OLD COLWYN EAST RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION
Resume of Probation and Shore FM meeting
12th November 2003
12th November 2003
Minute Record of Meeting on 12 th November 2003between 85 members of the Association and Mr S. G Ray Assistant Chief Probation Officer, Mr Graham Thomas Community Service Unit Manager and Mr Harold Martin, Head of Shore FM, the voluntary sector body who had begun to use the Church House, Cliff Road,
The historical connection with the building through Zam Mead to the Probation Service and the Youth Offending Team was laid out the start of the meeting. It had been intended to that the building would become a young offenders’ institute but this was not taken forward because of public feeling at having offenders from all over Conwy and Denbighshire bussed into Old Colwyn every day for training.
Mr Martin said that he had no knowledge of Mr Mead.
Mr Martin was questioned about what his target group.
He said anybody, there are no barriers, no ages, no discrimination of any sort, it doesn’t matter what age you are The concept about discriminating against anybody because of their background doesn’t enter into anything that we do. If people want to learn, we’ll teach them and frankly we want to involve and allow people access to the airwaves.
It was put to Mr Martin that Previous Plan by the Community to develop the building was prevented by Mr Mead ,because the group that were trying to organise it had not got the immediate money to pay him £5000. The theme was developed that Mr Mead was of course actively either working for the Probation Service or actively courting them to take up the premises. It was further pointed out and agreed that the Probation Service paid him an amount of taxpayers’ money (in the tens of thousands of pounds) to retain an interest in the property.
Mr Martin was then asked with reference to the previously reported cost of refurbishment (£150,000 to make safe and £350,000 to make it suitable for use) if Shore FM could afford that the premises would be safe or whether it would be underwritten by Probation.
Reply - a third of a million pounds, that’s a heck of a lot of cash, the sort of thing...the sort of scheme…the sort of project that would require an awful lot of input from some big outside organisation… like the National Lotteries Commission, or as its now known the New Opportunities fund.
We need to be sure that the building isn’t going to collapse, fall down about us, or that people who are going to walk into it aren’t going to go through the floorboards, before we could start making some fairly strong decisions that anything was going on...about how much we could get involved dealing with it.
He was asked if it was intended or a (strong) possibility that Shore FM will be an agent of NACRO and / or the Youth Offending Team or another partner of the National Probation Service or, is it otherwise intended to provide Shore FM services to such Organisations to deliver training on their behalf, to offenders or persons likely to offend?
Martin Right, I’ve never met anyone from NACRO yet, OK that’s point number one, I’ve obviously met people from the Probation Service and Youth Offending Teams and I again would provide assistance ,help, support, advice, training to anyone if we were asked…. y’ know we don’t discriminate.
He said that Shore FM would not act as agents of an org. purely to deliver training on their behalf to their agenda but said he could not discriminate against anyone who wants to enrol on the course that we might be offering
He was asked to clarify whether the Probation would want services for the input that they had supplied previously. He denied any knowledge of any previous business about the premises.
Mr Ray came in to outline that he had at the start become very excited about the premises from the point of view of training offenders from Conwy and Denbighshire and tried to secure the premises by paying the owner a large sum of money which had not been spent on another Voluntary service partnership
The panel were told that there had been misbehaviour by some of the persons working there on Community Service including swearing and smoking pot and told that if they were going to bring offenders or persons likely to offend in to the very centre of our small village it directly affects the persons who live here.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Questions about works done on a listed building, whether it was supervised by architects. Whether any material change had been made which would require permission
Mr Martin was very evasive about what he was doing. Made statements about being happy to work with the local authority, his having a great empathy with preserving the built heritage and his having a lot of knowledge and experience about ways and means in which things like this need to be done and developed .
He was asked who he had entered into a lease with. Again he was evasive but was pressed by Councillor Jones also about horrendous asbestos problem identified within that building and his concern that young persons were being put in to do to do repairs without a Health and Safety Audit and his third point was if the scheme did go ahead with and we all take part and learned all about radio or whatever …Who Pays…?
Mr martin agreed that there was asbestos tiles in the roof but then went on to say that he understood that all asbestos had been taken out by the church.
When pressed again, he stated that he had corresponded with Mr Ichball from Birmingham . Not necessarily the same thing as the owner a correspondent.
The chair questioned about liability within the building and it was apparent from the evasive answers that there was none a grey area
CllrCowans My question’s more directed at the probation side of things…I’m a County Councillor and as a result of that I worry about where we spend public money y’ know and I made a couple of enquiries with the District Auditor on the procedures. Could you say to me that you are allowed to use offenders on premises where you don’t know the owners?
Ray We are doing the work as I said earlier to assist….. {Mr Cowans interrupted}
CllrCowans It’s a simple equation, public money is let on repairing this building and then Mr Ichball throws this guy out and uses it for some other purpose, nothing to do with the community, where’s your fall-safe to make sure that public money is not wasted ( Ray can I say…) Cowans That’s one question, I have another one
Ray All our work as far as we’re concerned has been focussed on assisting Harold with some development work, we actually have quite a long standing history of having done bits of decorative work around the hall associated with the Church because it used to be one of our fairly standard community service projects so our engagement around some of the basic cosmetic stuff is no different than what we’ve been doing historically………
CllrCowans My second question is have you seen a statement of accounts of the owner of the premises?
Mr Ray did not answer this question but indicated by his body language a non-committal response
CllrCowans I understand it to be a necessary prerequisite before public money is spent. I shall be speaking to the District Auditor on these matters, I’m sure he will be very interested.
CllrSquire I am not satisfied entirely with the answer from …Chris followed on with the maintenance of the building but there are obviously a number of issues which needed looking at and a number of issues that required attention but people are going in there and at the very beginning, you must have a written safety policy for the organisation with the arrangements, included in that policy must be supervisory details for everything that they do. So I’m asking for the first time, do you have a full health and safety policy
It was obvious from the reply that Mr Martin had not considered the issue but in his usual manner he tried to bluster through
CllrSquire but it sounded as though, unless I heard wrong from the back, that some asbestos has been removed and
obviously you can’t remove asbestos without sampling and assessing what action needs to be taken.
Martin said that he had been advised that all the asbestos had been removed by the Church
CllrSquire Can I just ask that you send a copy of your Health and safety policy to the Secretary, that has not been done
Mr Moss told us that in his opinion with his experience of the hall as treasurer with the Church prior to the sale, the hall had had its day, the bills for upkeep were large, it was large to heat and the requirement was down from its heyday .
Mr Martin reacted by saying that he saw things that way, it is not a cheap option, he wanted his piece of the hall and then wanted to see what could be done with the rest in conjunction with everyone else .
CllrCossey said that he was as confused as the rest of us exactly ShoreFM were , what they represent, where they come from, who else is part of the organisation, and you say you’re a community based organisation, I would have thought it would have been wise on your part to come and ask us if we wanted you to come here first, rather than do it the other way round…you just said that you don’t want to impose yourself on us …But you Have!! ( Applause)
But having said that, I mean if what you’re telling us is what you want to do there and I assume you won’t want a radio aerial, because it’s a listed building (Martin interposes We won’t get one ha ha ha )
CllrCossey continues Can I ask you that you meet the four of us …so that we can take the idea of using part of the building for community based activities further with you because figures have been bandied about but I reckon it will cost you three quarters of a million pounds, to put that building back, because it needs totally re-pointing because the sand used for the mortar is sea sand and it’s now porous, the work required is tremendous and without the support of the community and the four of us, I think you’ll be going back to Rhyl ( Applause)
BethanWynne It concerns me that landlord have certain responsibility and first of all did you say you have an option on the building
Martin We, I mean that’s the way we, we…yes.
Wynne ….and then have you paid money for this option?
Martin We’ve, ha ha, we’re negotiating the amount that we’re looking at making, we haven’t paid anything yet
Wynne have you seen… you’ve seen sight of the asbestos survey and any recommendations of the asbestos survey, before letting persons enter the building, did you double check that the work has been done satisfactory?
Martin Yeah, yeah
Wynne Obviously taking a great interest in the building you will have seen sight of the NACRO survey of the building as well?
Martin I’ve seen a copy, I’ve not got a copy, I there is…I was shown a copy that said…
Wynne If your talking about maintenance of the building it concerns me that you’re looking into maintenance of the building and there is already a substantial survey been carried out, with a definition of how safe the building can be with the minimum of work, totalling or estimated to total £150,000.00 which could run into much more in reality.
Martin No…I
Wynne It concerns me that you have actually…actually no legal option on it and really what you’re doing is… it’s our money that’s paying for it… you’re actually using Community Service money which is public funded money we’re paying for all the health and safety assessments, we’re paying for the supervisor and everything to be out actually doing …fencing and community related work and it’s not actually touching what’s been identified that actually does need doing, I’m concerned about what you’re putting public money to use on this option that you have on the building… and what tarting it up is going to do about the quality of the building that we know what’s wrong with before you’ve done anything about it.
Martin When I’ve got a full copy of the survey obviously I’ll look forward to discussing it with the County Council members….that’s the time….
Wynne You’ve seen sight of the survey but you haven’t got a copy
Martin I haven’t got a copy
Wynne ..and yet you’ve actually got an option on the building and you’re employing publicly funded Community Service people to tart up the building
Martin We’re not…. we’re not….hold on ...hold on …nobody is tarting. Our point of view is that the building needs to be safe for anybody who wanders around and there’s an awful lot of anything in there…right…I make reference to the band practice and the boys that went in with the van quite specifically to test and see…does anything work …does anything work what’s it like in there. I think they were there for an hour on two separate occasions.
The facts were, the electrics were dangerous and condemned and people were sent in to test them with live guitars.
The partnership was found wanting in all the areas examined and it is apparent that the persons on Community Service have not worked there since.
A copy of the full transcript has been supplied to Mr Martin and the Head of Probation
The Chair thanked the three guests for turning up and answering questions and this item on the agenda was closed.
