Saints draw Pompey in the FA Cup

Hello,

Well this is the big news of the week – Saints v Pompey again, and over Valentines weekend too! As it happens, that is the weekend of the Chinese New Year aswell. Obviously with having St Marys Stadium on our patch this game will have some impact on us. I can remember the last time we played Pompey at St Marys, and the Safer Neighbourhood Team were all involved in community patrols all afternoon. As then, I expect the Constabulary will gain some of those impressive police horses to escort the Pompey fans from and back to the train station. I also have the Stadium Monitoring Group meeting this week, so that will be interesting and this game will obviously raise some issues at that meeting. Since the club got took over last year, these meetings have been really positive and long may that continue. The meeting is attended by community representatives from Northam, Newtown, St Marys, Woolston and Bitterne as well as councillors and council representatives for transport and community cohesion. It is an interesting meeting and gives an insight into some of the running of the club.

We work very closely with Saints in the Community – particularly with the summer activities programme that I have mentioned before and we are starting to plan for this years programme. In fact the contact with them is very useful. The Constabulary has an annual football tournament, and we as the Southampton Central Safer Neighbourhood Teams have entered a team, and Saints have kindly lent us an old kit – hopefully their luck in the recent cup competitions will rub off on us!! We are away to Basingstoke.

As I mentioned in the last blog – I will talk a little more about the community priorities – and this time it’s Northam.

Priority 1 is the enforcement of the no left/no right turn at the Prince of Wales junction. There have been several accidents here over the years as traffic illegally comes from Union Rd or Princes St into Northam Rd towards the City Centre. There is little we can do, other than enforce the law – so PC Dave Houghton spends some time there every day, and has issued over 30 tickets since November.

Priority 2 is vehicles travelling the wrong way around Kent St. This is mainly from the parking area in front of Clyde House around to Graham St. Again, this is an enforcement only thing really – people know they are breaking the law and Dave will be targeting them aswell. However, unlike the Prince of Wales junction where offenders do not see Dave until they have committed the offence, in Kent St they will probably see him first, and therefore go around Kent St properly.

Priority 3 is dog mess on the estate. This priority has been passed to the Council to deal with. As it happens, dogs in flats has been one of the issues on the patch chat for some time, so the council are working on this already.

The priorities will be discussed at the next Tenants and Residents meeting on 1 February and then we have the full community priority setting meeting on 2 March. If you would like to be part of this process, and influence what happens in Northam please let me know and come along to the meetings.

Well, that’s it till next time

Cheers

Dick