Firstly may I thank the Parish Council for organising this meeting. It builds on the informal meetings that the both the HEWEB committee has had with both Inspector Newstead and Geoff Cox in the past and the excellent work that Kerry Payne has done on behalf the Telegraph Road residents association to highlight various issues.
However as suggested by Jon Riddell at a HEWEB meeting back in October last year the best way for the Rose Bowl to avoid the problems they have had in the past with loud music, extremely long access times and unexpected fireworks is to have a locally based liaison group.
Therefore I was very pleased when on the 18th August I received the first invite to tonight’s meeting following a meeting of the parish’s Planning & Highway Committee on the 17th August.
Now before I get on to the main topic discussion tonight I will to clear up one point. At the HEWEB meeting on the 31st August I proposed that Steve Bloomfield’s motion should read :-
“That this Committee, support the work of West End Parish Council, who have created a Liaison Group to work with Police, Borough Engineers, Development Control, Hampshire Cricket, Rose Bowl plc and, above all, residents to address increasing concerns arising from activities at the Rose Bowl. These concerns comprise parking, noise, traffic levels and planning consent issues, and are increased by the success of the Rose Bowl in becoming a regular venue for International Cricket matches.”
Instead of which the motion started :-
“That this Committee, working in partnership with West End Parish Council, should create a Liaison Group to work with Police, Borough Engineers, Development Control, Hampshire Cricket, Rose Bowl plc ……..” etc etc
I was concerned that Steve wished to create another group to look at the same issues, this meeting was already planned to do and naturally I wished to avoid that.
However once Steve explained that was not his intention, I along with the rest the committee voted for Steve’s motion.
Anyway despite the unfortunate wording of Steve’s motion this meeting has gone ahead as originally planned by the Parish Council.
Now to the main point of the meeting, firstly I wish to highlight the issues and secondly I wish suggest some ideas of ways to overcome them. These are both points of my own and ideas that residents have put to me.
The first four issues revolve problems around access to the ground and how this can be achieved for fixtures which attract a full crowd. So here are some suggestions, in no particular order:
On the planning issues the answer is very simple. The normal practice is to have a meeting where your future plans, for say, a larger main stand or floodlights could be discussed. The Rose Bowl management team could then take the public suggestions on board and produce a plan for Borough to examine, which having ironed out the residents problems may even have their support.
That is end of my brief thoughts so over to anyone else for comment.