Letter to the paper 16th November
I Would like to respond to a couple of letters in your columns last week. Firstly with regard to the French market: expensive it may be but extremely popular!I have not seen so many people in Cinderford on a Saturday afternoon for donkey's years, and I have never seen a queue all day long as far up as the telephone box from the HSBC auto bank.
With regard to Saturday being the busiest shopping day, most people I know do their shopping on a Friday and reserve Saturday for sport.
Cinderford town council like Ross-on-Wye did not contact the French market - it contacted them. I have not heard the same level of criticism heaped upon Ross town council who also had to close their roads off.
All the councillors on Cinderford Town Council have ever tried to do is make our town as good as anyone else's. In Coleford, traders there with volunteers provide the town's Christmas lights; in the past in Cinderford it has been left to the town council.
Now, and it is very much appreciated, our traders' association is working with us, and so are the Forest Fitness Centre at Heywood and we will be the envy of the district at Christmas.
With regard to any decline which I believe is firmly behind us, this was mainly due to major factory closures.
All this resulted in a position in 1995 where we had 31 boarded-up shop fronts. I believe we have come a very long way from those miserable days, and in fact we should all take two steps back and take stock at what just has been achieved.
This year the town council together with our Cinderford Traders' Association produced the best flowers in the Forest.
Cinderford Traders' Association could be supported a lot more, especially by those who sit back and criticise! If these people joined forces, just think what could be achieved.
With regard to road closures, we face another dilemma in the coming weeks. Do we close Market Street and have a Christmas Parade or not? I pose this question; I believe it would be an eternal shame if we did not go ahead and have our parade. Not to do so would be taking away pleasure and joy from some 400 children in this town and a slight on the organisations that work so hard to produce this event.
The problem we face with any event in Cinderford Triangle is the safety of people. If we had two-way traffic flows up and down in front of the HSBC bank or some other traffic regime, we could then pedestrianise that area from the War Memorial across to Woolworths and in turn stop the need for any road closure in the rest of Market Street. Until this is done we are snookered.
The second letter mentioned public toilets and I agree that Heywood Road toilet should not be closed at 3pm. I find this odd; these toilets are cleaned twice a day and once on Saturday morning.
To clean Heywood Road and other town centre toilets across the district twice, seven days per week would cost in the region of £22,000 per year. To clean all toilets across the district twice seven days per week would cost £46,000 per year. It would be nice to know just how many people wanted to spend this sort of money; as with everything, these things come at a cost.
The same thing applies to road surfacing. I have asked many times for Woodside Avenue, Victoria Street and pavements in Parragate Road to be resurfaced and, let's be fair, the now Conservative-controlled county council made roads the main priority for spending public money. I will ask for these roads to be resurfaced yet again.
Graham Morgan
With regard to Saturday being the busiest shopping day, most people I know do their shopping on a Friday and reserve Saturday for sport.
Cinderford town council like Ross-on-Wye did not contact the French market - it contacted them. I have not heard the same level of criticism heaped upon Ross town council who also had to close their roads off.
All the councillors on Cinderford Town Council have ever tried to do is make our town as good as anyone else's. In Coleford, traders there with volunteers provide the town's Christmas lights; in the past in Cinderford it has been left to the town council.
Now, and it is very much appreciated, our traders' association is working with us, and so are the Forest Fitness Centre at Heywood and we will be the envy of the district at Christmas.
With regard to any decline which I believe is firmly behind us, this was mainly due to major factory closures.
All this resulted in a position in 1995 where we had 31 boarded-up shop fronts. I believe we have come a very long way from those miserable days, and in fact we should all take two steps back and take stock at what just has been achieved.
This year the town council together with our Cinderford Traders' Association produced the best flowers in the Forest.
Cinderford Traders' Association could be supported a lot more, especially by those who sit back and criticise! If these people joined forces, just think what could be achieved.
With regard to road closures, we face another dilemma in the coming weeks. Do we close Market Street and have a Christmas Parade or not? I pose this question; I believe it would be an eternal shame if we did not go ahead and have our parade. Not to do so would be taking away pleasure and joy from some 400 children in this town and a slight on the organisations that work so hard to produce this event.
The problem we face with any event in Cinderford Triangle is the safety of people. If we had two-way traffic flows up and down in front of the HSBC bank or some other traffic regime, we could then pedestrianise that area from the War Memorial across to Woolworths and in turn stop the need for any road closure in the rest of Market Street. Until this is done we are snookered.
The second letter mentioned public toilets and I agree that Heywood Road toilet should not be closed at 3pm. I find this odd; these toilets are cleaned twice a day and once on Saturday morning.
To clean Heywood Road and other town centre toilets across the district twice, seven days per week would cost in the region of £22,000 per year. To clean all toilets across the district twice seven days per week would cost £46,000 per year. It would be nice to know just how many people wanted to spend this sort of money; as with everything, these things come at a cost.
The same thing applies to road surfacing. I have asked many times for Woodside Avenue, Victoria Street and pavements in Parragate Road to be resurfaced and, let's be fair, the now Conservative-controlled county council made roads the main priority for spending public money. I will ask for these roads to be resurfaced yet again.
Graham Morgan
posted by graham_morgan at 10:14 am
