Thursday …

Back in June, I reported on a useful site visit held then with City Council road safety officers, West End Community Council and Blackness Primary School Parent Council representatives about road safety at the Sinderins junction.   The time length of the noise signal to advise pedestrians that it is safe to cross east-west at the bottom of Blackness Avenue was doubled in time length and we also discussed possible safety barriers at Hawkhill.

Today, we had a follow-up site visit (a very wet one in pouring rain!) at which the City Council representatives brought forward their proposals relative to the “barriers” idea.   They are proposing six bollards – at the footpath edge round the Blackness Avenue/Hawkhill junction and immediately to the east on Hawkhill – to emphasise to drivers not to drive too close to the pavement along Hawkhill, where pupils are walking to and from school.   It is a very busy arterial route into the City Centre and pedestrian safety is paramount.

The proposal will be discussed at the school’s Parent Council meeting next week and hopefully an agreed proposal can be implemented soon.

 

Later on, I attended the third West End estate “walkabout” of the week – this time round Pentland, where numerous local issues were discussed on-site including the condition of paths and steps in the area, grass cutting and parking. 

This evening, I attended the latest Dundee West Transition Town Group, where we discussed a number of issues including increasing allotment provision in the West End and the group’s input into the community fayre at the start of West End Christmas Week on 20th November.

Latest news …

As reported in today’s Courier, I was pleased to receive an assurance last night from the City Council’s Chief Executive that the Council’s Convener of Policy & Resources had now agreed that the Dundee Employment and Aftercare Project would be allowed to speak to councillors on Monday (see earlier article at http://tiny.cc/deap). The council’s ‘raid’ on Fairer Scotland Funding – funding aimed at assisting those in Dundee on the lowest incomes – is to be regretted and DEAP and the other projects that have been told their funding has been removed, are rightly perplexed at the decision to take vital funding away.

On another matter, we had an excellent initial meeting of the West End Transition Towns group (for want of a better name!) at Dundee West Church today (see earlier article at http://tiny.cc/transitiontowns). After a good lunch at the healthy eating lunches, there was a really positive discussion about how to take forward the Transition Towns concept across the West End – including food production, selling food, home insulation, public transport – to name just a few areas of discussion. I am very keen that there is an awareness public meeting soon and pleased all support this. A blog and further information to follow …