Pact Meeting – June

The Sixth Form block of Whitchurch Upper School was the venue for this months PACT Meeting with just a handful of residents showing up but still plenty to be said.

In attendence were Councillors Tim Davies and Linda Morgan along with PC Stuart Cozens and PCSO’s Christina Watkins and Emma Bowden, Neighbourhood Watch Coordinator Bill Farnham with Chairman Peter Ryan.

There were a number of issue raised so I’ll try my best to keep this as brief as I can.

• Residents from Warren Evans Court have had a lot of trouble recently with anti social behaviour in the surrounding lanes, particularly with groups of youngsters hanging around near the lane to the car park. They are looking at the possibility of setting up a Neighbourhood Watch Scheme and are also looking at options to make the parking spaces for the flats restricted to residents only.
• Driving Routes around Heol Y Gors and the Philog. Tim Davies had researched this online and there are 8 driving exam routes in Cardiff and noted there are some areas which are not on the driving routes. This will be followed up to see if the driving routes can be spread evenly across all areas of Cardiff as this is still causing problems for residents with a high number of learner drivers.
• There is no update on the new Car Park scheme which will shortly be in place at both the car parks in Whitchurch. The scheme will restrict all users of the car parks to a maximum three hour stay and will automatically issue fines to those who exceed these limits. With the cameras in place for some time now, it is not known what the delay with this project is.
• The Three Elms pub is a hot topic at the moment as customers who sit outside the pub are causing alsorts of problems from noise pollution, dangerous driving, verbal abuse and even reports of people urinating outside. There was a meeting last week to look at this issue which is sure to escalate over the summer. The problem seems to stem from the outside drinking and smoking area on the pubs car park and also allowing customers to drink directly outside the front entrance of the pub. There have also been reports of underage drinking at the pub and staff members serving their underage friends. I’ll be doing an article on this soon so if you have something to say then please drop me an email matt@mywhitchurch.co.uk or call 07731 80 60 40. I’m usually at the Cuppa with a Copper on Thursdays also.
• The old dairy site on the Philog has a little bit of news. It is expected the developer is going to insist on a public enquiry rather than a simple exchange of documents and we will know more about this in the coming months.
• Residents raised concerns with noisey quad bikes, dangerous motorcyclists and speeding motorists in the streets off the Philog however PC Cozens stated that they have looked into the speeding issue and suspect that speeding on these streets is rare as the streets are quite short and even though car drivers may be accelerating quickly, they are not reaching speeds in excess of the limit. With the terraced houses and cars parked in the street it can seem like these cars are speeding. It was agreed in any case that this type of driving was dangerous and a concern to the people the live there.

Anyone with anything to report was once again urged to call 101 in the first instance even if it’s a situation where the police will not be able to respond and be on site quickly enough. If the instance is never reported then the police struggle to redirect resources to deal with the problem.

Dates for your diary:

George Thomas Fete this Saturday at the grounds of Whitchurch Hospital

Tongwynlais Sunset Fayre on June 30th at 6.45pm

Whitchurch Festival Fete on the Common July 10th from 2pm

Tongwynlais Fun Day on August 7th at the Recreation Field off Iron Bridge Road

The next Pact Meeting is Tuesday August 3rd, 7pm, at the International Legacy Hotel in Tongwynlais.

Don’t forget you can always raise any issues or concerns you may have at the Cuppa with a Copper at the Whitchurch police station on Merthyr Road, every Thursday between 12 and 2pm and as always your comments are most welcome below…

Tags: community, Neighbourhood Watch, PACT, Police, three elms, whitchurch