Coffee shop planning application

An application's come in for a coffee shop on Garston Old Road at number 77 (on a small parade of shops)

You can see the details on the Council's website here

Event at CREATE

CREATE, the organisation that recycles and reconditions used white goods like freezers is having an "indoor car boot sale" next Saturday - 5th November.
 
You can find out more about CREATE here

Nursery Opening

I was thrilled to be asked to do the official opening of the new nursery attached to Clarendon College today.  Clarendon college is a Montessori school on Garston Old Road and the nursery is just round the corner in Whitehedge Road.  I last saw the building back in the summer when there was lots to do,  so it was nice to see the progress.  It really looked lovely today with all the bright coloured toys and the cots for babies.

Interested in Garston - keep this date free

The Friends of Garston Park are working to create a Garston skyline mural which will not only celebrate some of our buildings, it will help make the walls round the sports pitches in the park look less like prison walls!

The first planning meeting, where we hope volunteers will come along to share ideas, will be on 24th November.  More details will follow but if you want to be involved (as an ideas person , or an artist, or photographer or anything really) please keep this evening free.

ATM Campaign update

We've managed to get some national attention for our ATM Campaign.  This is the campaign highlighting the lack of fee free cash machines.  If you are very short of money, every time you have to pay a fee to get your money is like an extra tax on poverty.  And given the lack of machines that don't charge, this is becoming less and less unavoidable.

Anyway, after quite a bit of work trying to highlight this, the BBC TV's "Rip Off Britain"programme is going to give it some exposure.  I recorded an interview with them earlier this week.  More interestingly however they did some vox pop interviews in Anfield and not only discovered a real lack of machines there, but also were told that some charging machines change what they charge according to what day it is.  The programme makers were told that on match days the fee rises!  I hadn't heard of this before so will be doing some research on it.

Meanwhile the City Council did say it would consider putting some fee free machines in its buildings.  Since this was agreed I have heard nothing so the task for this week is to chase this up.

Cenotaph Community Clean up

The community clean up in the Cenotaph area of Garston is this Sunday (23rd) at 3pm.  We are meeting at Long Lane Church (unless you spot us already out there litter picking).  Our aim is to tidy up the area a bit.

This is part of a general project to improve this spot.  Watch out for the arrival of soil and plants for the planters and painting of the railings and benches to smarten things up a bit.

Community Clean up

I'm helping organise a community clean up of the Garston Cenotaph area (the bit around the cenotaph near the shops and row of houses and just around the corner).

This is building on some work I did earlier, getting some reps together to see what could be done to help brighten up and tidy up.  The planters on Long Lane are part of this work.

Anyway, I'm working my way round with flyers to let shops and residents know more about how to join in.  I'll post details shortly but if you want to get more involved, do please drop me an e mail at paula.keaveney@liverpool.gov.uk

New project for Garston Park

The Friends of Garston Park are looking for budding artists to help with a project to make part of the park look better.

The idea is to improve the wall round the sports pitch so that it doesnt' look quite so "prison like".

As well as some planting nearby, the Friends are looking for people to help paint some of the panels.

They now need to hear from anyone wanting to get involved.  I've posted the details below.  If you are interested, the person to get in touch with is Gwen (details towards the end)

The Great Art Project

FOGP is working on a project to camouflage the screens around the outdoor pitches at the Leisure Centre. Some sides of the pitches will have shrubs planted around them, but the sides facing the car park will be painted.


The idea has 2 parts: (1) to paint a Garston skyline on boards along the top of the screens and (2) below and around it will be boards representing how people express health and well-being in Garston. School children and other young people will do (2).

The skyline

This work will be done by community groups in the area. Small groups will work with community artists, starting with taking digital photos and working up to designing the final skyline. You don’t have to have a digital camera to take part.

You do have to commit to a number of sessions for the work. There will be a preliminary meeting in November and work will start in January 2012, for completion in May.


If you are interested and have ideas about what should be included in the skyline, please contact Gwen White, gwen.white@wmail.freeserve.co.uk . If you give your email or telephone details, you will be sent the date of the preliminary meeting.

See this film

As a huge fan of the Smiley novels of John Le Carre, and the original Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy TV adaptation, I was worried I would be disappointed by the new film.  Not a bit of it.  It is absolutely brilliant and the flashbacks give more character to some of the figures involved.  If you haven't seen it yet make sure you do.  It must surely win every award goind.

Dovedale Children's Centre Campaign

This weekend's been marked by several messages from people at the Church and Mossley Hill Children's Centre (I call it Dovedale!)

The Council is consulting on whether or not to close this centre (and others)

Some of the messages about how the centre helps parents and children are so touching and they really underline the good work done there.

The centre has set up a campaign website which I promised to tell people about.

You can find it at this link     http://www.savemossleyhillcc.org/

Garston waste plant update

I reported earlier that Jack Allen Holdings have decided not to build a waste plant on Stalbridge Dock by the Cressington Heath housing development.

However the Council is still looking to designate that piece of land as the official "sub regional" waste site for Liverpool (there are others being designated in other parts of Merseyside)

There was a consultation on this earlier this year in which I took part as did others from the Garston area, but the final report has to go through each relevant Council.

The bad news is that Stalbridge remains the identified site in a report going to the City Council's Cabinet this coming Friday.

I'll be speaking to residents about what we need to do next.

Door knocking in South Liverpool

This weather is great for some Lib Dem doorknocking.  This is part of the team out yesterday (rubbish photo which manages to cut people out of the shot entirely) is by me!

Cenotaph area - can we improve this?

I got a small group together recently to see what we could all jointly do to improve the small area by the Cenotaph in Garston.  We've got a row of shops and some houses as well as a bench and some bus stops. It's by a busy road and very visible.  But it's one of those places that seems to suffer from more litter and mess than most and this picture shows a typical morning site outside the shops.

So we've got together some people from the Council, Enterprise Liverpool, the Long Lane Church and others to see if there is something we can do to make some changes.  We're talking to shop keepers and residents.

The empty planters on the central reservation on Long Lane are the first visible sign of progress (plants to come!!)

I'm also working on funding applications for other things and we have a commitment to get the bench and barriers repainted to look brighter.

Thanks to the residents from that immediate area who've already been in touch.  Do e mail me if you want to know about meetings or have any ideas. paula.keaveney@liverpool.gov.uk is my e mail.