25 April (Part 2) - The Public Realm Meeting - The boring bits
After the talk on what Mr. Payne repeatedly called ‘The Jewel in the Crown’, as if the other shopping centres were all second rate, chairman Cheryl moved on to the routine items, the first of which was the review of local employment. As usual, everything is rather marvellous and much better than other parts of the country.
“There has been a significant drop in unemployment exceeding the drop within London. A 34% drop.”
The council had “placed 917 individuals into work” with 672 different employers.
Crossrail had advised 112 vacancies but most are highly skilled tunnelling jobs.
The Tesco distribution centre in Erith continues to provide jobs.
There are 22 providers of apprenticeships in Bexley. Again the statistics are
claimed to be better than those found elsewhere “in London or nationally”.
Employment opportunities for those with learning disabilities are also among the
very best. 18·1% of those entitled to support get it compared to 6·27 nationally.
That is a brief and hopefully accurate summary of what was said in a rather
self-congratulatory report but the
combination of voice, microphone technique and room acoustics meant that
intelligibility was not to the standard achieved by Mr. Payne.
Councillor June Slaughter asked about apprenticeships and in particular the
numbers involved and the sort of firms offering them. She also spotted in the
written report - but not the spoken one - that young people in Bexley made up 25·2% of
those claiming Job Seeker Allowance compared to an average of 19·5% across
London. The latter observation was answered with the comment that Bexley’s figure has
been coming down faster than elsewhere in London. I don’t think the first
question was answered at all, at least not publicly.
Council officer Mrs. Jane Richardson did her usual resumé of things happening across
the borough in her usual clear voice and mentioned…
Sidcup is “progressing at some pace and most of the shop fronts are now in”. The
work outside the gym started on 22nd May and will take two weeks. Hadlow Road
will reopen on 16th May. The regeneration had brought nearly 100 new jobs to
Sidcup but I would guess that for that to be anywhere near true you’d have to
include the Waitrose and Travelodge jobs which were created before Bexley
council inflicted its particular brand of chaos on the town.
The new bridge across Eastern Way in Thamesmead is now formally called Cory
Bridge after its sponsor. Due for completion at the end of this year.
In Howbury the two new schools will be finished by the end of June.
Crayford shopping centre has seen an increase in the vacancy rate.
Crossrail is progressing well. Greenwich and Bexley will put in a joint bid to
TfL to secure public realm improvements around Abbey Wood station.
Bexley failed with its mini-Holland bid but the
mayor’s cycling commissioner will visit Bexley next week to see what else might be done.
During
question time councillor John Waters said that TfL had “made a right
mess” of Welling and the council got the blame. In particular TfL had placed
the traffic signal control box right next to the historic cannon and “made a
mockery of it”.
Cabinet member Gareth Bacon responded to his chairman wife’s request for comment
by agreeing that the control boxes were “a complete eyesore and completely
unacceptable”. He hoped to meet TfL about it but nothing was yet confirmed.
Councillor June Slaughter wanted to talk about Sidcup saying the time it had
taken so far was “unconscionable” which is a word genteel solicitors like her
use when other people might say bloody ridiculous. She was however complimentary about the new shop fronts.
Councillor
Stefano Borella who lives in Sidcup was similarly “concerned about
the time it takes” and “in Welling it has been a disaster zone”. “New pavements
[in Sidcup] do not mean people will come into your shops, they do that because
of good transport links and parking”. He referred to a meeting at which
councillor Linda Bailey said she had saved Sidcup. This would be
the infamous
presentation of the Sidcup scheme from which the hapless Cheryl Bacon illegally excluded the public.
Councillor Borella asked councillor Bailey if she still believed she had
saved Sidcup. The chairman then stooped to sarcasm while rebuking councillor Borella
for making the same point as he had at a previous meeting. She also said that
the regeneration was about a lot more than new pavements but omitted to say what
they might be apart from the fact we should be proud of them.
The microphoneless councillor Colin Tandy said “Sidcup was splendid and I buy my groceries there”. He said
the same
thing at the previous meeting but was not rebuked by the chairman for the repetition.
Counclllor Linda Bailey had obviously been brooding over Stefano Borella’s
comment about saving Sidcup and decided it was best that she denied it. No one
has saved Sidcup which is probably what most visitors to the town currently think.
The eighth Agenda item raised not a flicker of interest from anyone and item nine met
the same fate, so the meeting was wrapped up just before a quarter past nine. Thank
goodness for Mr. Payne or it would have been an evening totally wasted.