Recently I launched another website, www.YourBury.co.uk. It is a discussion forum about everything in Bury St Edmunds in which anyone can raise and discuss any issue they please. Unlike a blog, which is dependent on the author to update, a forum can contain much more user based content. Please visit it, sign up and contribute to the debate. During the recent election campaign it became clear to me that some people do not feel they are being listened to. Hopefully this forum will help us all make a small step in the right direction but please remember unless you speak up your views will go unheard.

The aim is to get 500 users within the first year. We’ll be doing a few advertising campaigns to get the userbase off the ground – at the moment it sits at 28. Forums tend to snowball – so please sign up now and help get the project off the ground. You can raise any issue you please and there is no moderation in place. The only thing we ask is that users abide by the rules in the signing up agreement.

Click on the picture above to visit www.YourBury.co.uk

The Chairman of the Bury St Edmunds Chamber of Commerce, Rick Wildridge, was quoted on the front page of the East Anglian Daily Times yesterday, calling for the introduction of a permanent Park & Ride in Bury St Edmunds.

He suggested, quite rightly, that more of the £400,000 raised from on street parking in Bury should be spent in Bury, rather than elsewhere in Suffolk. However, the Park & Ride debate is far more complex than came across in the East Anglian article.

Let me first state that I am, in principle, in favour of a permanent Park & Ride solution for our town. The reason for this is not the often cited lack of parking – car parks in the town are rarely full and it is only at peak times such as Christmas that any real strain is seen. Even then the car parks are rarely at capacity for more than an hour or so. This, in itself, is not enough to warrant the introduction of Park & Ride nor make it financially viable (even with the £400,000 from on street parking). The reason I support Park & Ride in the long term is not due to insufficient car park capacity, it is simply because I don’t believe we have the infrastructure to cope ever increasing traffic flows. The problem isn’t with getting parked, it will rest, as traffic in the town increases, with getting to a car park.

The solutions to this are twofold. Long term, Park & Ride will become more and more feasible and should remain an ultimate ambition but I will come back to this subject in a moment. In the short term, we need to look at the town as a whole and see what improvements can be made to the town’s infrastructure to ease traffic flows – the signalisation of Tayfen Road is just one of these solutions. There is some excellent work being done by the Borough and County Councils but I have, for some time now, argued for the creation of a traffic management plan for the entire town rather than a more piecemeal approach where junctions are upgraded as and when the funding is available. This is an argument I will continue to pursue – it is only through looking at the town as a whole that we can begin to address problems with congestion.

Returning to the subject of Park & Ride, the difficulty is this: while people can park all day in the town centre for a couple of pounds they will do so. On the average weekday and weekend we have adequate parking and, despite the inevitable outcry, when there is an increase it remains comparatively affordable. Given the choice between paying £1.50 for a Park & Ride ticket and £1.90 to park on Parkway or Ram Meadow all day, the vast majority of people would choose to park more centrally and pay a little more for the privilege. It wouldn’t even attract the casual shoppers popping into town for 2 hours when they could park in the most central location for less than £2 or, on a shorter visit, on street for £1.60.

Where Park & Ride works elsewhere it is because town centre parking is prohibitively priced and reasonably scarce. For it to be a success the town centre parking charges would need to be such that most people would opt for Park & Ride. For example, a day’s parking in the Grand Arcade in Cambridge is close to £15. Furthermore, if Park & Ride is a success it would mean that some of the town centre car parks would fall into disuse – strangely the success of Park & Ride would probably see some town centre car parks (most likely the more outlying ones) close.

Some others, with whom I have discussed this topic, go further – they argue that for Park & Ride to work people need to be forced out of driving into the town centre and this would mean not only prohibitively priced town centre parking but also the closure of some car parks from the very outset. There is also the problem that we do not have the capacity for bus lanes on our roads; what use would Park & Ride be if the buses simply got stuck in traffic? The natural argument goes that a successful Park & Ride would free up space on the roads but this simply gives more weight to the argument that it would mean the need to force far fewer people to drive into the town centre on a daily basis.

This is, as I have said, a complex debate and personally I see the short term solution in improving traffic infrastructure in the town with Park & Ride as an ultimate goal.

To say we need a Park & Ride is easy. To say how we would make it a success is far more difficult – I’d be interested to see if the Chamber of Commerce would support its introduction if it meant fewer town centre parking spaces and large price increases. That is a much more difficult case to make.

The results from yesterday’s Suffolk County Council elections are in and were as follows:

Mark Ereira-Guyer, Green 1,924 (elected)

Paul Farmer, Con 2,042 (elected)

Kevin Hind, Lab 624

Allan Jones, Lib Dems 625

David Nettleton, Ind 1,846

Richard Rout, Con 1,726

Daniel Warren, Lib Dems 641

Kevin Waterson, Lab 645

Sadly, while the Conservatives held onto the seat that Paul Hopfensperger won in 2005 we were unable to gain both. It was a remarkable result for Mark Ereira-Guyer who increased the Green Party vote massively – my congratulations go to him and to Paul Farmer on their victory.

One can dwell on the reasons for the result endlessly; the expenses saga and many people’s disenchantment with politics were doubtless factors as was the middle school issue but it would be churlish to blame any one of these.

Mark’s election does reveal that environmental issues are now, quite rightly, at the very top of the political agenda and that politicians both locally and nationally need to work to restore the public’s faith in them.

It was a long and hard campaign and I’m grateful to all those people who supported me and helped us along the way. It was much appreciated and I’m sorry that I didn’t deliver the victory that both they and I craved.

Given all the coverage in the press recently about MPs’ expenses claims I thought residents would find it useful to have an update on my claims as a local councillor.

Since I was first elected to Bury St Edmunds Town Council in 2005 and St Edmundsbury Borough Council in 2007, I haven’t claimed a single penny in expenses. Furthermore, if elected to Suffolk County Council on June 4, I will not submit any expenses claims in relation to this role.

Borough and County Councillors are provided with not insubstantial allowances and in my opinion these should be used to cover the expenses we incur. It is true to say that the allowances do not nearly compensate for the time involved (in my case over 20 hours a week) – in fact when I worked out how much my allowance compensated me for per hour each year it worked out at less than the minimum wage. It is also true to say that I and many of my colleagues could make a huge amount more money if we dedicated this time to our jobs. However, Councillors do not stand for election to make money and, personally, I could not claim for every short journey or indeed the occasional meal (which I would have consumed regardless of my location) with a clear conscience.

So to be clear – I have made no expenses claims since I was first elected in 2005 and this will continue to be the case regardless of which council I sit on.