Dear Neighbourhood
Partnerships Business Support Team
You've been asking
Friends of Stockwood Open Spaces (FoSOS) what's happening about the
community notice board you generously paid for. You know the sort of thing...... nothing fancy, but good enough to do the job.
Yes, it seems
unbelievable that a year has passed since everything was in place, ready to go. During those same months, the Arena
has moved on apace, the South Bristol Link has been turned from green
belt meadows into a sea of mud ready to link up with the emerging
Ashton Vale to Temple Meads metrobus. The BearPit is being
transformed . Bristol is certainly looking different.
But Stockwood - apart from a fire in a tattoo parlour - looks exactly the same.
If all had gone well, you'd now be seeing our notice board in the middle of this picture, and FoSOS and a load of other local organisations, not least the Neighbourhood Partnership itself, would be putting it to good use. You might even see a council candidate or two posing in front of it.
The empty space is not the fault of
FoSOS. Sure, it was FoSOS that researched and drafted the bid after
a couple of the council's 'arms length' partners had promised, then
failed, to do it, and FoSOS who got endorsements from a load of other
community groups who'll benefit - while our councillors sat on their
hands. It was FoSOS that agreed to act as fundholders. That, in
spite of the last time FoSOS 'fund held ' on behalf of a community
project, the council managed not only to lose the cheque returning
the unspent money, but to suggested that FoSOS had misappropriated
it. Remember?
Anyway, we finally got
there, cash in hand, and on the point of placing the order for the
board. Just one problem..... it turned out that the city council are the only people
permitted to embed it in the pavement, and they're much too busy with the big vanity projects to bother with a piddling little notice board to
tell people what's happening in our not-very-important neck of the
woods.
Once that little snag
became clear, FoSOS took up a request to organise the work itself, using other
council-approved contractors. But they weren't
interested in the job..
So we came up with
another scheme. Abandoning the preferred plan for a conventional
post-mounted notice board, we opted for second best. Another kind of
board could be bolted to the masonry walls of the raised flowerbeds
alongside the original site. Fixing this one would be no problem –
local people would volunteer their skills and labour for free (just
as well, because a more expensive board would have to be bought).
We were given the OK to go ahead.
After a bit of
negotiation with the suppliers – they'd wanted the cash up front,
but we preferred half now, half on delivery – the order was finally
placed and our cheque for half the cost was sent off. Yippee.
BUT – then we got the
message from the council. We mustn't install it ourselves. The
flowerbeds are, it turns out, the property, and responsibility, of
the Highways department. They, and only they, can fix the notice
boards. And only when they have the time, and are paid the money.
So the order, and the
manufacture of the boards, has had to go on hold yet again. There's
not enough money left to pay the Highways dept charge for doing the
job.
So there's still –
three years after being 'officially' proposed – no public notice
board in Stockwood.
Thank you BCC. Your
monitoring form is being be returned, completed as requested.
Note: Friends of Stockwood Open Spaces has NOT been asked to endorse this post!
