Here are some more highlights from October’s monthly full council meeting – which you can watch in full here.
Mayor apologises for “minor mayor” jibe
Mayor of Bridgend County, Cllr. John Spanswick (Lab, Brackla), apologised following a snarky comment on Facebook.
He described the Mayor of Bridgend Town Council, Cllr. Steve Bletsoe (Ind, Morfa), as a “minor mayor” and commented about the size of his chain, which “offended members of the opposition”.
Bridgend Town Independents issued a lengthy statement calling for Cllr. Spanswick to resign for denegrating the office of Mayor (which you could argue comes across as being as childish as the original comment).
The comment was made around the time both mayors attended the opening of the newly refurbished athletics track at Bridgend Life Centre.
Cllr. Spanswick thought he was making a private comment, but as soon as he realised it was public he deleted it. He apologised if it offended and clarified that it wasn’t his intention.
This one goes out to all the councillors, potential candidates and party faithful types. I don’t care if you’re Labour, Independent, Conservative, Plaid, Monster Raving Loony – whatever.
We’re a little over six months out from the next local elections and we can probably expect this kind of crap to start ramping up. To any of you thinking of starting or continuing one of these tiresome, painfully boring Facebook custard pie fights over absolutely nothing – whether it’s to take the moral high ground, garner sympathy or because you think you’re being witty and funny – grow up.
Valleys “missing out” on new developments in draft Local Development Plan
There was a scheduled question from Cllr. Altaf Hussain (Con, Penyfai). The proposals in the draft Local Development Plan were disproportionately disadvantaging the valleys. Only around 1,300 of a proposed 9,000+ new homes are earmarked in the north of the county (and most of those are in and around Maesteg).
Why is the LDP process failing the valleys, when there’s a lot of talk about “levelling up the valleys”?
The Chief Executive, Mark Shephard, said the LDP has to be based on evidence and viability. Realistically, there are only a few viable sites in the valleys. Where developable plots of land exist they’ll be brought forward – like the Ewenny Road site in Maesteg.
An officer told councillors two issues impacted housing viability north of the M4. The first is capacity at Junction 36 and the second is the bottleneck caused by the Pencoed level crossing/Penprysg Road bridge (which has led to a moratorium on housing building to the north and west of it).
The officer revealed that BCBC is working on a bid for up to £18million from the UK Government Levelling Up Fund to finance a proposed replacement for the bridge and level crossing.
She went on to say that BCBC’s strategy for the valleys – particularly the much narrower Ogmore and Garw valleys – is to concentrate on smaller infill plots suitable for fewer than 10 homes rather than large tracts of land that are attractive to volume housebuilders.
Cllr. Rod Shaw (Ind, Pontycymer) later said it was quite right to say that there wasn’t enough room to build large housing developments in the valleys, but not enough time and resources were being spent on making these smaller valleys plots viable. How can BCBC address this imbalance to free up small plots?
The officer didn’t agree there was an imbalance, stressing the importance infill plots are to meet housing requirements.
Cllr. Tim Thomas (Propel, Ynysawdre) asked whether infrastructure improvements could be made retrospectively after developments have started? He cited issues with bridges on Abergarw Road as well as issues with the A4061.
The response would be too detailed and complicated to be answered in session, so it was agreed that a written response would be issued to all councillors at a later date.
