Central Yate Election Guide

 To help you find out more about your Lib Dem Focus Team candidates for Central Yate we have published this guide.

McDonald's Chaos

Friday, 4.30pm and it is... chaos.... First full week back at school and Station Rd was completely blocked in both directions by queues for McDonalds - blocking the fire and ambulance station, right turn area and the east and west bound lanes.

We have asked the police and South Glos to work with McDonalds urgently to stop this happening again. And asked the shopping centre owners to help.

Two residents have very helpfully supplied photos - if YOU spot the problem, and can safely take a photo, please do and send it to us, as the more evidence we have, the more likely officials are to take serious action to prevent the problem.

When it was bad earlier in the year, S Glos did some monitoring, but of course McDonalds knew, so they made sure the problem did not occur. And McDonalds for a while had a sign saying no queuing back onto the road, with someone where forcing cars to move in. That needs to be restarted, and they need to act quickly whenever a problem occurs. McD's say they don't know if there is a problem. Well, there is a camera that monitors car parking entrance, run by the shopping centre owners, so could they not use that to spot if there is a backlog, or simply put in their own camera. It is not acceptable for the town centre to gridlock because of a queue for McDonalds....

An ALDI for Yate at B & Q?

B & Q have just put in a planning application to CLOSE their store, and turn half into an ALDI and half into a 'discount store' (no brand mentioned) . People would welcome an ALDI (though there must be a point at which we have too many supermarkets in the town centre) - but B and Q is the only large DIY venue for 8 miles in any direction...... though we do have our brilliant local independent hardware suppliers.
If you have views, for or against this change you can log your comments at: https://developments.southglos.gov.uk/online-applications/
Then put in the application number P20/07452/F
Their own figures suggest it will dramatically increase vehicle movements at the Home Orchard junction. Can the roads there cope? WIll pedestrians cope?

Station Rd to be closed to tackle flooding problem.

Morrisons Crossing flooding to be tackled

Station Road closed outside Morrisons

After a hard fought campaign, with members of the Focus Team pushing officers on a regular basis to get something done, we are delighted to announce that on Monday 11th S Glos is going try to do something about the flooding on the crossing when it rains. its a complete mess on a wet day with people wading through water and getting splattered by cars. Because it means closing the road we have been pushing S Glos to do it now, during lockdown, when the roads are a bit quieter. They have now agreed, so Station Rd will be closed outside Morrisons from Monday for up to 21 days. We don't think it will take that line, but they always give some leeway.

This has been a longstanding problem, and we are delighted we have managed to get it pushed to the top of the queue at last.

Council agrees to investigate flooding at Morrisons to Armadillo crossing

Some news. Earlier this week we blogged about flooding in the MIU car park. One resident asked Focus for an update on the terrible problems with flooding at the pedestrian lights from Morrisons to the Armadillo.

Waiting at Morrisons to cross when it has been raining you get soaked by passing cars and then often the pool of water is so deep it gets into people's shoes as they try to cross.

This has been going on for years -and the Focus Team have raised it any number of times with officials. South Glos has had various attempts to find the cause (it is not anything obvious and seems to date back to when Morrisons was part of Newman's factory and where the water went then - as one effort to solve it concluded all the water just goes into a soak away under Morrison's car park so when the water table is high it just sits there with nowhere to go!!)

But today we got a response from South Glos, which for the first time recognised how serious the problem is. They've run out of simple solutions - the next investigation will involve closing the road for two days whilst they dig up quite a big area and try to track what is going on.

S Glos say:
"As you have said it’s an issue that has been on-going on for some time now. We have tried to resolve this issue in the past and have recently utilised a lane closure in an attempt to determine the issue without much success. 

The next step would be to close the road and spend a good couple of days locating where the fault/faults are. A road closure will cause some disturbance but we believe it needs to be done. At present this is not a high priority, we have had some major floods over the last few weeks and we must tackle these first.

Its on the to do list and we will have to find a slot to do the work."

We have gone back to South Glos to suggest that it whilst nobody like road closures, we all want this sorted as soon as possible - doing it at the same time as they close Church Rd for resurfacing this summer would make sense (although if we have a dry summer that would be useless - it needs to be when there is water around......)

Our thanks to S Glos officers for replying so quickly - now to find a slot to do the investigations. 

Do you have a group looking for a regular meeting space?

The former YMCA hall has been done up. It is now available to local groups to rent, afternoons and evenings. it has a kitchen area, and a hall. Not quite as big as the Parish Hall next door, it can seats 60 ish but is also great for meetings of 12 - 20 people.  (It's 8.66m x 6.16m ). £9.30 an hour to hire.

For bookings or to look round call 01454 866251.

You can find it on Station Road, one of the three community buildings by the small Tesco. It's the own nearest the town centre.  BS37 5PQ

(The photo shows the Focus Team members who managed to raise the cash to buy this for continuing community use and get it done up)