Fifth meeting of Pontyclun Residents' Town Centre Working Group

Fifth meeting of the Pontyclun Residents’ Town Centre Working group:  14^th September 2011

Present:               Len, Ann, Rachel, Claire, Chris, Paul, Marg and Mick Antoniw Assembly Member for Pontypridd
Minutes

               Meeting with RCT Planners

The group was informed that Len, Ann, Paul, Marg had attended a meeting with RCT planners on Tuesday 13^th September. It had been a very interesting meeting and indicated that the planners have not made final decisions about many aspects of the development and are waiting for the outline planning application to be submitted. However, it also made us aware that it is the Council rather than the developer that is more likely to respond to our concerns; we will need to lobby the Council.

Marg to invite the planners to the open meeting 

             Meeting with Mark Jackson, Developer

Mark Jackson met with the group on Tuesday 13^th September. We have received their response to our letter expressing concerns and we were able to discuss the issues. Mark made us aware that he would be happy to consider any specific proposals regarding the development such as the footpaths but that many of our ideas would not be part of their planning application.

Marg to write and thank him and invite him to the next open forum meeting

Meeting of Developer with Community Council

Mark Jackson made his presentation to the Community Council on Tuesday 13^th September at Babell Chapel in Groes Faen. Unfortunately only a few members of the public attended.

Councillors Paul Griffiths and Dan Clayton Jones asked questions about the development referring to it as a retail park and not a town centre.

Local police officers were present and questioned the developer on traffic problem. They considered that the problems of traffic were not resolved when the Tesco’s retail park was developed and believe that there is a danger that this will happen again.

Meeting with Mick Antoniw, AM for Pontypridd

Mick Antoniw said he would discuss the proposal with the Welsh Government official Mike Cuddy and the appropriate ministers in light of Welsh Government policies on sustainability and zero carbon targets. He will feed back information to us. He will be present at the open forum meeting on 4^th October

Next Phase of Lobbying

The group felt that it is now essential to lobby the Council on some of the issues that are of concern to the group and members of the public. These include:

·        The scale of the development

·        Traffic management

·        Ecology and the environment

·        A Car based retail park or a town centre

·        Cycle and pedestrian access

·        Sustainability

We will write another letter to be sent to RCT and circulated to key organisations

Questionnaire

Rachel has a software package to analyse the questionnaire results and to produce charts. She has entered the results from 60 responses and will have completed the data entry by the open meeting.

Rachel to present the results to the open meeting

            Email List

            Len has produced the email list of interested residents and is keeping all informed

Notes of the Meeting

Len will distribute the notes of the meeting to all those at the public meeting who provided an email address

Public Meeting

The next public meeting is on 4^th October

Marg and Claire are to plan the agenda  

Next Meeting of working group

The group will meet again Wednesday 28th September