Category: Winchester

Reporting graffiti on telecoms cabinets

Post author By Martin
Post date August 5, 2022
2 Comments on Reporting graffiti on telecoms cabinets

Like so many, I’m getting very irritated at current levels of graffiti – and there’s a lot going on at the City Council to get it under control.

Most graffiti in our area is removed by the Business Improvement District or by the City Council and both have significantly increased spending recently to get more removed. Strictly, neither can remove it from another organisation’s property without permission – and that includes the boxes owned by Openreach and Virgin Media – as well as substations owned by SSE – and equipment owned by Network Rail.

Each of these has places to report graffiti – currently as follows:

On public buildings, monuments, benches and bins
- Winchester City Council – Clean My Street (or use the Your Winchester Android app or iPhone app and look for ‘Clean My Street’)
On cabinets
- Openreach – Reporting Damage or Safety Problems
- Virgin Media – Reporting Cabinet or Manhole Damage (you can also post in this webforum, which I’ve found works really well)
Near the railway
- Network Rail – for problems on or near railway tracks.
- At stations, use this South Western Railway form.
On substations
- Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks – Substation Repair

One tricky thing to handle is identifying which organisation a cabinet belongs to. Openreach has a guide to this (pdf) – but, if there isn’t an obvious logo or label (or even a barely visible faded one), the main trick is to look at the keyholes on the cabinet.

BT Openreach has triangular or star-shaped insert.

Close up photograph of a keyhole on an Openreach cabinet with a star-shaped insert

Close up photograph of a keyhole on an Openreach cabinet with a triangle-shaped insert

And Virgin has more conventional keyholes.

Close up photograph of a keyhole on an Virgin Media cabinet covered in graffiti paint that takes a conventional round key

Close up photograph of a keyhole on an Virgin Media cabinet that takes a conventional round key

It’s always helpful to take a photo. Also write down or photograph whatever numbers are on the box in case it’s a useful reference. Openreach also ask you to use the What3Words app or website to get a useful link or set of three words to give an exact location – and I’ve also used this successfully with other organisations! If you don’t like using a proprietary system and want to use a more open reference or app, then the Ordnance Survey’s OS Locate app gives you easy access to latitude, longitude and National Grid references.

Any other comments or suggestions on how to get graffiti removed? Please add a comment below.

COVID-19 and our local streets

Post author By Martin
Post date May 4, 2020
5 Comments on COVID-19 and our local streets

I’ve been thinking a lot about the challenges and opportunities that COVID-19 offers to the way we use our streets and roads here in Winchester.

The lower level of traffic is causing some immediate problems, such as increased speeding; revealing other problems, particularly in places where our pavements are too narrow for the number of people who want to use them; and also showing great opportunities, with a big increase in walking and cycling, particularly on our rural roads.

As we move into the recovery phase, we also need to do more to make our centres “social distancing” friendly. This means wider pavements and, learning from other countries, more opportunities for businesses to have widely spaced outdoor seating areas. People need to feel confident and safe coming back to our towns and villages knowing that they can easily move around in a socially distanced way.

What sort of measures would this give us?

We need to tackle the heavily walked and queuing areas where the pavements are too narrow and the roads are too wide. An obvious place to start is the one-way system. I’d like to see if we could cone the whole one-way system down to a single lane with the rest reserved for walkers and cyclists – single lane in North Walls – single lane in St George’s St – narrowed single lane in Jewry St – narrowed single lane in the upper section of the High Street. If possible, we also need to do something for pedestrians on City Bridge and Romsey Road bridge too (although given both are heavily used by buses, this will be harder).

We need to cut cars and lock in the change on roads where we have seen a dramatic increase in leisure usage. In my own area the road where this is most visible is Sarum Road. I’m sure there are plenty more. As a minimum, we need signage which shows that this is a road where cars drivers are not the priority users and should expect heavy foot and cycle usage.

On speed, we need to finish the job in Winchester and extend the 20 mph zone to residential areas across the whole city. We also need to narrow roads and widen pavements or add cycle lanes where there is a particular risk of people driving too fast. I would love to see up an uphill cycle lane on Chilbolton Avenue, for example.

We need to create space for businesses to use the highway for widely spaced outdoor seating. The most obvious option to do this is to fully pedestrianise the Square. We may need a couple of blue badge parking spots for people who need parking near the centre, but we should definitely stop through traffic.

Finally, one minor irritant that I know concerns some people. We need to revisit our push button crossings. Can we make them sensor or timer driven – so we don’t all need to push the button?

Make sense? Any streets, roads or priorities I’ve missed?

One of my responsibilities at the council is the City of Winchester Movement Strategy, so I’m already talking a lot with council officers and engineers at the City Council and County Council about how we can improve our streets. I promise to pass on any ideas that people send through!

Tags COVID19, Cycling, Movement Strategy, Streets, Walking, Winchester

County Council Latest News Winchester

Hampshire’s cuts to hit Winchester hard

Post author By Martin
Post date October 17, 2017
1 Comment on Hampshire’s cuts to hit Winchester hard

Portrait of Martin Tod in front of a field of yellow flowers

A press release I sent to the Chronicle – that colleagues liked so much that they asked me to post it online. So here it is:

Yesterday’s meeting of Hampshire’s Conservative cabinet confirmed that they will go ahead with their reckless £140 million cuts. These will only cost us more long-term.

In particular:

Their cuts to health and care will mean that the NHS is unable to hit the financial targets laid out in its ‘sustainability and transformation plan’ – and will put health and care services under even more stress.
Their cuts to Household Waste Recovery Centres are almost certain to lead to more fly-tipping.

In a surprise decision, the Cabinet also voted to recommend extra money to support parish and town councils in covering for services cut by Hampshire – such as community transport, school crossing patrols and subsidised bus services – however the Conservatives still have not put anything in place to support the many areas of Hampshire without parish and town councils – such as Winchester.

There’s also still no sign that they are taking any account of the impact of the cuts in less well-off areas of Hampshire.

Martin Tod, Liberal Democrat County Councillor for Winchester Westgate, commented:

We’re paying the price for the Conservatives’ incompetent and chaotic management of Brexit and the economy. This has led to collapsing investment, the lowest growth in both the EU and the G7 and rapidly growing inflation. Aside from the effect on people’s cost of living and the very real threat to businesses and jobs, this utter incompetence makes it even harder to tackle the crisis in funding for council services.

These cuts are a disaster of the Conservatives’ making – Conservative MPs, Conservative Ministers and Conservative Councillors have all contributed to this fiasco – and it will hit local people hard. The Conservatives are now compounding their failure by deciding not to have any kind of plan for the many areas of Hampshire without parish and town councils.

This is a real threat to Winchester – and, along with my colleagues, I will continue to push for the council to put in place a plan for unparished areas – and to stop the most damaging of their proposed cuts.

And nationally, the sooner we can find a way to ‘exit from Brexit’ and focus on a plan to turn round the economy, the better it will be for jobs, for businesses and for our local public services.

Air Quality Latest News Winchester

Conservatives vote down tougher action on air quality

Post author By Martin
Post date January 11, 2017
1 Comment on Conservatives vote down tougher action on air quality

Once again, Conservative Councillors at Winchester City Council have voted down a proposal from the Lib Dem group to have a tougher policy on air quality in the city.

IÂ summed up on aÂ proposal at today’s council meeting that it should be compulsory for all council proposals to report on the air quality impact of any action they recommend.

Under the Conservatives, again and again, the council has treatedÂ air quality as something that’s only done by the environment team. Â Other departments are left free to ignore it. It happened with Station Approach. It happened with the â€˜pollution patioâ€™ in St Georgeâ€™s Street. And the proposed new Parking Strategy doesn’t do enough. With 51 deaths a year in the Winchester district from air pollution, this canâ€™t carry on.

It’s got to be impossible to ignore air quality in council plans â€“ right across the council â€“ as well as making sure that the Air Quality Action Plan due later this year does enough to tackle it. You can’t sort air quality in a silo. It’s got to be everyone’s business.

Thatâ€™s what we proposed. And itâ€™s deeply disappointing â€“ although not surprising â€“ that, once again, the Conservatives voted it down.â€