Painting Arlington Youth Club

We are looking for community volunteers to join us during week beginning June 18th 2018 to help paint and brighten up the external areas of Arlington Park Youth Club - We are TS18. If you would like to join us, do please get in touch.

Thanks!

Developments in respect of rubbish in the alleys

For the last few weeks council Enforcement officers have been patrolling certain alleys in targeted areas to see for themselves the problems that residents have identified. They have then issued the first of what will be a series of Section 46 notices. Fining people is so much harder than it used to be and some people are in despair at the state of the back streets behind their houses. Since 2012 things have become much more difficult, people need at least three warnings now before they can be fined. In the meantime people just throw out anything they no longer want, with no regard to their neighbours.

Not everyone realises that the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition Government decriminalised the offence of "mispresented waste" claiming that “Honest, hard-working people have been punished for innocent mistakes with heavy-handed bin fines for far too long. We are now consigning these bin-fines to the scrap heap of history."

These photos do not show "innocent mistakes" from "honest hard-working people". What they show is what happens when you let people get away with doing as they please, with no regard to anyone else in the street. It is a disgrace that situations like this are now almost impossible to get on top of. Our enforcement officers are working really hard to jump through the ridiculous hoops they need, in order to change behaviours and punish those who won't learn.

I want to thank them for everything they do, even though they have one hand tied behind their back, and look forward to seeing improvements in the state of our back streets eventually.

In the meantime, keep reporting everything you see to Care For Your Area so they know the places to concentrate their efforts in. 

Oxbridge Community Garden

Last week I had a walk round Oxbridge Community Garden with one of our residents who volunteers there every month, litter picking and tidying up. We met a council officer who is responsible for projects in green spaces to talk about some more enhancements we would like to see. We discussed completing the network of paths across the garden (which is on Oxbridge Lane just below the cemetery and just before the beck). We hope to find the funding to extend the paths into Grangefield Park (Rudd's Rec) and across stepping stones over the beck, to form a long lazy figure of 8. This would be great for local people who like to walk their dogs or take a stroll. The officer has gone off to cost the proposals up and then we will work on ways of raising the money to pay for it. I would like to think we might have a community picnic to celebrate the new paths if we can pull it off, so that local people who don't yet know about this lovely green space can start using it.