On your bike! - Redditch Borough Council - Worcestershire Hub

Contents
4 Redditch Round-up.
New awards recognise
greater access for
people with disabilities,
Garden Waste pilot takes
root
5 Council news. Meet the
new Management Team
for Redditch and
Bromsgrove
Councils, It’s
thank you and
goodbye to
Neighbourhood
Groups,
Communicating
with you
6 More Council
news. New future
for the
Countryside Centre. Developing our
Community Centres. Next stop the
Country Park!
7 Partners in Action.
Redditch Partnership
responds to
Redditch’s red flag
8 Use your vote in May
11 Town Centre goes
‘centre
stage’.
How a new
Town Centre
Partnership is
putting the
town centre
`centre stage`
with exciting
development
plans
20
7
12 News from Housing. Tenants get
involved and give the Council their
views
16 Focus on Winyates. £850,000 bid to
help the district being planned, and
About Redditch Matters
19
remembering Albert
18 Spring into sport. Teens
get active and new Abbey
Stadium work gets underway
19 Landscape Matters
20 On your bike. Redditch
can be wheely good for
cycling – new BMX track to
open, and local cycling
contacts
22 Community Safety
news. Busy with more bus
shelters, and how to protect
your home
24 Ralph on Bordesley’s
monks. Our regular historian
Ralph Richardson describes
how Bordesley Abbey was
the fifth wealthiest of its day
25 Fish and fishing `working` efficiently
here
26 Award for sporting stars. Win a
month’s free gym and swimming
27 Friends across the miles. Twinning
links across the world
28 Boosting business. From Business
Booster Grants to a Business Expo in
May
29 Foxlydiate Woods walk
30 What’s On this April, May
and June. Let us know your view
in our readers survey
32 Contacting the Council.
Including how to contact
your councillor and
details for sports
and leisure
venues
29
This magazine is produced by the Communications Team at Redditch Borough Council.
It is printed on paper from sustainable forests and costs 7.5p per copy. To the best of our
knowledge, all information was correct at the time of going to print.
Our thanks to everyone who has advertised in this edition. However, the inclusion of
advertisements or information from any third party should not be taken to imply the
endorsement by the publisher of any product or service advertised in Redditch
Matters.
Summer edition out 30th June 2010
Cover photograph: Redditch gets a new BMX track this spring.
Foreword
SPRING
TIME in
Redditch
has taken
on a slightly
different
meaning for me
this year as I recently
heard - and you may have read - that as
well as producing springs at Millsborough
House in the town, manufacturing
company Herbert Terry and Sons was also
responsible for introducing the Anglepoise
lamp to our lives.
It’s amazing to think that these lamps;
found on offices desks, in homes and
medical surgeries the world over, were
invented here. Thanks to local author
Anne Bradford for reminding us of this
interesting fact recently.
Spring is, of course, about celebrating
new life and after the past year we have
all had, we certainly welcome that.
It is actually a year since we reintroduced
Redditch Matters and we
hope you will enjoy this latest edition.
Informal feedback received has been
positive, so much so that we have
decided to produce the magazine every
quarter, along with the seasons, instead of
three times a year. This means that we will
have separate autumn and winter
editions from this year, all supported by
advertising to help keep the costs down.
We have much to be proud about as
your local Council, delivering vital and
varied services day in day out, and it is
important you are aware of just what is
provided for your Council Tax (Borough
Council services cost just 56p per day for
a Band D bill payer which amounts to
only 14 per cent of the annual Council
Tax bill charge).
In our spring edition we celebrate cycling
with the launch of a new BMX track at
Arrow Valley Country Park where Redditch
Borough Council has been working
closely with Redditch Premiers BMX Club
and British Cycling.
Finally our Focus for this edition is the
district of Winyates where I heard first
hand about issues affecting local people
during one of the Council’s Consultation
Roadshows, and where there are plans to
secure major funding to improve life for
everyone living there.
Happy reading! Yours
Cllr Carole Gandy, Leader of Redditch
Borough Council
Redditch Borough Council Redditch matters 3