The Bradley Stoke Journal

Bowls legend David Bryant CBE, three-times world champion and four-times Commonwealth Games champion, is to perform the opening ceremony of the new Bradley Stoke Bowls Club on Saturday 1st May.

Representatives of  the City & County of Bristol Bowling Association and the Gloucestershire  Bowling Association are also expected to attend the event.

The sport is returning to the Baileys Court green two years after the former Northavon Bowls Club was controversially evicted from the ground by Bradley Stoke Town Council in a dispute over rent.

A spokesperson for the newly-formed club says they have already signed up 62 members and are expecting numbers to grow even more by the time the new season gets underway.

Annual membership of the club has been set at £35 and new bowlers are being offered training from two qualified coaches.

Bradley Stoke Town Council’s Finance Committee recently agreed to set the new bowls club’s first year rent at £1,500, inclusive of maintenance of the bowling green – an estimated £8,000 p.a. cost previously borne by members of the Northavon club.

The deal received cross-party support from members of the Finance Committee, with the notable exceptions of Cllr Julian Barge and spouse Cllr Elizabeth Todd, who both abstained.

The agreement must now be ratified at a meeting of Full Council later this month.

The club is holding its ‘Spring Meeting’ on Tuesday 13th April (7pm start) at the Baileys Court Activity Centre and welcomes enquiries from new and experienced bowlers.

More information: Bradley Stoke Bowls Club (The Journal)

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Conservative Councillors have welcomed the signing of an agreement between Bradley Stoke Town Council (BSTC), South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) and Southern Brooks Community Partnership (SBCP) that secures annual funding of £93,000 for youth work in Bradley Stoke.

Councillors claim that the new agreement will produce “better value for the money that both Councils put into youth services in the town”.

Under the ‘Commissioned Service Agreement’, £93,000 of  annual funding – made up of £60,000 from BSTC and £33,000 from SGC – will be paid to Southern Brooks Community Partnership to provide:

• A full-time qualified youth worker managing and co-ordinating the development and delivery of youth provision in Bradley Stoke, working closely with Bradley Stoke Youth Committee and South Gloucestershire Youth Service
• Four nights of centre-based youth sessions per week for the 13 – 19 age group
• Two centre-based activity sessions per week for the 10 – 13 aged group
• Two ‘detached’ youth sessions per week – where youth workers engage with young people ‘on the streets’

The agreement requires centre-based sessions to be provided for a minimum of 44 weeks per year.

Young people are said to have sat on the panel that chose the provider and quarterly reports will be provided to ensure that requirements are being met.

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Councillors on Bradley Stoke Town Council’s Planning Committee have taken exception to proposals from South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) to install a number of ‘raised table’ cycle crossings in the town.

As reported last month, SGC has opened a consultation on plans to install the crossings on Baileys Court Road, Fiddlers Wood Lane and across the access road to Bradley Stoke Leisure Centre.

The crossings will bring the carriageway up to the level of the footway, allowing cyclists and wheelchair users to cross the road without a change in level.

In a unanimous decision, Councillors voted to object to the scheme on the grounds of “unnecessary expense; raised tables offering no protection to cyclists; causing damage to vehicles; and slowing the passage of emergency vehicles”.

The motion was proposed by Cllr John Ashe, who also drew the meeting’s attention to a statement in the SGC proposals that claims the crossings can “help to maintain the low speed of traffic within any 20mph zone”, adding that he feared this could be the first step towards introducing unwanted 20mph speed limits in the town.

The crossings are part of the Cycling City Route 3 scheme, which will link Parkway Station to Bradley Stoke Leisure Centre.

Construction work has recently started on parts of the scheme, including the installation of a short stretch of new cyclepath along Bradley Stoke Way, close to its junction with Fiddlers Wood Lane.

It is seems unlikely that the Councillors’ objection will prevent the crossings being implemented as the current consultation is on the Highways Act notice that represents the final stage of the approval process.

A widely-publicised month-long public consultation on the whole Cycling City Route 3 scheme was held in September 2009 but Councillors failed to discuss it at any of their meetings held around that time.

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Bradley Stoke’s Deputy Mayor Ben Walker has expressed concern over obstruction of the pavement around the recently-erected works compound at Bradley Stoke Surgery on Brook Way.

He raised the matter at last Wednesday’s Planning Committee meeting, asking if ISG Pearce – the contractor working on the surgery extension project, had permission to obstruct the highway in this way.

He also pointed out that access gates installed within the compound’s boundary fencing are likely to completely obstruct the remaining pavement when opened.

Cllr Walker said it was not clear which of the two planning applications made by the surgery was actually being implemented at the Brook Way site, but he did not recall either application mentioning that the Brook Way pavement would be obstructed during the construction phase.

Town Clerk Sharon Petela was instructed to contact the Highways Department of South Gloucestershire Council to verify if the appropriate authorisation had been obtained.

The fact that the matter was raised at all seems curious, since two members of the senior management team at the Brook Way surgery (Dr Elizabeth Todd and Julian Barge) are members of the Town Council, although neither of them sits on the Planning Committee.

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Bradley Stoke Town Council (BSTC) has been stung by a massive hike in the business rates it has to pay for the Jubilee Centre following the discovery of a clerical error made by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in 2005.

This week’s meeting of the Council’s Finance Committee was told that a “manual error” within the records held by HMRC’s Valuation Office Agency (VOA) resulted in  the rateable value of the main building being recorded as £1,071.60 instead of £10,713.60.

The under valuation has been in place since 2005 and BSTC has therefore benefited from a substantially reduced rate level for almost five years.

Councillors were told that the VOA has waived its right to retrospectively claim the underpayment but were disappointed to hear that the new rate is to be applied from January rather than from the start of the new tax year in April.

Had the increase been applied from April, it would have coincided with a five-yearly rate review and under ‘transitional relief’ rules the new rate would have been phased in over a four to five year period. As the April increase is now unlikely to trigger ‘transitional relief’, the new rate will have to be paid in full with immediate effect.

The additional rates arising from the corrected rateable value are believed to be between £4,000 and £5,000 per annum.

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