I live very close to Buile Hill Park in Salford and use the park every day (to walk Dexter, my dog). It’s a beautiful park and I consider myself extremely lucky to live near such a great open space (in fact, luck had little to do with it, I specifically moved here because of the proximity to the park).

Over the last few weeks, without any consultation or notice to Buile Hill Park’s regular users, work began to tear up a large section of the grass seen in the picture below to install a cricket pitch. A 20m long section of natural grass was cut out and replaced with artificial grass.

Many of the park users were surprised when the work started, firstly because we knew nothing about it until the work had started. Secondly, many of us thought it was an odd location for the cricket pitch. The crease was mere centimetres from one of the goalposts that make up a set heavily used by local youths. Don’t get me wrong, I have seen local kids playing cricket in Buile Hill Park (once), whereas there are lads playing football almost every day it is dry. It seemed impossible for a game of cricket and a football match to be played at the same time, given the proximity of the crease to the goalpost.

On Thursday afternoon I noticed the goalposts have disappeared. Who has stolen our goalposts? They belong to the park and were installed for the benefit of the users of Buile Hill Park. Nobody has any right to take them away without asking us first.

I have brought this up with Langworthy’s Lib Dem Councillor Drake who has started to probe the council for answers. I fear we won’t know who is responsible until after the election.

I have nothing against cricket (regular visitors to my blog will know I am a big football fan) and if both cricket and football pitches can be accomodated in Buile Hill Park I would be happy to have them co-exist, but damaging the park and making wholesale alterations without notifying it’s users is just not on.

Salford Council needs to learn that consultation with it’s residents over important changes is vital and necessary. My fear is that if Labour wipe out opposition members off the council at the local elections in less than 2 weeks time, this kind of totalitarionistic approach will be all to common across our great city.

A new planning application has been received by Salford City Council to erect a 4-bedroom house on the vacant land at the junction of Liverpool Street and Derby Road in Langworthy. The plot is adjacent to the Moorlands Sports and Social Club.

Application number: 11/60734/FUL

You can read the full application and view maps and illustrations of the proposed building at Salford City Council’s Planning Portal by clicking here and using the search facility for the above application number.

Navigate to the ‘documents’ link and all the details are accessible in PDF format.

Langworthy residents may wish to note that the applicant wishes to close off part of the public footpath (on Liverpool Street).

I would be interested to hear the comments of both Langworthy and Weaste residents with regards to this proposed development – comments can also be submitted to the planners via Salford City Council’s planning portal (link above).

I would expect the council’s planning panel to consider the application in the new year.

In October, Urban Vision announced that street lighting across Salford City was being updated with new LED lamps, rather than the traditional filament-type as a way of saving money and becoming more energy efficient. They even listed a few streets in Langworthy’s neighbouring ward of Claremont where the LED lamps would be installed. Great!

But what about Langworthy?

About a week ago, I asked our Langworthy Neighbourhood Manager which streets (if any) would be getting LED street lights. He did not know, so forwarded my request to Urban Vision. The response? None.

I’ve since reminded Urban Vision about my query – but their silence simply raises another question. Why does Claremont get to do it’s bit and save money for the Council whilst being more energy conscious and Langworthy does not?

Langworthy has a proud community and we want to do our bit to help the city and reduce our energy consumption, which in turn protects our planet.

UPDATE 23/11/11:
Urban Vision have finally come back to me and the following streets are scheduled to receive the LED streetlamp upgrade in November/December:

Almond Close
Amersham Street
Brentwood
Citrus Way
Clementine Close
Coconut Grove
Coomassie Street
Culverwell Drive
Mango Place
Melksham Close
Melon Place
Sandy Grove
Tenbury Close

This list is different to the streets initially listed on Labour’s Langworthy ward Councillor John Warmisham’s blog here, however he has since updated his blog to the list above (presumably because he received a copy of the email I got from Urban Vision).

I note with some annoyance that Cllr Warmisham only wrote about the LED street lighting in Langworthy after I blogged about it. Langworthy ward Coouncillors were told about LED street lighting in October, perhaps Cllr Warmisham didn’t think energy efficiency was important until I mentioned it?

Don’t forget tomorrow (Tuesday 24th May) there will be a residents meeting at the Moorlands Sports & Social Club (the former Weaste & District Conservative Club) on Liverpool Street at 4pm.

Representatives from Urban Vision and Palmer Demolition will be in attendance to give a brief overview of their plans for the site and to answer resident’s questions.

Langworthy ward Councillor Lynn Drake will be chairing the meeting and I will be on hand to collect questions, should residents not want to ask them personally.

The other ward Councillors have also been invited.

This is not a political meeting, it is purely for concerned residents to find out what is happening with the former school site during demolition and to learn about future plans for the site once cleared.

As of last week the ‘free’ bulky waste collection in Langworthy came to an end. Since the start of Langworthy’s SRB5 re-generation the council has collected bulky waste free of charge and this has helped to combat (but not eliminate) the fly-tipping that has plagued our ward in recent years.

All this has now come to an end in a short-sighted cut by Salford’s Labour Council.

The new charges are £24.14 for up to four items (excluding builder’s rubble, bricks, concrete, paving flags and other heavy items and gas bottles).

However, all is not lost. Salford Community Transport ‘New to You’ have been providing local residents with a free collection service for  re-usable bulky waste items such as beds, suites, drawers, washing machines and tumble dryers for some time now. This will continue.

Salford Community Transport ‘New to You’ is a charity which collects good quality unwanted furniture for the re-supply to families and individuals in need and will collect any reusable household items free of charge, such as Beds, Three piece suites, Washing machines, Tumble dryers, Wardrobes, Chest of drawers, Dressing and dining tables.

Bulky waste items need to be in good condition and not flat packed, damaged or in need of dismantling for transport.

To arrange a collection of re-usable bulky waste items or for more information please call Salford Community Transport ‘New to You’ on 0161 736 8852 or email: salford@communitytransport.org.

Alternatively, you can also donate your unwanted furniture at the Lumns Lane Household Waste Recycling Centre.

From today, Tuesday 12 April 2011, your blue and brown bin, recycling collections will be changing from a fortnightly to monthly collection schedule.

Under the new scheme:

• Your blue and brown recycling bins will be collected once a month (instead of once a fortnight) on the same day as your black bin.
• Collection of all other bins will not change with your general domestic waste (black bin) collected weekly and your garden waste (pink lidded bin) collected fortnightly.

All households in Salford should have received a new calendar sticker attached to your blue and brown recycling bins which detail your new monthly collection dates. Please make a note of the calendar dates showing your new sequence of recycling collections.

Because I live in Langworthy, I’m frequently checking planning applications to see if any potential development could cause problems for my neighbours and this evening I have come across a troubling application from Tesco, in relation to the Pendleton Store.

Late last year, Tesco were controversially granted planning permission for their new “eco-store” in Pendleton (despite nothing about the building being eco-anything) and to protect local Langworthy residents from noise and being disturbed in the early hours, a restriction was put in place on the times that Tesco would be allowed to deliver their produce to the store.

These restrictions were no HGV movements/loading/unloading outside the hours of 9am and 9pm and no other loading or unloading outside the hours of 9am and 9pm.

Tesco is now seeking to remove these planning restrictions by way of planning application number 11/60166/FUL which is a variation of their original application number 10/59130/FUL which has already been granted permission.

All local Pendleton and Langworthy residents should immediately write to Salford Council’s planning committee quoting planning application number 11/60166/FUL. Langworthy and Pendleton residents have an automatic right to quiet enjoyment of their homes without being woken by deliveries on a Sunday morning before 9am.

Tesco’s reason for removing the above loading/unloading restrictions are “to enable the foodstore to operate more efficiently with regard to deliveries to the store” which is a nonsense reason. Tesco takes no account of it’s neighbours and the store is fully capable of operating just fine with loading and unloading between the hours of 9am and 9pm.

You can comment on this planning application by going to http://publicaccess.salford.gov.uk/publicaccess/ and searching for planning application number 11/60166/FUL and then clicking on ‘Make a Public Comment’

A little over three weeks ago, I wrote to Urban Vision (copy here) and requested a walkabout so that I could personally show them the dreadful state our road had deteriorated to. Less than a week later, I was pleased to be joined by Steven Lee (Director of Engineering at Urban Vision) on Seedley Park Road where we met and discussed the current condition of the road and poor previous attempts to fix it.

Steven promised an immediate fix for the pothole and longer term, a partial re-surfacing of Seedley Park Road in the Summer.

I am pleased to report that today Urban Vision workers arrived on-site for the first of two days work to cut out the damaged sections of Seedley Park Road and fill in the holes. I will be checking by tomorrow to see the completed works, but I would just like to pass on my personal thanks to Urban Vision for re-acting quickly.

My enthusiasm for Urban Vision is, of course, tempered – because it took a resident’s complaint (i.e. mine) to get Urban Vision to agree to action. If it hadn’t have been so close to election time, who knows how long it would have taken to get the road sorted?

I am sick of hearing that a pothole “doesn’t meet intervention criteria” and I am looking forward to meeting Steven again to discuss how we can make changes to the decision to fill/not fill a pothole. Further, there are many a road that need complete or partial resurfacing – yet the policy seems to be just to fill in the holes, no matter how many they are and how close together they are.

This policy is wrong and needs to be changed.

It was my pleasure today to be invited to attend the public demonstration that was planned by the Save Barton Moss protest group on Liverpool Road in Eccles.

I know the area reasonably well, since in my last two jobs as a sales rep, I frequented the area (including the nearby Makro) and I have never been able to comprehend the council’s plain daft idea to build an industrial estate on nearby green belt.

Green belt land exists for a number of reasons, which I won’t go into here – but given the Secretary of State’s recent decision to refuse planning for the Worsley Racecourse on the grounds that building on Green Belt couldn’t be justified, it seems bonkers for the Labour-controlled Salford Council to continue with the industrial estate building plan.

I joined Salford Lib Dem Leader and Prospective MP for Salford & Eccles Norman Owen in the protest and it was good to chat with demonstration organiser Jackie Anderson about how well the protest group has grown. Norman has supported the Save Barton Moss campaign and helped them ensure they have had their voices heard by the council. The group’s arguments are sensible, well thought out and conveyed to the council with attention to detail. Other protest groups would do well to emulate the Save Barton Moss campaign’s strategy and ethos.

It was pleasing to see cross-party support for the protest, but I was a little irritated to see the local Conservative party staging their own, separate, protest – seemingly organised by Councillor Iain Lindley, who no doubt assumed this would look good on his next leaflet.

A note to the Conservatives, either join in fully with the existing Save Barton Moss campaign or start your own and hold your own party’s support on a different day.

The Salford Liberal Democrats are backing the Save Barton Moss campaign.