I went to the North Devon District Council (NDDC) Executive Committee meeting this morning as there were two items  relating to South Molton on the agenda – Care Closer to Home and .

In essence NDDC appear to be against the Care Closer to Home proposals and want to have a closer look at the way population growth was worked out and the what the financial model looks like,

NDDC members seem unable to grasp the difference between acute care and long term care. There still seems to be the misapprehension that beds equals hospitals i.e. if the beds are closing the hospital is closing.

The second item of interest to South Molton concerned Norrington Yard. In essence approval was sought to appoint the same agent as that used by Tesco to explore the sale/development of the Tesco site and the NDDC site.  Lots of waffle but no real action – both Cllrs John Moore and David Worden did speak in favour of taking the views of South Molton people into account and ensuring that things didn’t end up stagnating again.

It was good to see Councillors Goodman, Moore and Worden at the meeting – along with our Deputy Town Clerk, Andrew Coates.

I went to presentation in the Assembly Rooms on Monday afternoon given by McCarthy and Stone, a development company that specialises in building homes for the elderly (generally considered to be those over 60!).

They are currently having discussions with North Devon District Council before they submit a planning application for 34 one and two bed roomed apartments behind Moors Yard, to the south of the Community Hospital and Eastleigh.

McCarthy and Stone have a good reputation, and whilst I’m always suspicious of developers, this largely looks like it could be ‘a good thing’ and fulfill a real need for some people. Although it certainly won’t be affordable by everybody. Prices are likely to be quite high, as will the service charge and there will be no social housing element (see also my final point).

The apartments will be spread over 2/3 floors with an even mix of 1-bed and 2-bed flats. The building will have two lifts, a community lounge, a house-manager on-site and a guest room. It will all be wheelchair accessible and special provision will be made for the needs of the more frail elderly.

There will be covered ‘parking’ for four mobility scooters (with charging points), and four disabled parking bays i.e. much wider than normal. There will be an additional 30 ordinary parking bays and four or five bays for visitors.

One of my major concerns is that the amount of parking is insufficient. Apart from the visitors’ parking, there ought to be more parking in each of the categories, including for mobility scooters.

The access to the complex is also somewhat problematic. Traffic will approach from the north i.e. it will come past the Community Hospital and then head south in front of Eastleigh.

The developers have said that they would ‘facilitate’ pedestrian/mobility scooter access to South Street via Moors Yard. This will be somewhat difficult as there is no public right of way, and it’s not exactly appropriate to have elderly pedestrians mixing with garage/workshop traffic.

My final issue is that this isn’t really for local people. I think it’s primarily aimed at retirees from elsewhere – London, Birmingham Manchester etc.

The sales pitch can be found on their website.

EDIT: This development has changed its name and is now called Squire Court.

Well done NDDC for removing the fly tipping detritus from outside the old Phoenix recycling centre.

The first of a series of Antique Fairs was held in the Pannier Market today,

A good selection of stalls, no tat, and reasonably priced.

Have a look at the website here.

Let’s hope they go from strength-to-strength.

Outside the old recycling centre.

I’ve reported it via the NDDC flytipping website. Let’s see how long it stays there.

Outside the pannier market today I noticed that one of the hanging baskets had been vandalised. You can’t see it very well in this picture unfortunately but it looks worse in real life. It might be a minor thing but it looks unsightly and costs time and money to clear up.

Why do people have to engage in such mindless hooliganism?

A very well attended meeting on Friday night – good.

The reasons for attendance – bad!

When things are going swimmingly (pun intended) people don’t tend to attend AGMs. When they have issues – they do!

Some of the many issues raised by the attendees included:

• Opening hours – the pool has frequently been closed, either because of equipment failures or staffing issues;
• Cleanliness – the state of the showers and the tiling of the pool leave something to be desired;
• The lack of a proper hairdryer;
• Lack of communication of unplanned closures.

Unfortunately the trustees were very defensive. They shouldn’t have been. People recognise that they are doing a difficult job and face many challenges – not least of which is that much of the equipment is old, doesn’t work properly, and needs replacing.

Hopefully once a new pool manager has been appointed (applications closed on Friday) things will improve.

The manager can look after the day-to-day running of the pool and the trustees can devote more time to longer term strategic issues.

For example:

• gaining access to so-called Section 106 money from the district council ;
• exploring options to obtain grants from other sources;
• communicating with both the Town Coucil and district Council;
• better public facing communication in general.

A bit of fund raising wouldn’t go amiss either.

The swimming pool is a very important part of our local community and needs to be kept going!

Back in 2012 the District Council approved the conversion of a two car garage into ancillary living accommodation for the adjacent house. The application was also endorsed by the Town Council.

The first plans increased  the height of the roof line by a small amount and showed two bedrooms and a bathroom in the roof space. The ground floor was shown as a gym/recreation area.

The original application was approved with the constraint that there should be no deviation from the initially submitted plans and the accommodation should only be used as ancillary accommodation with no cooking facilities.

A new application has now been received which alters the original application by:

• increasing the height of the roof line even further;
• making minor changes to the bedrooms;
• adding a toilet downstairs;
• dividing the space downstairs into two rooms – a gym and a recreation area.

Three objections to this new application were received.

The Town Council endorsed the new application on the grounds that ‘they’d approved the last one’ and that ‘there were no real changes’. They either totally ignored the objections or didn’t know that there were any – I suspect the latter.

It would almost certainly comply with building regulations for new housing as it would now have a toilet on the ground floor. It wouldn’t take a great deal of work to install a kitchen on the ground floor and then use the building as totally self contained accommodation. And voila! A new house for sale.

In theory, if this were to happen the District Council could insist that the kitchen be taken out. What would happen in practise is, of course, likely to be entirely different.

I would like to suggest that our Town Clerk briefs our town councillors properly and thoroughly before any planning applications are discussed at the town council level.

Because of the new houses being built  off Station Road, the Town Council wanted a speed limit of 30mph to be extended along the full length of Station Road. From where it currently starts, just past the junction with Hugh Squier Avenue, to the junction with the Link Road.

Devon County Council (DCC) were happy to extend the 30mph limit to just before the turn-off for Gunsdown Villas,  but objected to extending it all the way to the Link Road junction. This was not what our elected representatives wanted but was the advice given to them by the council officers i.e. the council employees.

In order for the full 30mph limit to be approved it will have to go a full meeting of the DCC cabinet!

I’ve gone into the whole issue in more detail here.

At the recent Town Council meeting it was decided that the scaffolding on the Town Hall won’t be coming down until sometime in the spring, once the repair works have been completed.

The rationale behind this is twofold:

1. The first being cost: it was costing £60 a week to keep the scaffolding up, this has now been negotiated down to £200 a month. However, it would have cost £2,200 to take it down and put it up again in the spring.
2. The second reason is more compelling. The Town Council have been advised to keep it up on Health and Safety grounds in order to avoid the possibility of masonry falling on people!

The question that still needs to be properly answered is: Why did the first set of repairs not fix the issues? Was the work not done properly?