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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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27th July '08
Some of the agenda items at council meetings seem designed to fill one with a sense of foreboding boredom. A recent one promised the delights of a 67 page ‘Quarterly Business Review’. Amazingly when I came to read it I found it actually very interesting but before I go into detail I will point out that on the ‘Scorecard’ for Torridge’s overall performance there is now no issue giving serious cause for concern which is a real cause for celebration and congratulations towards the council’s staff for helping turn the administration round. The report abounds in detail so that, for example, we learn that the numbers of requests for ‘Pest Control’ are currently running between 127 and 206 a month whilst the peak month for waste collection is the immediate post-Christmas period. Intriguing footnotes are added to many of the entries – thus a joint recycling promotion campaign with NDDC was ‘cancelled due to there being no interest to work jointly by NDDC’ – presumably we have to thank Councillor Cann for this. One set of figures could be seen as either good or bad depending on who you are – planning application refusals were running at 23% in February and March (the last months for which figures are available) compared to an overall average of 16%. One question I did raise was about a ‘Covert CCTV system’ recently purchased for environmental monitoring such as fly-tipping etc. You may have seen the Government telling councils to be very careful how they use such systems – and I was glad to hear that Torridge has already taken this on board and intends to follow the guidelines suggested by the central authority.
I am Torridge’s Lead Member for Historic Buildings and every year English Heritage sends me a weighty tome on ‘Buildings at Risk’ in England. This year the volume, at 327 pages, is weightier than ever because not only buildings have been included but also nearly 20,000 archaeological sites, some 1600 historic parks and gardens, 43 registered battlefields and 45 protected wreck sites. As always I turned straight to the Torridge section and happily there are only 2 entries. One is the Grade 2* Richmond Dock in Appledore. Constructed in 1856 as a dry dock it was the largest such facility in the Bristol Channel when built by William Yeo. According to English Heritage the dock is in fair to poor condition mainly owing to a lack of ‘significant maintenance in recent years’. Apparently ‘Redevelopment proposals for [the] adjacent site will entail its repair’. The proposals as I understand them will actually encircle the dock completely and will rather overshadow the old structure. The collapse of the property market, however, would seem to pose a major problem to the gentleman behind the redevelopment scheme and one can only speculate on what might happen to the dock if no funds are forthcoming for maintenance in the near future. Perhaps now is the time to follow up on some of the suggestions I have detailed in previous columns? – and sooner rather than later if we are not to lose such an important part of our local industrial heritage. Incidentally, over the next 2 years English Heritage will be assessing England’s 9500 designated conservation areas including the various bits in Bideford and Appledore - along with our 14,500 listed ‘places of worship’ – my postman is warned now.
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