Goddard Avenue playing fields

John Fareham and John Abbott are given to understand that developers are rumoured to have purchased the Goddard Avenue playing fields. We do not as yet have firm confirmation of this, nor do we have a planning application to build on this land, but we thought it best to notify local residents to empower them to make representations as soon as possible. We have had no notification from the corporate centre that they intended to sell this land. Nevertheless this is a good time for local residents who share the view, expressed by many local residents when this open space was last threatened, that this land should be kept as open space to make their feelings known on that point. No formal consultation is involved in this process at this stage about this publicly owned land, but you can of course contact either of us at the postal and E-mail addresses given below and we will pass your views on to the relevant quarters. It is not too early to write to Neville Brown, Planning Services, Kingston House, Bond Street, Hull HU1 3ER and express your opinion. However, City Plan consultations are due early in the New Year.

110 bus service to continue

John Fareham and John Abbott report that Wyke Area Committee have given the go-ahead for a Traffic Regulation Order to facilitate the passage of the 110 bus service without as many double yellow lines as were originally envisaged. Discussions we requested between the officers and Stagecoach clarified that not all the double yellow lines originally suggested when the scheme was first proposed were actually necessary for the unimpeded passage of the bus. We will therefore be able to accommodate most of the objections raised to double yellow lines in places residents considered inappropriate while still giving Stagecoach everything they need to get their modestly proportioned Dennis Dart single deckers through. The area committee, at our behest, also resolved to make representations to Wyke College regarding the current proliferation of cars belonging to students and regularly parked on Grammar School Road. Stagecoach meanwhile have changed their tack and applied to extend the route of Service 110.

Pigeon deaths on Chanterlands Avenue railway bridge

John Fareham and John Abbott are working to resolve problems with pigeons being caught in the anti-pigeon netting on the Chanterlands Avenue railway bridge and dying there. We have received reports, and seen the evidence for ourselves, that pigeons have been finding their way in and, on being unable to find their way out, have become caught on the netting and died there. This is contrary to what we were after when we had the netting installed; the object of the exercise was originally to bar their path on to the beams where they were gathering, not to trap them. We have made representations on this matter at Wyke Area Committee but met with a less than ideally helpful response from my successor as Chairman. This is not, however, the end of the matter and we will take the matter up again with the officers until a satisfactory resolution has been found. To our way of thinking, the problem may well lie with the manner in which the anti-pigeon netting was installed in the first place; it should have been possible to fit the nets in such a way that the birds could not get round them, but this would appear not to have been done.

Fairfax Avenue-Bricknell Avenue junction

John Fareham and John Abbott confirm that there are no current plans to install a bus shelter at the junction of Fairfax Avenue and Bricknell Avenue. As soon as we received representations from local residents at one of our surgeries, we made enquiries of the officers if a bus shelter was the intended outcome of the excavations being made at the bus stop, and if so, why no one had taken the elementary step of letting us know that this was to happen. Happily, in the light of concerns raised by residents regarding the possibility of crime and disorder resulting from young people congregating at this bus stop and egging each other on, we are able to assure residents that the real purpose of this part of the pavement being dug up is to provide for the same kind of real-time electronic display as is currently in use at the bus stop at Rainhill Road.