As well as the hundreds of cases due to the poor maintenance by the County Council of our roads and footpaths, and the ongoing vandalism of street nameplates, I am working on several ajor cases in our Ward:

Stewartby 1

1) The obviously big one is the closure of the brickworks.

Following the distribution of our December FOCUS with this as the main story, we were invited to a meeting with David Szymanski the Managing Director of Hanson Building Products to make first contact with him and to find out what Hanson’s plans are for the site. Judith and I met David on Thurs 10th Jan and discussed many issues.

– We pressed our wish that at least one of the chimneys be maintained. We had also asked for Borough Council and English Heritage support for that. We were very pleased to hear afterwards that the County Council were successful in getting English heritage to “list” the site.

– David showed us what the new office block fronting Green Lane should look like when it is finished. Many residents will have already seen work starting on that site.

– David told us of future development plans for the site. We said we would support local residents views on any residential development of the site.

– David has very kindly sent both me and Judith a copy of the book outlining Hanson’s vision for the site.

– Obviously there are plenty of issues arising out of the brickworks closure that we will need to provide a lot of information and support to local residents on.