THIS weeks Redditch Standard letters.
‘Wrong priorities’
LAST Friday night, I was alerted by a resident, to a matter of serious concern on Abbeydale.
Children as young as four years old were getting through a fence on the estate and running across the slip road on Coventry Highway.
I have reported this to Redditch Borough Council and have asked they assess this situation as quickly as possible and act to avoid possible fatalities.
Redditch Police will also increase their patrols in the area.
Whilst I understand parents need to be more aware of what their children are doing, I am also clear play facilities on Abbeydale are badly in need of updating.
It saddens me to hear there is currently no money available at present to do this, or to put goal posts on Terry’s Field when other, less deprived areas have had upgrades.
Redditch Borough Council will borrow £1million to fund the move of the library into the Town Hall.
As a Labour councillor, I know where my priorities lie.
Monica Stringfellow
Labour councillor Abbey Ward
‘Project is laughable’
I WATCHED the footage from the debate in the council chambers on September 25 where the future of the library was discussed.
Coun Luke Court admitted that he couldn’t rule out an increase in council tax or cuts to council services in a bid to help fund the library demolition project.
It has been proven time and time again that Redditch residents do not support the demolition of the library.
We will all pay more council tax and receive fewer services (and a downgraded library) in return – something that Tories nationally like to claim is the case with Labour and Lib Dem-led councils.
Then I saw Coun Emma Marshall’s letter in last week’s Standard, where she claims she is putting to bed the ‘misconception’ the new library will be smaller.
However, she does not mention there is no space in the Town Hall for the archives currently housed in Redditch town centre library.
These would be removed and sent to Worcester.
It is laughable to say that the library demolition project must proceed in order to save the council’s finances.
How much more money, which could be spent on improving local services, will the council waste on this vanity project?
Liam Kane
Redditch
‘Get involved’
TUESDAY, October 10, is World Mental Health Day and the Mental Health Foundation is encouraging everyone to get involved by talking the time to have a meaningful conversation about mental health.
Talking about how you feel is important to help protect your mental health. If you are struggling, it helps to talk to someone you trust.
If you want to start a conversation with someone about their mental health, find a quiet space with no distractions.
Listen and allow the person to speak. Ask questions but don’t interrupt. Ask how you can help and listen to what they need.
World Mental Health Day is about raising awareness and driving positive change for everyone’s mental health. So, you might like to host a Tea and Talk event at your work or community group to get everyone involved.
Our website has lots of information and materials for running an event including tips for starting conversations.
You can also show your support by wearing a green ribbon or sharing information on social media.
Visit mentalhealth.org.uk/wmhd to find out more, along with posters, social media images and advice on how to protect your mental health.
Alexa Knight
Director for England at Mental Health Foundation
‘Costs spiralled’
CAT GOT your tongue Matt Dormer,? I have not heard a squeak yet.
I asked through this letters page, a perfectly reasonable and pertinent question – ie have the Town Hall floors been structurally examined and inspected to establish whether they are strong enough to withstand the extra tonnage which will be placed upon them (47,000 books).
You are answerable to the electorate or maybe you think an answer is unnecessary.
I wish to remind you this is a health and safety question and the answer is simple – yes or no?
If you are not capable of doing so, perhaps Coun Joe Baker can – he seems to be very much on the ball and this has come from a lifelong Conservative voter.
The cost of the Town Hall refurb has spiralled out of control with an extra £1million plus interest of approximately £50,000 being added to the already enormous amount previously quoted – due to the fact interest rates were not taken into account!
May I ask Coun Emma Marshall how she has arrived at the figure of 400k, which by her reckoning Redditch will be financially better off by this amount every year?
Maybe she can look into her crystal ball and tell us just how many more millions will have to be borrowed to complete the demolition of the library and all of the other grandious plans for the rest of the Redditch Town Centre.
Is this another example of HS2 waiting to happen?
Margaret Drewell
Redditch
‘Council wants to bankrupt us’
NO WONDER Sunak wants children to study maths up to the age of 18 having listened to members of the Tory party over the last week.
Our council wants to bankrupt us by using a space they could rent for £180,000 pa to house the library rent free and has negotiated a 10-year rent free lease to the NHS of yet another floor which would have provided an income of around £30,000 more for the council to spend on services for us or to reduce our council tax.
They then outvoted the Labour Party to get another £1million loan which with interest will cost us £2.4million over the repayment period for the library relocation that Mr Dormer promised us – we Redditch people – would not pay a penny towards.
Nationally, 30 MPs have pledged to not vote for tax increases which the very rich could afford despite the government borrowing being so high that the average council taxpayer now pays £3,710 just to pay off the interest on the government loan (total interest is £115billion for this year on a debt of £2,594,100,000,000).
Our own council also has a problem with either English or maths (or both).
A councillor’s letter last week insisted our new library will be bigger. The county council got their surveyors to check.
The new library will be 934 sq metres. The current library is 1,018 sq metres.
Only if you add in all the corridors and shared bits do you arrive at a higher figure.
Let’s end the bluffing, Coun Marshall.
There is less book space in the new library.
The extra socialising space is of course detrimental to the town economy because we should be going to socialise over a coffee in the town centre rather than sitting in the ‘shared spaces’.
I would suggest the idea of the Conservatives being the party of low tax is dead and buried.
They are setting the foundations of crippling taxes with their policies.
Margot Bish
Abbeydale
‘Disappointed at councillor comments’
I WATCHED the full council meeting on September 25 on YouTube to hear about the proposal to commit the cash-strapped council to another £1million bill for the vanity project of moving the library in to the Town Hall.
I was more than disappointed with seeing the Conservative councillors lining up to speak with their regular repeated lists of misinformation and blame gaming with quite vicious attacks at the previous Labour council.
Watching the video I then heard a refusal for Labour to be able to respond and clear the record which I found to be grossly unfair and undemocratic.
Now I read in the letters page Coun Emma Marshall repeating that demolishing the library was ‘started by Labour’.
Labour has not run the council for five years but in March 2018 a regeneration study had been put together by officers of the council, working with public and private sector organisations.
Labour didn’t actually produce the study.
There were loads of different ideas which had been agreed to go out to a lengthy public consultation. None of the ideas had been debated, voted or decided on. Two months later the Conservatives took over the council and didn’t bother with any of it, wasting two years of work and the money that had already been spent on preparing it.
Meanwhile they have been running the council for the last five years and it wasn’t until 2021 that the Town’s Fund Board proposed to demolish the library without including a plan for a new library.
Included in that decision were Coun Dormer Leader of Redditch Council, Coun Geraghty Leader of Worcestershire County Council and MP Racheal Maclean. There were no other political parties invited to be involved with the Town’s Fund Board.
However, Labour has consistently been against demolishing the Library
It occurs to me that the Conservative councillors are already trying to put the blame for any failure upon the previous Labour council.
Which for my mind just shows they haven’t got the conviction or confidence in owning their own decisions.
A Berry
Redditch
‘Make space for girls’
I AM writing to you in response to Make Space for Girls’ new Parkwatch report which for the first time reveals the full extent of how teenage girls are designed out of parks.
Parkwatch was a citizen science project where we asked people to go to their local park and count who was using the teenage facilities and how many of these were girls.
We got more than 250 counts from across the country, giving us the first ever data on who uses the teenage facilities in our parks.
The results are quite shocking. Over 90 per cent of those using the most commonly provided teenage facilities in parks are boys and young men.
Girls and young women are left with nowhere to go.
This is a problem which has been hiding in plain sight for a long time.
The vast majority of what we provide in parks for teenagers are skate parks, BMX tracks and fenced pitches for football and basketball.
Our research demonstrates for the first time these are used 90 per cent by men and boys, which means that girls don’t feel safe or that they belong.
This inequality has a whole range of impacts. Girls don’t feel they are meant to be outdoors, or that they are part of the community, and this has an impact on both their physical and mental wellbeing.
We know girls are less active than boys – but is that surprising when they don’t have places to be active in? And it’s proven that access to parks and nature is really good for the mental health of young people, so in a world where girls are three times more likely to have a problem than boys, getting them into parks should be a priority for everyone.
So we’re recommending that councils look at their provision and see if it really does meet the needs of teenage girls.
A broader range of facilities need to be built, which are more inclusive for everyone. And most of all, they need to talk to teenage girls themselves, to find out what they really want.
We know councils are short of money right now, but a lot of the facilities that teenage girls would like to see – swings, social seating and trampolines for example – are actually cheaper than the facilities that they currently provide.
And we also know no one has created this situation deliberately. But now we understand just how much teenage girls are designed out of public spaces, we can’t go back. If there is one message we take from the Parkwatch report, this has to be that it’s time for a change.
Susannah Walker
Co-Founder
Make Space for Girls,
‘Make voting more accessible’
ON SEPTEMBER 25, the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) held a trial of accessible voting solutions that allow blind and partially sighted people to vote independently and in secret.
RNIB has been campaigning on this issue for many years, with the charity time and time again hearing from people with sight loss of how they faced challenges in their democratic right to cast a secret and independent vote, as the practical act of voting – making a cross in a specific location on a piece of paper – is fundamentally a visual exercise.
We are working alongside the Electoral Commission and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) to find solutions to ensure future elections are accessible for the 350,000 blind and partially sighted people living in the UK.
The accessible solutions which were tested at RNIB’s London offices were a range of tactile and audio devices which allow people with sight loss to determine the order of the candidate list and mark their desired box.
It was fantastic to be in a room where everyone shared their commitment to improve the voting experience for blind and partially sighted people.
We heard directly from those with lived experience in encountering barriers when polling stations don’t have accessible solutions available, and the impact this has on their independence – a powerful demonstration of why change is needed in this space.
We look forward to continuing our engagement with the Electoral Commission and DLUHC, and to see how the results from this trial can inform future elections.
Mike Wordingham
Policy Manager
RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People)
