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Somerset this week: 5 January 2024
How is the shiny new Park and Ride scheme working out in Taunton? Hopefully it is going well. A new initiative brought in by Cllr Mike Rigby saw a £1 fare introduced not just on the Park and Ride, but across the Taunton area. Somerset Council report that it has boosted bus journeys across our county town.
Park and Ride buses run Monday to Saturday from the Silk Mills and Gateway sites in Taunton and the service does appear to be generating more interest and more passengers.
Which you might have imagined would be good news for bus operator First Bus. It runs bus services in Somerset under the Buses of Somerset brand.
The increase in bus journeys makes it all the more surprising that they have decided to hand back the contract for the Park and Ride service. They will finish working for Somerset Council on 11 February.
A spokesperson for First Bus told us: ““Due to rising costs and inflationary pressures, Buses of Somerset advised Somerset Council that it was no longer commercially viable to run the Taunton Park & Ride service under the terms of the original contract. As per council process, this triggered a re-tendering process. Buses of Somerset remains committed to services in Somerset and continues to work closely with Somerset Council to provide a reliable bus network for local people across the county.”
no longer commercially viable
A new tender process was conducted by Somerset Council and Stagecoach South West were selected. Presumably they feel that the cost pressures First Bus complained of will not hit them in the same way?
Even so it is disappointing to see that the current service running every 15 minutes will be reduced to one running every 20 minutes, but it is not for now a massive change.
The new service will be launched on the 12 February with larger double-decker buses. A striking new livery has been designed although for now it seems we are not allowed to know what it looks like.
The new service will operate from 6am to 8pm Monday to Friday, with a slightly later start on Saturdays.
Somerset Council’s Lead Member for Transport and Digital Councillor Richard Wilkins said: “It’s great news to secure this new contract with Stagecoach South West. Taunton’s park and ride is a vital part of the town’s transport infrastructure and has shown a significant increase in patronage in the last two years. Thousands of commuters make use of the service every week, helping to cut the number of cars going into town during peak hours, and at just £1 for a single journey, it remains fantastic value.”
Indeed. Which makes it all the more mysterious that First Bus didn’t want to continue.
Bruton School update
On 4 December we ran a piece on the attempt by King’s Bruton to sell off the assets of Bruton School for Girls. King’s Bruton took over the girl’s school last year and promptly closed it down. Now it wants to use the assets of the girl’s school to benefit its own institution. You can catch up on the back story by following this link: Battle of Bruton
However to take over the assets requires Charity Commission approval. Because the girl’s school was also a charity. So King’s Bruton launched a consultation with the local community to meet the requirements of the Charity Commission. That consultation closed on 4 December.
To date no results from the consultation have been published. However there is plenty going on. Local MP Sarah Dyke has taken a keen interest in the goings on and is being briefed on progress to date.
Meanwhile a number of local people raised their concerns directly with the Charity Commission. The responses coming back suggest that the Charity Commission are taking a particular interest in the proposals. They say: “we expect the trustees to give full details of the consultation carried out and any responses to it, including an explanation of how this informed their decision-making and details of any potential opposition to the scheme or controversy about it. Where opposition or controversy is identified, we will expect to see details of any steps taken by the trustees to address this where possible. We will take this information into account when deciding whether a scheme should be made.”
details of any potential opposition to the scheme or controversy about it
Which may be one reason why it is taking some time for local people to be told the results of the consultation.
Somerset NHS consultation
Meanwhile there is of course another consultation in Somerset drawing great public interest. It is the consultation on the proposed transfer of some or all stroke services away from Yeovil Hospital to Musgrove Hospital in Taunton.
The consultation is being run by Somerset NHS (as the Integrated Care Board now likes to call itself).
At the last board meeting of Somerset NHS on 30 November, the broad findings of the consultation were reported. However all of the data and detail was missing.
There was enough information to make it clear that the majority of respondents were not at all keen on the idea. And indeed the board did agree to abandon the idea of moving all stroke services to Musgrove.
However that still leaves the option of keeping acute stroke services in both hospitals, but making Hyper Acute services only available in Taunton.
At 30 November board meeting Somerset Confidential editor, Andrew Lee asked if the full consultation data and analysis would be made available prior to the January board papers being published. The significance being that the final decision on stroke services will be taken at that meeting.
He was given an assurance by Somerset NHS chief executive, Jonathan Higman that this would be done.
This is important. To date the summary analysis is subjective because it is simply the Somerset NHS take on the data. We asked for the full information to be available well in advance of the January board meeting so others, ourselves included could have time to properly review the information and form our own conclusions. And of course to allow anyone to ask questions of the board before they made their decision.
So it is disappointing to report on 5 January that a date has been set for the January Board meeting (Thursday 25 January) and there is still no sign of the consultation data.
This is what we feared.
That the data would not be made available in good time to allow Somerset residents to form their own conclusions. And in doing so to get a handle on whether the board of Somerset NHS were really listening to the voice of Somerset residents through the consultation, or simply paying it lip service.
Time is running short. We can only hope that a genuine attempt is made to release it in the next few days.
Double whammy in Ilminster
Last month we wrote about the way that agricultural land is being mopped up by housing developers. Whilst the need for more housing seems to be a political mantra all our politicians are chanting, no-one seems to be looking at the implications for food security of building all over agricultural land.
Next week a planning application will be heard by Somerset Council’s Area South committee for Persimmon Homes to build 400 new houses at Canal Way, Ilminster.
The original application went in during 2016. The Regulation Committee of South Somerset District Council narrowly voted to approve the plans in 2017.
But before a s106 agreement could be negotiated, along came the phosphates issue. An inability to mitigate the phosphate from sewage that the new estate would generate saw the plans stall.
They’ve come forward again now but whilst the phosphate issue may be mitigated, the consequences for food security are certainly not.
It is bad enough that 21 hectares of Grade 3a agricultural land will be built on at Canal Way in the first place. But astonishingly the mitigation agreed, will see a further 110 hectares of good quality agricultural land taken out of production and fallowed.
a further 110 hectares of good quality agricultural land taken out of production
It is acknowledged that this is just a short term solution. But if no better long term plan is agreed, the land will eventually be turned into woodland.
The land near Donyat Hill is within the Donyatt County Farm Estate currently under the control of Somerset Council. One of the few county farms remaining in the control of the council. Most of the others were sold off to raise funds four years ago.
Although it is not stated in the planning documents, presumably Persimmon will be asked to pay the council to take the land out of production.
Whilst recognising that phosphates are a problem and sewage treatment in Somerset leaves a lot to be desired, this solution seems to be worse than the problem.
Can we afford to continually take land out of food production? Is this really a viable way forward? If there’s one thing we need as much as housing it is surely the ability to grow food and feed our population.
The planning application will be heard at the Area South Committee of Somerset Council on Tuesday 9 January at 2pm in the old SSDC offices at Brympton Way, Yeovil.
Last orders
The closure of yet another pub on his patch has drawn the wrath of Ian Liddell-Grainger, MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset. The globe in Milverton is just the latest Somerset pub to be put o the market.
However just like the The Waldegrave Arms in East Harptree, there are moves afoot in the community to raise funds to buy the pub and run it for the community.
The MP is asking the government to provide funding to help community groups buy and run failing or closed village pubs. He says assistance should be made available under levelling-up measures to stop villages losing ‘priceless assets’ which have served locals for years.
For the MP this is no different i9n principle to funding for community shops which can source funding from a number of sources and are usually set up by the community in villages where there are no longer any shops to serve them.
In Stoke St Gregory they went one better. A similar community led project saw the a successfully take over of the local pub which was the set up as both a village shop and a community run pub.
Dozens of country pubs have disappeared in the last few years and Mr Liddell-Grainger has his own theory as to why: “A lot of the closures stem directly from the fact that when interest rates were low some large pub chains overborrowed to increase their property portfolios. Now interest rates have risen again they find themselves trapped.
But he adds: “A pub is a priceless asset to a rural community because it is often the only place where locals can gather together. If local people are keen enough to buy threatened pubs and take them on and can provide viable business plans then I don’t see why they shouldn’t be helped. Pubs have a far better chance of survival when they are community-run because they won’t be shovelling huge amounts of money into the coffers of corporate chains every month.”
It has become increasingly common for community groups to try and take over their local pub when private owners or pub chains decide to throw in the towel. Before Christmas the Alhampton Inn in the village of the same name (just outside Shepton Mallet) was successfully taken over by the community.
But it doesn’t always work out.
In Curry Rivel an attempt by the community to buy the King William IV failed when the community proved unable to raise enough funds. The pub closed and has been converted into residential units.
Just down the road in Drayton, the Drayton Arms also faced closure. The community swung into action. Their plan to take it over for themselves was gathering steam and they had started working on raising funds.
However someone else had the same idea. In the end the community were beaten to it by another private owner who bought the pub and reopened it as the Drayton Crown. Refurnished throughout the it is now doing well. So the community have little reason to be disappointed.
After all the aim of the exercise was to keep the local pub open and indirectly that’s exactly what they achieved.
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