It seems that the Town Council have responsibility for the maintenance of the bus shelters - so the next topic of discussion was what to do about this graffiti. One councillor suggested keeping it for Hay in Bloom! Others suggested a pot of green paint was in order. They also talked about having more town information at the bus stops. Apparently Velindre bus shelter has books in it - no buses, though....
And from graffiti to fly tipping, and the trialing by Powys County Council of imposing fixed penalty notices on householders who fly tip. There's also a warning here for any householders who pay someone to take their waste away - if the person who takes it then tips it, it is the householder who is responsible.
Richard Greatrex was very keen for the Council to get involved with a consultation on how local government should work in the future, from the Welsh Assembly. For instance the Welsh Assembly are asking what community councils should be responsible for. It may seem theoretical, but could change the way things work across Wales in the future, such as combining neighbouring councils. If Hay were to be combined with Llanigon, for instance, the two areas have very different requirements.
One Voice Wales is working on a response to the consultation at the moment, and various councillors said they would be interested in seeing it when it's done. They also agreed that more working together between local councils would be a good thing.
Meanwhile Miles Without Stiles is forging ahead with work on local footpaths. Powys County Council have donated ten gates! And the Lions have donated £1,000, and would like to have plaques on their gates. The next stage is to get grant money - the project minimum is £20,000, which can be match funded with volunteer hours rather than cash, so they're looking for a pledge of 500 volunteer hours, with an additional £6,000 from the Town Council - and I missed the details of the rest of it. The Finance committee was due to meet a few days after the main Council meeting, and they had a lot to discuss!
The councillors were also looking back to last year, when they had a meeting with the National Parks and set out what they hoped to achieve over the year - and the consensus was that they've done quite well!
One area where they haven't been able to make much progress is affordable housing, partly because they were hoping the Affordable Housing Group would do most of the heavy lifting, but the group doesn't seem to have been active recently.
One concern was over the affordable housing in the Persimmon development. One condition for the building to go ahead was that local families in need would get first choice of the housing, but families seem to be moving in from all over Powys, not just the Hay area. There was a point that these families have more points than local families, so were in greater need. There was also concern that some local people have tried to get housing on the new estate, but have been refused, and the councillors wanted to talk to the National Parks, Powys Planning Department and Wales and West Housing Association to discuss this. This was seen to be a matter of urgency, as Wales and West are involved in future developments locally.
Meanwhile, over the border in Cusop, the houses of Booker's Edge are springing up opposite the Co-op, and people applying for affordable houses there have to prove a connection to Cusop. This would include anyone with family already living in Cusop, or someone who is employed in Cusop, which would include anyone who works at the Co-op, or Hay and Brecon Farmers. However, Cusop is unusual in that all the facilities are in Hay. Affordable, in this case, means at a discount of 39% of the full price for the houses. The councillors wanted to publicise this as much as possible, to give local families a chance to apply.
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