Report on STF Event – Glastonbury, 16th June 2011
As a departure from our usual events, this gathering brought together members who were asked to
talk about one ‘big issue’ or challenge for their town, followed by a solution or good news story.
Frome - Charles Wood, Vision for Frome
Issue/Challenge – The Saxonvale/Garsdale development site is a large derelict industrial area close
to the town centre. This could have a major effect on the character of the town, and is a once-in-alifetime opportunity to change it for the better. Its 2005 Planning Brief lays out a strategy for new
shops, workplaces, open spaces and homes. The main developer, Terramond, has produced plans
in outline that largely comply, but with some significant compromises to the open space area. Of
real concern is a subpart which could be under the control of St. James Investments, who have
declared plans for a 40,000sqft supermarket to lead the overall development. Which supermarket
is still an open question, but they are known to work a great deal with TESCO. A group has been
formed to campaign against a supermarket of this size, especially if it is to be a TESCO. They have
vocal support from national media people living locally, have involved a campaigner against a
TESCO in Bristol, and have much local community support.
Charles pointed out that there is much concern at the effect a large supermarket will have on the
independent traders and the town centre and its surrounds . However, most people expect to have
access to and do use supermarkets, and they miss access to a much smaller one that closed down in
the centre. The issue for him is can we learn from other towns in how they have fared with new
supermarket-led development? What works best?
In response, Hattie Winter (Taunton Deane Borough Council) flagged up that the Wellington
Chamber had worked well with Waitrose following the opening of the store in the town. Waitrose
had agreed to hosting a large information board and leaflets in the store foyer, about the
independent shops in the town, and are having regular meetings with the Chamber about joint
initiatives.
There was a discussion about the relative merits of town-centre versus out-of-town supermarkets,
with Matt Day reminding those present of the CPRE’s recent report into supermarkets and their
effect on the viability of traditional town centres, and also the size (small to medium supermarkets
often don’t compete with every independent shop in the town).
Solution/Good News – The relatively recent Catherine Hill Artisan Market is a really good shopping
experience and takes place the first Sunday of each month – more info at Facebook here. It has
been joined by a Flea Market in the main town car park, which requires shoppers to move between
the two through the town centre shopping precinct. Overall it is now of financial benefit for shops
in the areas to open, with good returns. An annual Cheap Street Fun Day on the same Sunday
brings a really good visitor and shopping experience, and complements the town's other events
such as the Frome Festival and a Xmas Extravaganza.
Axbridge – Baz Hamblin (Axbridge Town Council)
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Somerset Towns Forum supports and promotes community action to revitalise our towns
Issue/Challenge – The town has narrow medieval streets and a beautiful square, which is used for
short-term parking, and two charged-for car parks owned by Sedgemoor District Council (SDC).
Traders were concerned about the lack of enforcement of the free parking in the square, so
Axbridge Town Council (ATC) lobbied the Police to make regular enforcement checks. SDC decided
to sell the larger of their two car parks in Axbridge for residential development without consulting
ATC.
Solution/Good News – ATC after much lobbying was allowed to purchase the Meadow Street car
park, the larger of the two, which has around 50 spaces. It cost £180,000 to buy (around a third of
its open-market development value). It took around 6 months to have the highways regulations
amended. For 18 months, ATC are trialling free car parking then will review it.
Shepton Mallet – Andrew Rainsford (Diocese of Bath & Wells)
Started with Good News – Andrew recently moved to the town and was impressed by how much
activity was taking place; Shepton 21 and a group called Fresh are jointly organising a mini-Festival
on Wednesday 22 June involving live music in 5 shops and cafes around the town. The Townscape
Heritage Committee has been refreshed with new members. The funds have now been raised to
renovate the Market Cross. Their annual Collett Day earlier in June went well.
The Diocese is organising a Conference on the reuse of old buildings. Andrew mentioned an
innovative project in Ilton, a village near Ilminster, where they are looking at establishing a
community shop inside a church, as the village’s shop has closed and is being converted to
residential.
Issue/Challenge – The £600m redevelopment of the Bath & West Showground, near to Shepton,
includes creating 2 hotels, a shopping centre and improving the facilities. There was also a solar
farm planned, though the changes to the Feed-In Tariffs may have postponed that. Andrew was
concerned that the promised jobs (construction or legacy) wouldn’t benefit local people; he
suggested that Shepton doesn’t benefit much from the Bath & West (it does better from the
Glastonbury Festival).
There was a discussion around jobs that are promised in planning applications not being delivered –
large supermarkets and the Hinkley C reactor being examples – and there being no enforcement of
this.
Linda Hull asked if the Church would be interested in making some of its spare land available for
community growing projects – Andrew enthusiastically agreed and they will meet to take this
further.
Martock – Roger Powell (Martock Parish Council & M3 Community Partnership)
Issue/Challenge – Martock (pop. 5000) has a high proportion of young people and has for some
time invested in provision for young people, creating a fulltime Youth Worker post in 2009 and
renovating the Youth Club, which hosts clubs on most evenings as well as after-school homework
sessions.
Until recently they also had support from the County Council’s Youth service; but with the 75% cut
to the services’ budget, most provision in South Somerset’s smaller communities has ended.
The Parish Council created a Contingency budget to cover this and other cuts to services. Martock’s
precept is one of the highest in South Somerset (approx £40 for a Band D dwelling), and they have
raised it over the last 10 years from £60k to £240k by being very transparent about the reasons for
the rises, which can be directly linked back to the Community Plan (which has just been refreshed).
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Somerset Towns Forum supports and promotes community action to revitalise our towns
Though its never easy, on the whole the community has remained supportive throughout this
period.
Solution/Good News – Martock Parish Council is exploring with other nearby Councils the potential
to work together to replace the lost services, by sharing the costs and creating joint resources (in
the case of youth work this could be a shared youth worker). Important that it’s professional,
quality resources being used. South Somerset District Council keen to support initiative.
In response, Earl Bramley-Howard (Green Party, guest) said that Stroud Town Council had been
consulting widely and raised their precept to fund new initiatives in the town. Linda Hull asked
whether Participatory Budgeting had potential to strengthen influence over decision-making; Matt
Day mentioned Dulverton’s trial of PB, which had gone well, though was involving ‘additional’
money rather than the Town Council’s budget. Apparently Shepton Town Council are showing some
interest in PB.
Glastonbury – Peter Millar (Voluntary Sector Training Alliance)
Issue/Challenge - An application has been approved for a large TESCO store on the edge of
Glastonbury, next to a large Morrisons store, on the former Avalon Plastics site. 200 jobs promised.
Peter raised the issue of TESCO’s Buying practice, which – some people suggest - effectively bullies
producers into accepting lower and lower prices. Baz Hamblin gave an example of a business that
decided not to supply TESCO’s more than 30% of their produce, to not be overly dependent on
them. Peter felt that self-reliance in Shepton Mallet had really suffered since TESCO has moved in,
evidenced by the empty shops - they’ve had two stores in the town, the latest being a large store
on the edge of the town with free parking. The car parks near the town centre are owned by
Mendip District Council and charge.
Matt Day pointed out that Mike Perry (Shepton 21 & Chamber) had given his apologies for this
event as he had been invited with others to meet with TESCO to discuss what they could do to help
the town centre. There was some cynicism about the timing of this relating to the Glastonbury
development. Linda Hull said that she understood that the TESCO Board will discuss customers’
concerns if they receive more than 5 complaints. There was a discussion about Localism not
extending to controlling what happens to our town centres and their local businesses.
Glastonbury – Sara Clay (Glastonbury Community Development Trust)
Sara noted that it was difficult to find an individual or organisation from Glastonbury to represent
‘the Town’, due to its diversity (“the term ‘herding cats’ comes to mind”). In contrast to
descriptions of developments in other towns, it's not feasible to start a community project
in Glastonbury by calling a public meeting and recruiting a steering group to discuss it and carry it
forward. More often, how it happens in Glastonbury is that one person has an idea, starts doing it,
then others either join in - or start another group. This leads to duplication, but it’s how it is.
GCDT carried out a community survey in 2003/04 that fed into the Town Plan process later.
It was a face-to-face survey, with 101 questions devised by a diverse group of volunteers from the
community. The interviews could last between 20 minutes and 1.5 hours, and over 1700 surveys
were completed by a team of researchers between Oct 2003 and June 2004. The survey indicated a
large middle ground, with about two-thirds agreement on major issues.
Issue/Challenge - Lack of employment opportunities in the town since Morlands factory closed is
the biggest issue – Glastonbury often tops of the list of highest unemployed % population in
Somerset. ‘Economically inactive’ rather than lazy though – there is not a lot of work in the town.
Transport links are limited; car ownership is relatively low; ‘its a low-wage, high-rent town’. There is
a joke that ‘there’s a graduate behind every till on the High Street, working part time at minimum
wage’.
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Somerset Towns Forum supports and promotes community action to revitalise our towns
Solution - A major project idea emerging from the GCDT community survey (and a parallel survey in
2004 of the town's businesses), was the Glastonbury Opportunities shop - a volunteer-run service
providing information, advice and support for local people looking for local employment, training or
volunteering opportunities.
Glastonbury – Linda Hull (Somerset Community Food & ex Town Councillor)
The town is very diverse, or rather there are multiple communities living side by side. In a recent
survey they identified 72 different religions and groups meeting in the town (pop. approx 9,000).
Inclusion and representation are real issues – “who can speak for ‘the’ community?”. The new
Town Council make-up better represents the diversity of the town.
Issues/Challenges – Hinkley C reactor development will bring many hundreds of HGV journeys
through Glastonbury, transporting aggregate from the Mendips. Concerns over TESCO
development as mentioned before. Neither the Town or District Council have taken a lead on the
delivery of the Town Plan, and little has happened on the projects that involved them. The issues
remain the same.
Solution/Good News – the Red Brick Building on the Morlands site (between Glastonbury and
Street) is now community-owned, with the Trust involved undertaking a 2nd Share Issue to raise
funds. They were recently granted funding (from the County Council’s Market Town Regeneration
Fund, the last to be granted before the fund was closed) for a Feasibility Study that will hopefully
move their development plans forward. They plan to create rented workspace, employment
training for young people and a community meeting room.
Wells & Frome – Liz Spurgeon (Flourish Homes)
Liz is a very experienced Community Development Officer with Flourish and works with tenants and
tenant groups across Mendip district.
Issue/Challenge – Wells has some current problems with Anti-Social Behaviour, Benefit fraud and
drug abuse, possibly caused by tenant changes made possible by Choice-Based Lettings (where
tenants can move from other parts of the country), and/or by problems with non-tenants living in
Flourish Homes.
Solution/Good News – Tenants in Frome have been very involved in the redevelopment at
Randolph Road. 59 houses were demolished and 133 new homes have been built. They chose the
developer, and have proudly led tours of the new homes.
In discussion, Peter Millar was concerned about the lack of outdoor space in new developments –
“postage stamp gardens are fine if the supermarket shelves are full”. Cara Naden (Langport Town
Council & Transition Town Langport) gave a plea for immediate local action to address climate
change, by having greater food security through growing more of our own food (and not relying on
long food distribution networks) and greater energy security by strongly supporting renewable
energy projects. Peter Millar suggested that those campaigning against wind turbines should be the
first to lose their electricity when shortages start due to a lack of supply.
In addition to representatives from member towns, two Glastonbury projects were invited to talk
about their work;
Linda Hull - Somerset Land & Food
Linda, who works for Somerset Community Food, explained the Somerset Land & Food (SLAF)
project, which aims to turn 100 hectares of new land into community-based food production
around 10 market towns. They’ve identified a large number of pieces of land where the landowner
is happy to allow community growing – whether allotments, community allotments or other type.
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Somerset Towns Forum supports and promotes community action to revitalise our towns
Their Foodmapper website has proved a very useful tool in mapping opportunities. There are at
least 250 people on waiting lists for allotments in South Somerset alone. The Co-op are supportive
of the initiative.
SLAF has created a Knowledge Bank of advice, and is introducing a Technical Assistance Fund,
offering £500-£2000 to help community groups to engage with landowners and develop growing
projects. Their next Conference will be part of the Exmoor Food Festival. Foodmapper may ‘go
national’. Flourish Homes keen to get involved in the project.
Find out more here...
Sara Clay – Glastonbury Opportunities Shop
People wanted local work, and access to those opportunities. Early last decade, the Street
JobCentre was closed, and Wells is a £5 return bus ride away. GCDT decided in 2004 to start a Local
Job Shop – called the Opportunities Shop, as they saw that volunteering opportunities also needed
promoting. It offers back to work training, support and advice. Initially gained funding for 3 years
from European Social Fund, with support from a County Council Officer.
They help on average 450 people each year. Two evaluations show these have around a 70%
success rate of gaining employment. Now have 12 Volunteer Advisors, trained to NVQ level in a
wide range of skills (Advice Work, Volunteer Management, Community Development, Counselling).
Costs are only £6,500 pa, yet struggles to find funding to strengthen and grow services. Glastonbury
Town Council now funds half of this.
Sara rightly feels that they’ve made a real difference in the town, and gave it a lift when they
started up. The Glastonbury Opportunities Shop has just been honoured with the Queen's Award
for Voluntary Service, the MBE for voluntary groups.
STF would like to thank all attending for their positive contributions at this trial event.
Somerset Towns Forum
c/o ViSTA, The Town Hall, Bow Street,
Langport, Somerset, TA10 9PR
Tel: 01458 259077
Matt Day, Coordinator
matt@somersettownsforum.org.uk
www. somersettownsforum.org.uk
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Somerset Towns Forum supports and promotes community action to revitalise our towns