Minutes of the Board Meeting of St. Mary’s Island Residents’ Association Ltd. (SMIRA)
held at the Community Centre on Tuesday 12th January 2016
commencing at 7:00pm
Present:
Chair: David Taylor
Directors: Leslie James, Peter Haigh, Allan Sneller and Chris Reynolds.
Officers: Lily Leaver (Treasurer), Bob Muid (Secretary).
Visiting Members: Brian Leamon, David Small, Steve Quayle, Brian Viney, Gary Page, Wendy Pinder, Martine Pay, Mandy Gill, Tracey Bell.
CMT Representatives: Dalia Halpern-Matthews (CEO), Grant Leathwhite (Estates Officer).
Medway Councillor: Cllr. Andrew Mackness.
Guests: Helen Kristic (PCSO), Rebecca Pease (Community Warden) and Ben McGowan (Moat Housing)
Apologies for absence: Graham Wrightson (Director), Barry Woolford (Director), Cllr. Habib Tejan, Alan Bennett. Dalia Halpern-Matthews (CEO) had to leave the meeting early.
Abbreviations: CMT – Chatham Maritime Trust, CML – Countryside Maritime Ltd. (developers), HCA – Homes and Communities Agency (SMI landowner), SMI – St. Mary’s Island.
Item 01/16: Minutes of the previous meeting
Adoption of the minutes of the meeting of the 3rd November 2015 were proposed by Peter Haigh, seconded by Chris Reynolds and unanimously adopted, with one correction. In the previous Treasurer’s report the correction is that the balance includes the additional grant of £1,000.
Item 02/16: Moat Housing
Ben McGowan reported that he’d had some residents at the surgery prior to the SMIRA meeting. Should anyone have anything they wanted to contact Moat about they can contact Ben directly by phone to 0845 359 6218 or email to .
Item 03/16: Chatham Maritime Trust Report
Grant Leathwhite (Estates Officer) reported that:
Ship & Trades area
Additional Remedial works have been undertaken to the car park to include an additional two large heritage bins to help reduce littering. Work has been done to cracked drain channels and gullies to reduce pooling. New manager at the Coop will be meeting CMT to talk over expectations soon.
Christmas Fair
The Christmas Fair was held at St. Mary's Island Community Centre on Saturday 28th November. The event was very well attended with good feedback from residents. Many new children's presents were donated to the Salvation Army on the day. Donations towards the Salvation Army were raised by SAINTARA from the sale of refreshments and a collection at the carol service. Perhaps best of all almost 100 children were able to visit Father Christmas free of charge and receive a modest present. Our thanks to the Community Centre staff for their hard work. The Christmas Fair this year will be held on 26th November 2016.
Finsborough Down/Bulb Planting/Estate Walk:
The tree husbandry on Finsborough Down started on 11th January and will continue into February. This is a rolling program over the next five years. Don't forget to look out for the crocuses planted on our community bulb planting day in October. This year bulbs are expected to be planted on Central East bund, probably on 8th October 2016.
Landscaping
Soft Landscaping works currently underway across the estate, include new shrubs in Walter Burke Way with a retaining fence added to prevent pedestrian crossing and damage to new planting, the Bell Mast (brought up to estate standard), the Southern Bullnose (the land next to the historic ships) and the Lozenge (next to the MHS building) and other sites.
Defibrillator
We have supplied the information for a British Heart Foundation grant for a defibrillator for the Community Centre to David Taylor, and he will be applying for this. Our Ward Councillors have kindly offered the remaining required match funding.
Post Meeting Note: David Taylor applied for the grant but has been advised that this fund scheme has been withdrawn. We are now on their list if the scheme is renewed and we are investigating other alternatives. See post meeting note under Item 06/16: Treasurer’s report.
River Walk
Following on from the successful resin bonded path put in by CMT behind the school, the pathway from Central Walk to Finsborough Slipway has now been completed with re-tarmacking and a new anti-slip resin surface. A review on the Outfall 15 surface and cobble pathway is currently underway. The intention is to look at positive ways to improve the surface for cyclists, mobility scooters, prams and wheelchairs.
Basin 2 Watersports Hub
Everything is on track for the Phase 1 opening on the Easter weekend 2016 (25th March). The hub will be cross generational, all abilities including special needs and will have activities up to seven days a week. The activities will be provided by two charitable bodies: Arethusa and Medway Watersports.
Phase 2 will provide permanent buildings for the watersports hub within 2 years but possibly sooner.
PCSO
PCSO Helen Kristic will be holding a pre-surgery meeting before each SMIRA meeting (5:00pm in the Community Centre Office) for people to raise issues with her that they don’t want to address to the full meeting.
As well as the SpeedWatch volunteers we have also had the Kent Police down to monitor traffic speeds on the bridge. They have been down on three occasions and over thirty drivers were spoken to on each occasion and ‘speeding tickets’ were issued to between 8 and 15 people. Most of these were residents on SMI. Helen has two additional SpeedWatch volunteers who need to be trained but she has lost one who has gone abroad.
Survey
Thank you to everyone who took part in the survey. CMT had more people than last year completing it, including a marked increase in other users of the estate taking part. Results are currently being analysed.
Central Walk/ Ring Road
CMT are still working with CML to progress the transfer of Island Way, Central Walk/Lookout soft landscaping and Sectors 7, 8, 9 & 14. No date has been confirmed due to ongoing talks to resolve funding arrangements and the plans of the landscaping as originally planted.
Signage
Signage is being looked at as a whole across the estate. Hundreds of information signs have been surveyed so that everything can be tidied up and we have conformity of signage and appropriate way-finding across the estate. Additional meetings have been held with a creative team for the designs and a CMT review of funding the cost for the project is pending. This is not the street name signs.
Food & Drink Festival
Next year (2016) it will again be on the Whitsun bank holiday weekend 28-30th May with the Dragon Boat Challenge on Sunday 29th May. Anyone wanting more details or that would like to be involved with music and or stalls should email details and information to . For details about entering a team in the Dragon Boat Challenge e-mail
It is also worth penciling in the first Saturday in July in your diaries as we are likely to have some linking activities with the River Festival run by Medway Council. This will probably be in Basin 2.
Pump House No.5
This will be opening as a distillery from late Spring 2016, producing whiskey, gin and vodka.
Chris Reynolds raised three issues: Island Way West being a potential accident blackspot with someone knocking down the street lamp on the central reservation and last year someone driving through a hedge which has been replaced with a bit of fencing. One of CMT’s contractors, either Conway or Turfsoil, park on the corner by the Co-op while they have their lunch and this makes it very difficult for drivers to get into the Ship & Trades car park. Chris’s final question was on the caisson access. Grant Leathwhite said that CMT’s final plan was with Peel Port’s lawyers, awaiting a decision.
Item 04/16 Chair’s report
David Taylor asked for any feedback on the newsletter and the AGM. The attendees found the newsletter useful and that the AGM went on a bit too long. Other than that most people thought the format was good.
Item 05/16: Secretary’s report
Not much to report. David Taylor asked if the SMIRA website was still getting hits and Bob Muid reported that it had had 2,444 visits since the last meeting.
Item 06/16: Treasurer’s report
Lily Leaver reported that last month £1,882.00 was spent on the newsletter and AGM. We have a balance of £1,105.00. We’ve had donations from three people joining SMIRA. The balance includes the £1,000 additional grant from our Councillors.
Cllr Mackness asked if the £1,000 included the cost of the defibrillator and David Taylor said that it didn’t but the cost will be £400. The additional grant is ring-fenced for community activities.
Post Meeting Note: Our Ward Councillors, Andrew Mackness and Habib Tejan, have jointly donated a further £1,000.00 of their ward funding to cover the cost of the defibrillator and any associated training.
Item 07/16: Roads, road adoption and landscaping
David Taylor and Allan Sneller regularly attend the road adoption meetings and the SMIRA newsletter gives an overall program of when the roads will hopefully be adopted. Parallel to the road adoption is the adoption of the roadside landscaping by CMT.
Item 08/16: Bus services on St Mary’s Island
Although Keith Robinson has resigned as a director of SMIRA he has emailed David that the revised bus timetable comes into effect on the 24th January. Changes are minimal but the 600 school bus which used to depart at 07:47 will now depart 10 minutes earlier at 07:37am. The 09:02 and the 09:15 services are merged into a 09:05am service. Allan Sneller said that we need to find a way to alert the schoolchildren to the change to the school bus as it will now leave 10 minutes earlier. This concerns more than the St. Mary’s Island children as others join the bus further along the route. Allan said he would email the Maths School.
Post Meeting Note: Keith Robinson has advised that around 1500 revised bus timetables have been delivered to him by Arriva for distribution to all houses on SMI. David Taylor is to arrange distribution in the near future.
Item 09/16: Chatham Docks
David Taylor said that he hadn’t had any more complaints from residents about the noise from the Arcellor Mittal (Kent Wire) site where they manufacture the wire mesh.
Post Meeting Note: Further repeat complaints from a resident have been received and David Taylor will contact ArcelorMittal to see if the enclosure of the manufacturing buildings is underway.
Item 10/16: Youth Club
David Taylor reported that we were still no further forward with appointing a youth club worker. It is a firm intent to have a youth worker as CMT are financially supporting the post.
Post Meeting Note: Arrangements are now underway to re-open the Youth Club sometime in March with a newly appointed Club Leader supplied by Medway Youth Trust and financially supported by CMT.
Item 11/16: Planning Matters
Allan Sneller reported that he had looked through the Medway Strategic Plan consultative report 2012-2035 (118 pages). There is nothing in the plan that affects SMI but there are lots of parts of the plan which may have an indirect effect on residents.
Affordable housing is in short supply and the population of Medway is generally getting older. Most of the important detail is at the end of the document. Medway want to develop the Lodge Hill area and the land around Rochester Airport. They would also like to convert the Medway City Industrial Estate into a housing estate.
Consultation on the document ends at 5:00pm on the 29th February. Private residents can comment on the plan by going to the Council website. David Taylor thought that we should send a response from SMIRA.
Cllr Andrew Mackness explained that this local plan was a statutory requirement for any local authority to give a 20 year picture. It is all based around population growth in Medway and there is a requirement for an additional 30,000 homes in the next 20 years. The Medway City Estate is prime land adjacent to water and these days no one would build an industrial estate where this is. The land on the Hoo peninsula would suit industrial uses rather than residential. Nothing happens very quickly but there is an appetite for some of the industrial sites to relocate to the peninsula.
Cllr Mackness suggested that residents make sensible comments about the effects of additional housing such as the impact on medical services, education, transport, leisure and whether we need another tunnel or bridge.
Any Other Business:
Peter Haigh said that although work started on the traffic signal sequence on the roundabout above the tunnel just before Christmas, the lights still do not appear to be working as promised. Cllr Mackness said that the work has still to be completed. David Taylor will email Ruth Du-Lieu (Medway Council) for an update on the traffic light works.
Cllr. Mackness suggested that Ruth be invited to the next SMIRA meeting to give an update.
A resident pointed out that a lot of the road drains were full of leaves and rubbish and one of drain covers in Samphire Way was loose. David Taylor said that most of the roads were still the responsibility of CML.
The issue of school parking on Island Way West was raised again as motorists travelling anticlockwise around the Island have to drive on the wrong side of the road as they come past the school. Drivers are also concerned because they cannot see what is coming towards them. It is getting extremely dangerous. Cllr. Mackness suggested to PCSO Helen Kristic that she and the Highway Team have a purge on the drivers obstructing the road on a regular basis. Helen said that as soon as the offenders see her they drive off and go somewhere else.
Cllr. Mackness thought there might be some mileage in suggesting to the school to have staggered finishing times.
David Small said that there appears to be a lot of dog mess around the Island currently, particularly on the Boardwalk, and wondered if we could get a dog warden to visit SMI. Grant Leathwhite said that most of the mess on the Boardwalk was made during the hours of darkness. David Taylor suggested that CMT shut the Boardwalk at night.
Rebecca Pease (Community Warden) will do a patrol giving out dog bin bags and talking to owners especially if their dogs are off leads.
Brian Viney said that parking enforcement notices had gone up on the road next to Machine Shop No.8 but that they hadn’t had any effect on parking. Grant Leathwhite explained that the road still belonged to the HCA and they aren’t enforcing it at the moment. Yellow parking signs are enforced by CMT (Grant Leathwhite) but the HCA wanted their own signs and their own enforcement (or lack of it).
The meeting ended at 20:15
Date and time of next meeting: Tuesday 23rd February 2016 commencing at 7:00pm.
A Pre-Meeting Surgery, where residents can report issues or seek advice from CMT, our Ward Councillors, Moat Housing and SMIRA is held at 6:00pm (one hour before the meeting). Residents can meet with PCSO Helen Kristic from 5:00pm - 6:00pm in the Community Centre Office.
The other meetings for 2016 are:
5th April
17th May
28th June
9th August
20th September
1st November
Produced by Bob Muid Page 1 of 1 Adopted 23rd February 2016