to Ed Lawrence, Chair, Future Council Scrutiny

Dear Ed

My wife is whisking me off to visit our daughter and her family on her birthday today, so I cannot have my three minutes in the public forum at 6 pm.  Would you be so good as to read this out in my absence, please?

STALLED SITES

With the multiple crises affecting our nation, region and borough, consumer champion Martin Lewis is warning of the poorest getting into such financial debt this winter that it will bring some of them into such serious difficulties that their lives will be at risk and, certainly, their health will suffer.

I am, therefore, asking that the decades of neglect over the housing designated land at High Plateau and Daniel's Land at Merry Hill must immediately be given to the poorest for very low energy cost housing of flats, apartments and terraced housing of the kind that my wife and I have lived in for the last 46 years in Halesowen.  Our energy bills remain very low.

Who owns the High Plateau and Daniel's Land?

I would suggest that our council and the WMCA follows the example of Germany's striking measures to reduce energy demand, by doing the following:

Cut flood lighting of buildings and reduce street lighting.

Turn down the thermostat to 19C for central heating of public buildings.

Do not reopen the swimming pool in Halesowen and, perhaps Stourbridge closed too over the winter.  Reduce the water temperature at the Duncan Edwards Centre swimming pool.

In Hanover, Germany showers at pools and at public sports centres will be (or, now are) cold water only.

Certainly, bring in shorter and cooler showers in public leisure centres.  Cold only in Germany.

Cut/reduce the car mileage allowance for officers on official council business.

Cancel the Dudley Tram leaving the mainline railway at Hart's Hill and keep it running down to Stourbridge Jct to connect it, once again, to the railway network.

Scrap the £15 billion (Feb 2020 figure) to 2040 for the 150 miles of eight lines and 380 tram stops of Metro tramlines.

to Brigid Jones, Karen McCarthy

Dear Brigid and Karen - and copied to Ian Ward

It was a delight to meet you and to have a chat with you both this morning.

You are, of course, right Brigid in making the excellent point about fewer particulates, tyre dust and other toxic matter with trams on rails compared with wheels directly on roads.

It would be wonderful if you both and Ian felt able to take up my offer to show you the 400 metre grass embankment that holds up Dudley No 1 Canal at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.  Ian is ultimately responsible for the concreting of the only public open space at Merry Hill.  There is still time for the plans to be redrawn if Ian, transport lead for the Combined Authority, asked the MMA to tweak the tram tracks two metres west and to place them on steel stilts above the water of the canal.  This would mean maximum room for low energy, eco-housing on both the High Plateau and on 'Daniel's Land', while preserving the public open space and trees.  See one official plan below my name and address, at the very foot.

Work has only begun at the Dudley end of the WBHE tram and not at Merry Hill apart from ground investigations.

My landscape enhancement scheme is under the tram tracks and against the iron wall that holds up the High Plateau on its north side.  See the plan, at the very foot, below the photos.  I would love to show it to you.

This suggestion and my guerrilla gardening are to turn Merry Hell into Merry Heaven and the presence of your good selves and that of Ian would be just that - heaven!

Best wishes and thanks so much for seeing me - as did Ian, at his surgery, some three years ago.  My own Dudley councillors don't seem to have surgeries.  You three are brilliant!