Councillor Dave Smithwick chaired his first Estates sub committee last night and has set the record for the quickest meeting yet of the new council. All business dealt with within an hour!
We received up dates on various current issues. We have submitted an application for a grant to the Big Lottery for our planned improvements to the Frank Jordan centre and will shortly be submitting an application to the Stone Market Towns Initiative. The Frank Jordan Centre is an old Victorian school building which the Town Council leases from the Borough Council under a long, full repairing lease. The building needs quite a bit of refurbishment and we obtained planning permission a couple of years ago to do a 'refurb' and to carry out several structural alterations and improvements. Time is not on our side so I hope that we receive favourable news on our grant applications soon.
The Town Clerk also gave us a very positive report about our street market. Since introducing our new marquees, we have retained all our previous stallholders and have also attracted four new traders. This is very encouraging but markets change like the weather (probably because of the weather!) so we had best wait until the autumn to guage the long term effect.
On a related issue it was agreed that the whole question of street furniture should be reviewed. We have several seats , cycle racks, bollards and litter bins spread up and down the High Street. We believe that it may be possible to resite some of these to maximise the use of the High Street and to make the seats more user friendly.
Yes, an efficient well chaired and positive meeting.
We received up dates on various current issues. We have submitted an application for a grant to the Big Lottery for our planned improvements to the Frank Jordan centre and will shortly be submitting an application to the Stone Market Towns Initiative. The Frank Jordan Centre is an old Victorian school building which the Town Council leases from the Borough Council under a long, full repairing lease. The building needs quite a bit of refurbishment and we obtained planning permission a couple of years ago to do a 'refurb' and to carry out several structural alterations and improvements. Time is not on our side so I hope that we receive favourable news on our grant applications soon.
The Town Clerk also gave us a very positive report about our street market. Since introducing our new marquees, we have retained all our previous stallholders and have also attracted four new traders. This is very encouraging but markets change like the weather (probably because of the weather!) so we had best wait until the autumn to guage the long term effect.
On a related issue it was agreed that the whole question of street furniture should be reviewed. We have several seats , cycle racks, bollards and litter bins spread up and down the High Street. We believe that it may be possible to resite some of these to maximise the use of the High Street and to make the seats more user friendly.
Yes, an efficient well chaired and positive meeting.
