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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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1st February '09
I have noted before how one of the Bideford area’s two county councillors attends the town council to report on how decisions taken at Exeter are affecting Bideford – and this month Hugo Barton came along. He began by saying that the new Bideford College was on target in terms of time and how its very high level of in-built sustainability was attracting a great deal of interest the length and breadth of the UK. I did ask whether the plan for a large and dedicated wind turbine to serve the College was still part of the plan and was assured it was – though as yet no site has been chosen and one probably wouldn’t be selected until next year at the earliest. We also heard about a possible new road crossing at the eastern end of the Bridge which we first asked about over a year ago now – local government works slowly! The plan is to enlarge the present pedestrian ‘island’ opposite the Pine-Coffin bust and to make part of Torrington Lane Street a dual use crossing/road. If you cannot visualise what this means then don’t worry too much as the road engineers are going to public consultation on their ideas. Councillor Barton did stress that the existing weight limit on the Bridge would remain – and that there would be no change in the current width of the carriageway, i.e. no loss of pavement, and that road ‘humps’ some 75 mm high would be placed on the road to slow traffic down.
Councillors, with perhaps one or two exceptions I have known, are not really ‘chancers’ yet a recent suggestion at a town council meeting by councillor Mel Bushell might see him fall into this category. We were talking about buying some of the district council’s ‘assets’ if a new Unitary form of local government is introduced. He wondered whether, as we occupy our Town Hall offices rent free, we couldn’t claim squatter’s rights over them! The Town Clerk simply replied ‘Sadly, no.’ Speaking of the putative Unitary council East Devon councillors have paid for a judicial review of the whole scheme. The judge’s findings do actually raise doubts about the approach taken by the government but your understanding of this would depend on whether you read the press release from East Devon or Devon county council which seem to provide a different take on the outcome – indeed they would provide an excellent resource for media study students to analyse! The final decision has now been delayed but given the current ‘credit crunch’ I suspect a shortage of cash will forestall any new, grandiose scheme – but we shall see.
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