Listen to Hills Councillor Forum and AGM – 13 May 20

Some 50 of us joined up on Zoom on 13 May 2020 for the best-attended AGM organised by the Hills Amenity Society for many years featuring a Hills Councillor Forum. Submitted questions formed the basis of introductory remarks by each of the five Hills resident councillors on our panel.

Click to hear
Cllr Chris Pond Cllr Caroline Pond Cllr M Owen Cllr R Jennings Cllr J Jennings
and for question time CLICK HERE and the AGM CLICK HERE

Please note the recordings are available on Dropbox. You may be asked to provide an email address, then click Web View. The use should be free of charge.

Cllr Judith Jennings opened with comments on back to school for Staples Road School, parking problems on School Green and the project she has led to secure school run parking slots in the Traps Hill car park. Cllr Robert Jennings described some of the wide ranging issues he has dealt with recently – from domestic abuse to….blocked drains. Cllr Michael Owen, a resident of Baldwins Hill, discussed some of the issues raised about speeding and the potential for closure of Baldwins Hill to prevent through traffic. Cllr Caroline Pond addressed the importance of reinstatement work to hedges, verges and road surfaces once the major development project at Woodberrie in Woodbury Hill was completed and multi storey development fears for council-owned Centric Parade on the High Road and Cllr Chris Pond, who serves on all three Town, District and County Councils dealt with…everything else. He fielded most of the subsequent questions raised by those on the screen on topics covering street lighting, in particular the two-year wait for the new lamp on the corner of Queens Road to be completed, varying types of new LED lighting, missing and unsafe lamps, speeding controls, double red lining of five and half miles of roads through the forest and the impact of the Special Area status recently conferred on the area around the forest which is delaying many applications.

The meeting was chaired by Toby Scrutton, chair of the Hills Amenity Society, who introduced the Councillor Forum and thanked the five participants most sincerely as well as all those who took the trouble to take part