a sonata in the form of a right turn
ban on traffic leaving South End.
The idea is to improve traffic flow in the town. The trial ban, which began on 21st
August, is set to last for up to 18 months –
but after six months, there will be consultation with local people as to
whether the ban should be made permanent.
As any fule kno this road takes all the lorry traffic to and
from Boston Docks, and as a result of the ban on turning right, vehicles
heading north from the port now have to do a U-turn around the Liquorpond
Street roundabout to return along the A16.
The likely impact of large container vehicles turning so
sharply appears to have escaped the
radar of the Highwaymen – due no doubt to their finely-honed incompetence.
Seriously, who would have thought that heavy container lorries
trying to circumnavigate a roundabout that is not large enough for them to do
so might cause some major damage?
Not Clownty Hall’s experts, apparently.
The next question is how much will it cost to repair the
damage, and who will be responsible for repairing it.
If the right turn ban is to remain in force, the roundabout
will have to be reduced in size.
But whether it is repaired or reduced, the work will almost
certainly take some weeks, and require lane closures.
Perhaps, when the time comes, this work could be done
overnight – as a token of apology by our hapless county council.
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ention of road works moves us seamlessly to the subject of a
bypass.
After our comments last week about the debate over who was
doing what and when, we have heard from a reader who was a councillor way back
when – i.e. in the days before the BBI took control of Worst Street.
He says that the letter to a local “newspaper” was not
written with the thought of whitewashing any previous administrations – but was
a case of not letting an incorrect statement by former council leader Richard
Austin go unchallenged.
“Whilst it is a fact that that previous administrations'
attempts to secure funding of a solution to Boston's traffic ills had been
unsuccessful, should we describe such attempts as incompetence?” he asks.
“Some people may wish to do so, which is disappointing,
especially to those who did the lobbying, suggesting meetings and pushing
for funds.)
“But the point of the letter was to put the record straight
that Councillor
Austin was not correct to infer that absolutely no efforts had been made.
That's all. And of course Councillor Austin, not being on the council pre-2007
would genuinely not have been aware of actions which, for some reason, he wants
to tell the public did not take place.”
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nother part of the debate – that of whether or not the BBI
promised us a bypass has prompted another e-mail – this time from a reader who noted
some of the quotes being spouted as the party took over.
These included the comment from Councillor Austin at the
election count in the Peter Paine sports centre that “Boston needs emergency
treatment;” the claim by Deputy leader and former mayor Peter Jordan that the
party was “pushing to meet the next Prime Minister;” the claim on 9th
May 2007 by Councillor Sheila Newell in the Boston
sub-Standard that
“the party now expects a new road – probably in six or seven years”
which was rebutted in the next paragraph by Councillor Austin, who said “there
was never a promise that a bypass is coming – that’s out of our hands”
However, he also said in the same story: "Our borough
is no longer prepared to be ignored. This astonishing victory for the Boston
Bypass Independents is only the first step on the road to recovery, for
regeneration, and for that long, long-awaited bypass.”
We await the second step with bated breath.
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he mention we made last week of “The Bypass That Never Was”
turned out to be a reference to the so-called Southern Economic Corridor scheme
that included a section between London Road and the Dock bridge.
Whilst the precise year is unclear, the available documentation suggests around 2005, and the idea was to take traffic off London Road and continue
through the dock area to A52 east of the town.
The Boston Southern Economic Corridor was included in the
first local transport plan and aimed to enable “sustainable economic growth”
and support existing industries and businesses.
The overall project involved a partnership between Boston
Borough Council and the now defunct quango the East Midlands Development
Agency, with additional European support.
The original reason for the scheme was to boost the port’s
economy and the need to improve the road network was added later.
At this point Lincolnshire County Council was entirely
onside, but costs rose to such an extent that the scheme was reviewed
in both economic development benefits and transport terms.
We understand that when the idea was put to Lincolnshire
County Council for funding consideration it was “called in” – referred
back for further debate – by a group of county councillors, who
included, we understand some Boston members.
The upshot of the call-in and the ensuring discussions was a decision that funding should go elsewhere on schemes that were not being
challenged.
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hen Boston’s planning committee gathered to discuss the Quadrant
Development a few weeks ago, one thing that was particularly noticeable
– apart from the tang of Sloane’s
Liniment in the air – was the assertiveness with which any suggestion that
the area around the Princess Royal Sports Arena would be a suitable location
was rebutted.
Time and again, we were told that for a variety of reasons,
the area was totally unsuitable – and yet eight years ago, plans for a 7,500 seat football stadium with two
training pitches plus a 300 seat conference facility, 90 room hotel,
pub/restaurant, almost 1,000 parking spaces, and a coach park were discussed by
Boston Borough Council.
The scheme also included building houses on the redundant
York Street site.
The proposal was submitted by the football club’s then
owners – a company called Lavaflow –
and was rejected on the grounds that no business plan had been submitted that
clearly showed that the development, and the other related developments
required to enable the new stadium to be built were financially capable of being constructed.
But there were a couple of interesting points to emerge from
the report at the time.
The first was that council officers agreed with the
applicant that there were no alternative central or brownfield sites within the
town, which could reasonably accommodate a new 7,500 capacity football stadium.
They added: “The application site at Boardsides … has the
benefit of being located adjacent to the Princess Royal Sports Arena
and would therefore form a cluster of sporting facilities.”
Also of note was the criticism of a proposal to provide a
shuttle bus between the ground and the town centre on match days for only two
years.
This was considered “inadequate for the purposes of
encouraging fans to access the site by means other than the private car.”
Yet when opponents of the Quadrant scheme living in Wyberton
protested about congestion and other problems caused by visitors, they were blithely
brushed aside.
***
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he report on car park ticket machines that we mentioned last
week again highlights the lack of forward thinking by Boston Borough Council which
inevitably ends in a free for all with council taxpayers’ money.
The machines were bought in 2006 and are now wearing out.
The cost of replacing 28 machines is £105,000 – that’s
£3,750 a machine – plus a £9,500 a year maintenance contract. The machines
could also be rented instead, which would include maintenance – but the cost of this
option is not specified.
The new machines come with all sorts of bells and buzzers
which have clearly seduced them at Worst Street.
For instance, a machine can tell them at Base Camp Alpha if it
feels poorly, or is running out of tickets.
It can record car numbers to stop us cheating citizens from
giving someone else our unexpired ticket, and therefore the balance of our paid for but unused waiting time, and lets us pay by
mobile ’phone – which we imagine lit up a few greedy eyes with the news that
this would “increase compliance – motorists can pay to park whether or not
machines are operational.”
And of course, with an eye to future profit, an “additional
functionality” of this method of payment is “carbon-metered parking.”
This style of parking enforcement enables charging based on
the car’s carbon footprint with the most polluting vehicles paying the most
whilst those with low carbon emissions could potentially be offered a
discount.
This is not, of course, a way to screw more money out of
motorists, but “an incentive to individuals to move to less polluting
vehicles.”
Despite the apparent obsession with greed, it is interesting
to note that suggestions by the council’s scrutiny committee include looking at the possibility of
having free parking binges to encourage tourism into town, but also to
find out how much income would be lost if the council moved to free parking
altogether.
There’s no doubt that most people would like free parking,
and the advantage of that would also be that there would be no need for costly
ticket machines, and traffic wardens could concentrate on “real” infringements of the regulations.
However, the report has also proposed that charges
are reviewed over the coming months – with revised fees in the
starting gate for 1st April next year.
Despite the greedy efforts to make as much as possible,
thirteen of the council’s 23 car parks lose £70,000 a year between them.
Whilst it will be interesting to see what the eventual
outcome of all this debate is, we think that it is pretty unlikely that the
council will ever abandon the milk cow of parking charges or even reduce
them – although there are compelling
reasons to do so.
One suggestion that has not been made is to try to retain the more reliable machines for a little longer whilst replacing just the ones
that need too much maintenance.
That way, the replacement costs could be staggered so as to
be met in smaller outgoings, of, say, 25% every two years – avoiding the need
to spend a huge sum every eight.
Similar short-sightedness led to the Assembly Rooms fiasco
where, instead of budgeting for relatively small annual sums on maintenance and
decoration, the building was left to become ruinous – by which time it was
impossible for the council to find the funds needed to make it good once again.
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e’ve devoted a lot of space in recent weeks to the
finely crafted ineptitude of the county council’s highways department –
and the even worse news is that it is not just reserved for the big, set piece occasions.
Even down at a humble level it is possible to be ignored,
roughed up and made to feel that trying to be a helpful citizen is worse than
wearing a hat in church.
When the interminable road works on Main Ridge were being
done earlier this year, what appeared to be a temporary manhole cover was put
down on the pavement.
But when the workmen eventually struck camp and left some
months later, the cover remained.
Over time, those natives who inevitably regard destruction
as a bit of a lark did their best to pry the cover free of its heavy duty
fixings, leaving it loose, and potentially
dangerous.
We noticed all this because the Boston Eye offices are not far off, and our morning constitutional
regularly involves a stroll down picturesque Main Ridge, where fag ends and rubbish litter the
gutters despite the council giving the local Placecheck group £1,000 for a
state of the art street vacuum cleaner.
On 26th August, we wrote to the county’s Highways South office to draw their attention to it, and received an automated reply
saying that it would be “forwarded to the appropriate person for response.”
However, no response was forthcoming.
On 28th September our regular constitutional took
a nasty turn when Mrs Eye caught her foot against the remaining screw – which
by this time had been prised about an inch clear of the cover, and fell against
some railings, badly bruising herself in the process.
Having been ignored by Lincolnshire County Council, we
e-mailed Boston Borough Council to explain the history and request that
something be done as a matter of urgency, before someone was more seriously
hurt.
But as the responsibility lay with County Hall, Boston asked for our permission to forward the e-mail to the very people
who had ignored it, which we gave.
This time Highways South wrote to say that the e-mail had
been passed to the main Highways Department in Lincoln and a named member of
the Technical Services Section had been asked to investigate and respond.
We also told, somewhat abruptly: “ … you have been sending your enquiries to the
info email address … the contact email
address is customer_services@lincolnshire.gov.uk and they will ensure that the
correct department receives your correspondence.”
Presumably this served as a justification for doing nothing
– even though the correspondence had been received and acknowledged.
And guess what?
A further two and a half weeks have gone by with nothing being done.
Another time, we won’t bother.
And should anyone have the misfortune to trip and fall as a
result of this deliberate ignoring of a potentially dangerous situation, please
get in touch.
We will share our correspondence with you in the hope that you will be able to sue the clowns at County Hall from here to kingdom come.
We will share our correspondence with you in the hope that you will be able to sue the clowns at County Hall from here to kingdom come.
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final chuckle on a
different matter entirely was delivered by the previously mentioned Councillor
Richard Davies in Twitter message
which read … “Good visit to Bourne this AM to meet potential new Conservative
councillors – great to see fresh blood and new ideas.”
Whilst we know that politics is a dangerous game these days,
should this not have read; “new blood and fresh ideas?”
(** footnote) Not to be confused with Yogi Bear – who was famous for the
quote: "I'm smarter than the average bear"
You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com Your
e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.
Our former blog is archived at: http://bostoneyelincolnshire.blogspot.com
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