Is this the best they can do for our county?
SOME of you may have already received the knock on the door, many of you are due to receive it.
The knock where the current administration will be asking you to return them to Civic Offices in the local elections on May 4. They will come with promises of what they will do, they will be supported by AMs, MPs and even the First Minister of Wales. They will promise you what they will do; perhaps we should all talk about what they have done in their eight years of running BCBC.
They are imposing a draconian “two black bag” rule from April 1, with no true plans of how to impose or police it. Why are they imposing this? Due to failure to deal with an EU target on waste recycling which has been in place for years. Other authorities have had plans in place to deal with this target and have been working on decreasing landfill for the entire time of the last administration. BCBC are now panicking to ensure that we, as residents, don’t have to pay a fine for their inaction.
The Berwyn Centre has closed. Why? In the words of BCBC themselves “due to a lack of maintenance on the property, which made in nonviable to keep open”. Who was responsible for the maintenance? BCBC. Their failure to properly maintain this culturally important building to the Valleys has meant it is no longer there to serve the community.
There is now work under way to install a park and ride facility in Brackla ward, but details on how this will work are unclear as there are no plans to build the required railway station. So what has happened here? Many years ago, under the “Rainbow Coalition” BCBC bought the land for £1 with a Section 106, which was due to expire in December 2016 unless work started. So, BCBC have started the works. On what? A car park that will not link to a railway station as there is no capacity on the line to build a station. A station cannot be built until the capacity for the line is increased through electrification. So we will have a car park built that will be unusable.
Maesteg Market is due to be kicked out of its premises at the Town Hall. Why? Due to lack of maintenance of the property, which means the Awen Trust are being asked to take it over and run it as a cultural hub, and receive European funding in order to maintain it. Again, you could ask who was responsible for maintenance of this building? Again, you would find that it was BCBC.
Then there is the Rhiw car park, which due to failure to maintain was condemned and replaced with a facility offering a third less car parking spaces. The toilets under the Rhiw Centre are now unusable due to the pipework being left in such disrepair that it is now unable to be re-opened by either BCBC or Bridgend Town Council.
There is also the failure to address the terrible second phase of pedestrianisation of Bridgend town centre for seven of the years of their administration. When the traders finally forced a public consultation almost 80% of respondents supported the controlled re-introduction of traffic into this part of town. It was the largest ever consultation in the history of BCBC. In the meantime businesses have fled from this part of town due to lack of footfall and customers.
The people of this county are losing out due to the failure of this current administration to proactively deal with situations as or before they arise. They panic at the last second and deal with situations when it is too late to productively work towards the best outcome.
You will know of more situations, and please feel free to share them with us.
We will shortly be starting our campaigns and we will be campaigning on change for the better. This fantastic county does not belong to a political party, it belongs to the amazing people who live here. It is time for us as individuals to take it back and run it for the benefit of the residents.
Together we can return BCBC to people who will put their constituents first instead of secondary to their party loyalty.
So, when that door knock comes, we ask that you challenge your candidates – “Do not tell me what you will do, please tell me what you have done.”