The Globe: Matters Arising

"There have been rumblings," Mary said to start off the meeting (she being Mayor, and in the Chair).
So to clear the air, the Town Council were facilitating a public meeting for all the problems to come out and be talked about. Mandy and Jo from the Globe were there, several councillors, Gareth Ratcliffe the county councillor (who had to crawl under the table to get to a chair) and PC Thomas.
After Mary took her letter round to the neighbours of the Globe, the Council got 17 letters in reply. Nine were complaints, but the rest were in support (though two of the supporting letters came from further afield).
The complaints could be broken down into parking, and noise. Mandy said that, in future, when they knew they were going to get a lot of deliveries, they would try to stagger the timings better so Heol-y-dwr wasn't blocked by lorries or cars, but that was pretty much all they could do, besides saying on the website and publicity that there was no parking for customers at the Globe. She also agreed with the audience that there should be a resident's mailing list to alert neighbours to potential problems.
PC Thomas broadened it out a bit and said there were four areas around Hay that he got most complaints about with regard to parking: the area opposite Bridge Street, the corner around the Blue Boar at the other end of town, and around the zebra crossing on Oxford Road, and along Castle Street, where people sometimes overstayed their time. The new road down to Millbank was mentioned, but that hasn't been adopted by the Highways Authority yet, so there's very little the police can do yet. He said that if there are problems, then the number to ring is 101, the police non-emergency number (I didn't know about this number before tonight, but it seems a lot better than dialling 999 for some trivial problem like the woman on the national news who had her snowman pinched!).
As far as the noise was concerned, PC Thomas has been keeping an eye on the place to make sure they kept within their licencing agreements - which they have done. He also said that Trading Standards have been around the town doing test buying, and the Globe passed. Which means that someone under age tried to buy a drink and the Globe refused to serve them.
Another noise issue was that groups of people had tried to go into the Globe after they'd come on from other pubs and had been refused admittance because it was after 11pm, in which case the Globe had acted properly, and it wasn't their fault that the people in the street had been rowdy.
Privacy was a particular issue for one neighbour, and Mandy said that they would be planting trees along the edge of the new patch of ground that they've bought, which should also reduce noise.
Another neighbour brought up the safety problems of the road, with no footpath - and small children go to events at the Globe at times. This turns out to be the responsibility of the Highways department, who have been to look at the junction, but who have no money at the moment to do anything. It's too narrow to put a footpath in, and other options include making Heol-y-dwr one way, or changing the priorities so that cars coming up Newport Street have to give way to those coming out of Heol-y-dwr. But that's not going to happen until a bit of money materialises.
On the plus side, both Fiona Howard, as headmistress, and PC Thomas, mentioned that the Globe's events for children and young people mean that kids that would otherwise be hanging around and possibly getting into trouble were, instead, sitting in the Globe watching a film, which has to be a good thing.
As I was leaving, there was a little cluster of people round the bottom of the staircase talking about sending letters to the Highways Department to get them to do something to improve safety on Heol-y-dwr. There may be a campaign starting there.