Council Meeting, Part Two

The meeting moved on from Timbuktu to the potentially contentious issue of the update on the Youth and Community Centre/School/Supermarket Development, with the news that the County Council will not be able to make a decision of any sort until September at the earliest. August is the month when only urgent and emergency work gets done. There's a lot happening with the local schools, though - Clyro is getting refurbished to the extent that it's practically a re-build. Ffynnon Gynydd is closing shortly. After a campaign to save it, Glasbury School will be staying open until 2016 - but there are only four children there at the moment. Llanigon School is also due to close - and Hay School remains in limbo, and the funding is not in the Town Council's control.

After a vigorous discussion, the meeting moved on to the issue of closing the public toilets at night during the winter months - and who would have the responsibility of locking up each evening? There had also been a letter of complaint about the state of the public toilets in Hay - together with information about the holiday cottage that the complainer wanted to rent out!

There's now a Communications Working Group, and they are making a real effort to inform the public about what the Council is doing for the town. One step towards this is a regular column in WyeLocal - the first one was in the latest issue, and though there are a few teething problems, this will become a regular feature. They were also talking about a new notice board. Everyone is welcome to come to the meetings (first Monday of the month at the Council Chambers) and minutes of all the Council meetings are available to read at the Library.

The scaffolding around what used to be the big bookshop at the top of the Pavement was discussed. It's pretty much blocked off the little lane down to Lion Street, and the builders have been parking their vans across the top of the Pavement, more or less cutting off the bottom end of town from the top end. There were comments that, during the Food Festival, the top of town was full of people, but Lion Street looked like a ghost town. However, the scaffolding has now been taken down on the side of the building where the road is, and remains only on the Pavement side, where people can get past.

There have been problems with the playground equipment supplied by a group called PlayQuest, which was inspected and found to be non-compliant with the regulations (though the risk was low to medium). Repairs have been done, but the Trading Standards people need to become involved to make sure that the equipment really is up to the job.

There were questions from the public, the main one being a plea for someone to approach the Rose and Crown to get them to renovate their Grade II listed building.

There were then reports about different groups in Hay. Apparently someone had queried, at a previous meeting, why the Council were giving money to Dial-a-Ride, and what were the benefits? There's now been a meeting with Dial-a-Ride, and it was found to be very much worthwhile from a social point of view, and well worth supporting financially. There will be meetings with other groups that the Council supports financially soon, asking very similar questions of them. There was some discussion of how to split the money available between Dial-a-Ride and the Community Support office - and what about the sixty odd quid for Easter eggs for the children of Hay School? Which budget would that come out of? Someone was also going to go through all the information they had on the Community Centre, though a lot of information seemed to be missing from the records. Meanwhile, the Cheesemarket Renovation Group have applied for a Lottery grant.

There was a report, too, about the youth group in Hay - and how they didn't know about the Youth Forum that took place during Hay Festival, which they really should have been involved in.

And finally, Ellie Spencer talked about going along to a meeting of the Health Board - a four and a half hour long meeting! It concerned the future of Bronllys Hospital, in part, and the impression I got, listening to Ellie, was that the Health Board don't actually want the public to be involved in their meetings at all. They've already moved the times of meetings from evenings to during the day - and public attendance has gone down to a quarter of what it was because of that - and they didn't put information up on their website until the morning before the meeting. When they finally did, it was about 200 pages long, and pretty turgid going. They also had an item on the agenda to exclude members of the public so they could talk about confidential matters, though they didn't actually do this.
One of the proposals at this meeting were that the Mansion House at Bronllys Hospital, which presently houses clerical staff, should be sold off, along with the land around it, and the staff re-located elsewhere in the complex (about 200 of them). It was also mentioned that the hospital was £30 million in debt!

The next meeting will be held on Monday 3rd September, at 7pm