Confident Places Scrutiny Committee last night

At last night's Confident Places Committee meeting a couple of interesting things were discussed.

The first was the levy that Builders will have to pay the council when they builder houses. Currently the developers have to pay what is known as 106. This can be used for play areas and other things. This money is going to stop and the Council will put a new tax on property that are to be built. The Council say they want to strike a balance so that it is not to expensive that scares developers away and not too low were it is so low that developer cash in.

The Council want to charge a 3 tier system, so were developers do not want to build the new proposed levy will be low and were developers want to build the levy will be higher. However, I am worried that we might have our own Royal Mail scandal here, were the Council sell out to cheap. Standish, for example, will be charged about £65/£70 per sq metre for residential properties. However, I believe that this is to cheap, if they have to build then they should pay the correct rate. Setting the levy so low will only help developers cash in and profit more at the expense of the community.

When will the Council realise that they have to be accountable to the public?

Also the Council are looking at the problem of people parking on the pavement. Whilst it may be on an odd occasion were drivers have to park on the kerb with one wheel, it is something else, when mindless drivers park their cars on the pavement and block the whole pavement. This then make it difficult for people to get passed, especially ones with pushchairs or wheel chairs.

The Council are now looking to put traffic orders were by in cases they can go and put penalty notices on the vehicles that block pavements, rip up grass verges or damage the footpath flags. Normally I am all against action whereby Council's and Government agency's make money out of the easy target motorist, However, in this case I am all for it as I have had numerous residents complain about a small number of vehicles. Once these orders come in we can take action against them and stop them blocking pavements.