Around the ward

Residents on part of College Road have been experiencing real problems with parking making it difficult and even dangerous for them to get in and out of their drives. For many of them this seems to be associated with people visiting the HCA College Road site. I had a meeting with the principal and the operations manager and agreed some actions. We will keep the situation under review.

The parking around the Co-op at the Kingsway College Road junction is a concern to many residents. I am looking for how we can find the funding necessary to tackle this. Meanwhile the RNC has expressed concerns about the recent installation of tactile paving at this junction. I had a site meeting with a representative from the college and another from Balfour Beatty. We may have come up with a decent temporary fix. But we really need to whole area to be addressed and I will be working hard to make that happen.

I went on two walkarounds of the ward. One with the Locality Steward who oversees maintenance work on behalf of Balfour Beatty for the council. The other was with our volunteer Tree Warden. For such an urban ward we actually have quite a lot of trees and it’s great that we have a local volunteer looking out for them.

We had another litterpick in Churchill Gardens. I’d really like to thank the sixth form college students who give up a big chunk of their lunch break to keep on top of the litter in the park.

At the councils

I attended a meeting of Hereford Youth Council. They had a representative of Herefordshire Council there talking about the plans for the library to move into Shirehall. They raised some important issues about how young people use libraries that I hope the council will take into account.

I also attended a meeting of the Climate and Biodiversity Committee at the City Council. We discussed the criteria the committee will use to award grants which I hope Council will approve in May. This will give a stream of small grants for local groups who want to undertake projects to reduce carbon or to improve nature and biodiversity across the city.

Elsewhere

I attended the unveiling of the latest sculpture for the plinth at the skate park. I had a good chat with the artist who is a student at Hereford, Ludlow and North Shropshire College. The work itself is great. I was also pleased to see the Lord Lieutenant, the High Sherrif, the Chair of Herefordshire Council and the Mayor of Hereford all at the skatepark for the unveiling.

I also attended the service of thanksgiving for the service of Mayor Jacquie Carwardine at St Peter’s Church. Jacqui really is an impressive person who has achieved many things in her life and has been a really hard working and committed mayor.

Anything else

I’ve been pushing the police and, in some cases some other agencies, to act on pockets of anti-social behaviour around the ward. College is a generally very quiet ward but anti-social behaviour can be a real blight where it occurs. I will keep working to ensure any pockets are tackled swiftly.

I’ve also been out canvassing with Dan Powell who is standing for parliament for the LibDems to represent Hereford and South Herefordshire. There’s a lot of anger and disappointment about the Conservatives out there and a lot of enthusiasm for Dan. Both of which are well deserved.