New Yate Health Facility

The formal planning application for the new Yate Health Facility has been submitted to South Glos Council. You can view the plans using the Search planning applications service on the Council's website. The reference number is PK07/2712/F.

In the meantime, if you need emergency treatment of minor cuts, bruises, burns, sprains and similar between 8am and 6.30pm you can use the Yate Minor Injury Service. This is up and running at the Courtside, Kennedy Way and West Walk surgeries and is nurse-led with doctor support.

Radio mast update

Last Friday Claire Young met representatives of National Grid Wireless at both the existing site near the ring road and the proposed new site.

Although the proposed masts would be of a different design (a lattice rather than a solid tube with struts sticking out each side for climbing), it did make it easier to visualise the layout at ground level. Each mast would have a tuning shed at the base and there would be fences round these and round each of the points where the stays for the masts reach the ground. The rest of the field could continue to be used for grazing (there were cows at the existing site when Claire visited).

A larger separate building would be required for equipment (roughly the size of a typical block of public toilets). This needs to be secure but it should be possible to disguise it to make it look more like an agricultural building. It would probably be sited at the edge of the field beside Frampton End Road.

This Friday they confirmed that they are still working towards a formal planning application for the Tubb's Bottom site.

The Big Draw

South Gloucestershire Council is running a campaign for drawing, The Big Draw. Leaflets will be displayed at libraries, One Stop Shops and other Council buildings, or you can read an online version .

Take a look at the latest Science Park proposals

An exhibition of plans for the Bristol and Bath Science Park (SPark) is being held at Emersons Green Library from Thursday 6th September to Sunday 30th September.

It will display information about the Revised Masterplan for the SPark development, which was submitted to South Gloucestershire Council at the beginning of September, as well as more general information. There won't be staff on hand to discuss the displays but you will be invited to submit comments direct to South Gloucestershire Council for consideration through the normal planning process.

Emersons Green Library is open Tuesday and Thursday 10.30am-8pm, Friday 10.30am-6pm, Saturday 9.30am-5pm and Sunday 11am-3pm.

End of Nibley Park and Ride?

As you may have read in the Evening Post, the new Conservative administration on South Glos Council has decided to shelve plans for a Park & Ride at Nibley. For more information, watch this space.

Don't lose your vote!

You'll shortly be getting the Register of Electors form from South Glos - the form that makes sure that you can vote at elections. It also gets checked if you want to apply for credit.

If there aren't any changes from last time it takes literally just a minute to fill it out (maybe a little longer to fold it!). This year you can even avoid that by making a telephone return.

Remember to tick the right-hand column if you don't want your details used for marketing.

Please fill it out or make that phone call now and make life easier for the hardworking people in the Election Office.

More information on radio masts

Tonight National Grid Wireless made a presentation at Westerleigh Parish Council regarding the proposed relocation of masts from Emerson's Green to Tubb's Bottom. I asked a number of questions and requested a follow-up site visit to the existing masts.

National Grid Wireless said that in their search for a site, they went through a "sieving process" and this was the only site considered worthy of detailed investigation. Construction would take approximately three months and they would enter into routing and working hours agreements with South Glos to minmise the effect of the work on residents. I queried the access to the site, as Frampton End Road is narrow and twisty, but was told that the masts came in sufficiently small sections that they could be carried on typical HGVs, no abnormal loads required. They would need to access the site every couple of months for maintenance but that would be an engineer in an estate car.

The installation would be well within health guidelines and the mast could not be shared with, for example, mobile operators as it is live. They were considering planting to mitigate the visual impact on the footpath that runs past the site.

What's made of plastic, paper, and foil and is not recycled in South Glos?

Answer - lots of those "paper based liquid food and drink cartons". The sort that you buy fruit juice in, and maybe milk from the corner shop. They're actually rather clever multilayer cartons, but this makes them hard to recycle. The manufacturer has set up a dedicated recycling plant - big enough to deal with a fifth of all the liquid food and drink cartons used in the UK.

They offered local councils FREE recycling bins but the Tory administration at South Glos initially turned them down.

Emma Bone (Prospective Lib Dem MP for Filton and Bradley Stoke) said "I'm simply astonished... Lib Dem Councils up and down the country have already signed up to this free win-win scheme”

Lib Dem Councillor Peter Tyzack (Pilning & Severn Beach) commented “I am amazed and appalled that the Conservative administration didn't sign up to this free scheme to recycle them. We get fine words from them promising to improve on the previous Liberal Democrat led Council’s recycling rate but no real action!"

It is now reported that the Executive Member for Communities will meet the company next week.



Emma Bone and Peter Tyzack with cartons that could be recycled