Why we need to listen to the Hillcote families

MOST people would agree that one of the measures of a civilised society is how well it cares for its weakest members.

Nevertheless there are many minority groups in need of our squeezed public funds, and we have to accept that they can’t all have everything they want.

Some things may look, on paper, like easy targets for cuts.

One such is Hillcote, the respite centre in Salisbury for the families of young people with severe disabilities.

Severing this lifeline for a handful of vulnerable citizens won’t make a jot of difference to the vast majority of voters. Many won’t even know it’s happened.

Wiltshire Council and Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group justify its proposed closure by saying that the number of people using Hillcote is in decline.

But if you don’t direct people to the help that’s available they won’t be able to make use of it, and there is evidence that this is what has happened here, presumably because the closure plan was in the offing.

I haven’t visited the centre, in Manor Road, but years ago I spent time at a similar one elsewhere. I left filled with admiration for the people who work with such optimism in these circumstances and for the families who cope with challenges unimaginable to the rest of us.

The last thing the Hillcote families want is to travel across the Plain to Devizes to the only other respite home on offer. If their children, some of whom suffer from fits, are taken ill they’ll be bundled off to hospital in Swindon, making it hugely difficult to visit them.

They are also unconvinced by talk of foster care as an alternative, given the need for adapted housing and specialist equipment.

I know our MP John Glen sympathises, and has voiced “grave concerns” about how fairly they are being treated.

Over the years well-wishers have raised at least £30,000 to equip Hillcote. Their efforts ought not to be dismissed.

The families recognise that it’s an expensive place to run for a small number of users. But within Wiltshire’s fiefdom, Salisbury is the biggest centre of population. At the very least can’t somewhere cheaper be found locally?

On Wednesday at 10.30am the families present their case to the authorities at a public meeting in the Guildhall. They need your support.

Kerr-ching! Money's no object when you've got it

I’M suffering from Wandering Mind Syndrome, I suspect. This week my mind has been wandering in all directions.

Firstly, the University Technical College, that wondrous redevelopment of our police station that will fill in the gaps in Salisbury’s educational ‘offer’ without having Any Adverse Effect on our existing schools - honest.

On Tuesday Wiltshire Council’s rulers committed £2million to this monument to political vanity – sorry, that should have read “much-needed educational facility” and “sub-regional centre of excellence”.

I love the phrase “custody suite”. It sounds like somewhere you might spend a kinky honeymoon. A night in the cells is what it means. And they still haven’t worked out where it will be once the police are relocated, although we’re assured it will be “modern and sustainable”. Thank goodness for that.

Incidentally, wasn’t it delightful to read that Wiltshire’s former £183,000-a-year chief exec Andrew Kerr was confirmed this week as Cornwall Council’s top man on a salary somewhere between £158,000 and £176,000?

I actually felt quite sorry for him when he was ousted from Planet Trowbridge two years ago because a) he came across as a pleasant chap even though he had to ‘reorganise’ so many underlings out of their jobs and b) he so clearly didn’t have a clue that his political overlords had been plotting his own demise.

A £144,000 redundancy package must have eased the blow, but it was still gratifying to see that shortly afterwards he found a new role as £140,000 chief operating officer at Cardiff Council, where he was reportedly “looking forward to driving improvement” until the lure of the laid-back surf dude paradise proved irresistible.

Surely that’s as far as he can go. Any further west and he’ll fall into the Atlantic.

I don’t blame him, by the way. Or anyone who tries to do better for themselves.

It’s just interesting how teachers and firemen who protest about the decimation of their pension plans are portrayed as not caring about the inconvenience they cause while, among the upper  echelons, the gravy train hurtles on.

What a shambolic way to run essential services in Salisbury

IF you might be about to lose your job, and the first you heard about it was via your local newspaper’s Facebook page, how would you feel?

That’s the unpleasant situation that people caring for the disabled residents of Salisbury's Douglas Arter Centre found themselves in this week.

The charity Scope announced a proposal to close it, apparently without first informing all of those most closely involved.

Staff were quick to express their dismay online, as were relatives of the residents, who have no idea what will become of their loved ones.

“My sister lives there,” said one. “What next for her?”

The charity asserts that such homes are outdated and that disabled people would rather have help to live independently.

Yet its website is currently lambasting the government for failing to provide any support for 69,000 disabled people who need it to live independent lives. So how’s that going to work, then?

The care of individual residents there is funded by Wiltshire Council and the NHS. 

Two months ago Wiltshire declared its intention of shutting down Hillcote, the city’s only respite home for the families of children with severe disabilities.

The council claimed the number of people using the centre was falling. The families said that was because the council had stopped telling people it was available.

This, of course, is the council that last week rejected requests for an independent investigation into staff morale after nodding through huge pay rises for its top brass while their subordinates face a freeze.

The same council that has for years ignored requests to plan for a transport interchange in the city and is now reduced to hurriedly digging up our streets to create new bus stops, for which it admits there is “no public support”, before the bus station closes.

Now we learn that Balfour Beatty Living Places has lost more than £1million in the first three months of its contract to carry out highway maintenance, grass cutting and litter picking for Wiltshire.

So some of the firm’s staff will be made redundant while others will be moved from roadworks to lower-paid duties.

That’ll sort out those potholes, won’t it? 

Just as well Wiltshire don’t run a brewery. Because we all know what they couldn’t organise there.

Shoplifters are stocking up early for Christmas

 AMBLING around the aisles at Waitrose in a bit of a daze, as I tend to do these days,  I pitched up at the meat counter and was mildly surprised to notice that the reduced-price leg of lamb I was contemplating had a sticker attached to the packaging, proclaiming it to be “Security Protected”.

A glance round the chiller units showed me that some cuts of pork and beef carried similar statements – though the burgers, meatballs or sausages didn’t, and neither did some of the items in the Essentials value range.

My first thought was that we must be in the grip of some new food contamination scandal.

Maybe meat products had become the latest target of urban terrorists or animal rights activists?

But no, I decided, that couldn’t be right because the free range pork was stickered, too, and even the most committed activist would be hard pushed to protest about that.

So I asked the girl behind the counter what it was all about.

“Ooh, you’d be surprised,” she said, “what people steal these days – especially in the run-up to Christmas.

“High value joints of meat – they’ll stuff them under their arm beneath their coat, or cover them with cushions or a load of bedding.  It’s not just batteries they’re after these days, or bottles of alcohol. You’d be amazed how much gets stolen.”

I thanked her for this interesting insight into the behaviour of genteel Salisbury and returned to my trolley.

I had realised, of course, that the dreaded season of goodwill was approaching.

I could hardly have missed it, since there were strategically placed offers of organic chocolate mini-bars and those boxes of scarlet-wrapped truffles, the kind I only ever buy to stuff into people’s stockings or hang off the Christmas tree, around the store and at the checkout.

But that phrase “the run-up to Christmas” really drove home the message and filled me with dismay.  It was the first week of October.

Good Lord, there I was, stocking up on boring everyday groceries when I really should have been forging ahead with my preparations for the festive frolics.

Clearly, I have been failing in my duty as a consumer. And do you know, I suspect I will continue to do so until at least mid-November  - by which time they’ll probably have run out of everything I want.

I recall only one more heart-sinking moment in the supermarket this year, and that was the sight of “Back to School” signs over racks of grey winter uniforms before the poor little kids had even broken up for the summer holidays. Talk about spoiling their fun.

•  Two days later I popped back in and the whole place was knee-deep in Christmas kitsch, with assistants busily setting up arrays of glittering baubles just past the display of lurid Halloween merchandise. Why not stick a few Easter eggs in there, too, while they're at it?

Let's try switching off Salisbury's traffic lights

TRAFFIC lights. Are they a boon or a ****** nuisance? Answers on an email, please.

Here’s my answer.  I believe they are often counter-productive and Salisbury might be better off without almost all of them.

I would like to suggest that  the highway authorities switch them all off for a trial period of two weeks, to give drivers time to get used to the change and alter their behaviour accordingly.

Then I’d like to see an assessment of the effect on traffic flow, which I suspect would be improved.

If it doesn’t work, by all means switch them on again.

If it does, just think of those plummeting energy bills.

It’ll make the savings from switching off a few street lamps at night look like small change.

And if the effect is that fewer vehicles end up filling our air with exhaust fumes while they wait for the lights to change when there’s nobody coming the other way, then that has to be a bonus.

I fell into conversation about this with an acquaintance at a car boot sale not long ago and found him in complete agreement. As was the lady whose stall we were standing by. We were soon discussing which were the most annoying and pointless sets of lights, and I imagine everyone has their own particular bête noire.

My personal favourites  for extinction are the ones as you come in to town down Fisherton Street. They take forever to change and cause pointless delays.

As do the ones at the junction of New Street and Exeter Street, holding up traffic trying to get out of the multi-storey car park and out of town.

Certainly, whenever the lights at the Harnham gyratory are out of action I get round there a lot faster.

You’d have to leave the special lights for the park and ride buses on, I suppose, to avoid slowing them down.

I’m not saying yet that we should banish the rest for ever. Just give it a try. What have we got to lose?