Mayor’s Blog 127 – Local Housing, Dementia and more

Mayor’s Blog 127

Local Housing, The Eve Appleton Band, Dementia.

New houses at the Old Coal Yard Bridport

A much needed development was officially opened this week after the partnership between Dorset Council, C G Fry & Son Ltd and Hastoe produced an eight house development on the site of the Old Coal Yard in Bridport. All eight homes have been prioritised for people with a local connection to Bridport and are highly energy efficient and exceptionally well insulated which should help to reduce fuel bills for residents. The development consists of three 2 bed and two 3 bed houses for rent and two 2 bed and one 3 bed house for shared ownership.

Special thanks go to Martin and the rest of the Cox family for providing the land for the development.

As Mayor, and on behalf of the people of Bridport, I thanked all of those involved and, although it was a drop in the ocean when compared to our local needs, it is a step in the right direction and shows what can be achieved when a partnership works together to deliver much needed housing on a Brownfield site.

We were invited by a resident to visit her house and I was pleasantly surprised to see the properties also had a nice sized garden as well as good sized rooms. The outside of the properties were influenced by being built on the site of the Coal Yard and this influenced the final design which is a traditional style of architecture found locally, relying on correct scale, proportioning with appropriate detailing.

A really nice looking and badly needed development in our town centre, fingers crossed for more suitable Brownfield opportunities in the future!

For information: Hastoe invested £1,444,000 into the development with an additional £40,000 from a Recycled Capital Grant Fund. £414,000 from homes England and a Local Authority grant of £120,000 all combining together to fund the project.

This just goes to show why it is not easy to fund and provide the kind of housing we all know we badly need in Bridport and why we usually have to rely on “affordable housing” being an offshoot of bigger developments of open market priced housing.

Photograph courtesy of Hastoe/Neil Barnes’ Photography

Success for the Eve Appleton Band

I was interested to hear today from our Bridport Town and Dorset Councillor Kelvin Clayton of the recent success of the Eve Appleton Band in the “Green Man Rising” competition held in Wales. The five finalists from over 3,000 entrants will play at this year’s festival, the winner (which was the Eve Appleton Band) will open the festival on the main stage. Eve is Kelvin’s wife’s youngest daughter and she was born in Bridport, and went to Bridport Primary and Colfox School before going on to graduate from BIIMM (British & Irish Institute of Modern Music) in Bristol. The band play 3 songs right at the start of the clip and well worth a listen. I am sure we will be hearing more from the Eve Appleton Band, especially since Bridport seems to produce and foster such talent as well as attract it from far and wide. Well done Eve and her band!

Report from the Mayoress

Dementia and Carers

It was sad to read in the newspaper this week about the TV presenter Fiona Phillips after she announced last week that she’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at only 62.

The impact for her and her family will be great, she already has a painful insight into what the future holds as she cared for both her mother and father over time both of whom had the same diagnosis.

People are often confused by the use of the 2 terms, “Dementia” and “Alzheimer’s” Dementia is the umbrella term for the impaired ability to remember, think or make decisions that interferes with doing everyday activities. Alzheimer’s is the most common type of dementia. Others include Vascular, Lewy body and Huntington’s and Frontotemporal dementia.

Alzheimers.org.uk and Dementiauk.org are there for support and I have mentioned their local services in previous blogs.

These agencies help relatives or friends to understand how best to support the diagnosed person and can be informed about the condition.

On Thursday this week I met with Rachel Weiss, the Community Engagement Manager for Age UK.

She told me about the NHS Pathway for dementia. This describes the care a person receives from the moment they consult their GP about short term memory loss and then receive a dementia diagnosis, right up until the very end of life. Everyone should be assigned a key person or coordinator so I would be interested to hear from anyone who has a named key person.

We discussed the mental health and well being of carers, respite and ways in which Age UK could support Bridport carers of people with dementia and potentially linking with other agencies in the town.

Rachel commented how her raison d’etre is to “create a better understanding community” and a focus on supporting demand where it exists.