Food for thought perhaps in this article from ‘inside housing’ The UK’s housing crisis is not caused by a lack of supply and 300,000 new homes a year would not make a significant impact on house prices and rents, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has said. The thinktank, which published a report today written […]
It’s been a short while since I last wrote about the air pollution in our District. Residents will do well to remember that when we discuss air pollution there are two types that are often referred to. One being Nitrogen Dioxide NOx (car emissions etc) and the other being Particle Matter PM2.5 (that fine dust) […]
Apologies for the lack of blog updates of late. I’ve been spending a bit of time with my family and have taken in some sights of England over the past couple of weeks over the summer break. (More on that later) This week, I’ve been to the seaside and visited Southends CCTV control room with […]
Inspired by 100 years of social housing I thought I’d have a look at what we can be proud of here in the Rochford District (or not). Each quarter I receive a report from the housing team at Rochford District Council. I thought it was well worth sharing some of the ‘highlights’ of the report […]
A brief note to readers: Before I ‘lift-off’ with this report I have removed some of the content due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter. Therefore this report isn’t conclusive of all the actions taken. This week I’ve attended the latest Community Safety working group meeting. To say, I was kind of reserved […]
Most of us who have lived in Rayleigh for some considerable time have witnessed the changes to our High St. Toy Shops, Sports Shops, Tescos, video rental stores, they’ve all gone. Now I often hear residents say we’ve got too many estate agents, nail bars, cafes. So what could the Council do about it?This week […]
You may have read recently about the EV charging points being installed for Taxis in Rayleigh and Rochford. But have we missed a trick if we are deadly serious about making this change work? I wonder should we help motivate the taxi operators to make the switch sooner by reducing their licencing costs for those […]
I’ve been reading a publication that I received from the Local Government Association and came across an article about the Council housing centenary. It really struck a chord with me how our Council has shamefully neglected our low/middle earners and their housing needs, often priced out of the private rental sector. I was recently speaking […]
I have recently published my views on CCTV here and this has met with mixed reactions from members of the public. Not one to ruin the party, I propose the concept of a wide network of community manned CCTV cameras. What’s different?Manned CCTV is a different beast to an unmanned system. Live images being monitored […]
I thought it might be useful to clear up any misunderstandings on my view on the current CCTV situation or lack of it. During the last 3 years of my sitting on Rayleigh Town Council, I have been acutely aware of problems with the CCTV system that they had – poor image quality, camera locations […]