“Firstly, QUVL have no obligation to provide this facility although we have considered this request.

Both Jackie Hall, Glos Com’ Police and I have looked at various site for the Youth Pod here at Kingsway. The most appropriate site appears to be next to the primary school. We looked at the area alongside the school (vacant land at present, but unfortunately due to be developed, as you know under the local centre plans).

QUVL have suggested that the Youth Pod (owned by Glos County Council/Police) is located perhaps in the car park of the School (owned by Glos County Council), this avoids any leasehold agreements and planning permission, since planning has previously been granted. It also negates the need to meter services as the pod can be connected directly into the school facilities… Perfect!

QUVL do not see any problem with this and refuse to accept any backlash for not providing a site. I would say “come on Glos County Council, get on with it.”

So, it seems its a Gloucester County Council issue – so come on please GCC!!

I hope The Citizen do a decent spread to highlight the issue and it doesn’t just end up embroiled in local Politics who in the main don’t give a rats ass about us most of the time. Thankfully there are a few exceptions who do try to make a positive effect.

With regard to the Pod, I spoke to Jackie and Shiela and – on returning home – also received an email from Andrew Hunter (QUVL) with an invitation to call him about it (so I did)!

Jackie and Shiela said that that they asked the QUVL to site the Pod on the land immediately adjacent to the School entrance (in front of the planned Community Centre and Pub’) and everything was set to go ahead until last week, when the QUVL met and rejected the proposal (as you say: “pulled the plug”).

According to Andrew Hunter, previous plans were to site the Pod on the School land, (which has already been passed over to the County Council and so is their property).
Andrew said that planning permission to site the Pod on the School land was approved “a long time ago” and that they only recently asked to have it sited adjacent to the School, on land owned by the QUVL.
He said that he had thought that it might be possible (although he expected that the QUVL might want to negotiate a lease for the land itself and added that planning approval – which would take 13 weeks – would be required). He took this (new) proposal to a recent board meeting and it was rejected by the QUVL.

Shiela said that the original plans to site the Pod on the School land had to be changed when the plans were drawn up and one of the fences was sited in the spot intended for the Pod. She said that she and Mark Peer (mentioned in my previous Pod Article) visited Andrew Hunter in November last year and pointed out the spot on the map in his office.

Shiela added that siting the Pod on School land was not ideal because of security issues and because young people are often not keen on going onto School property outside of school hours (I can relate to that – lol) and she also said that planning permission would not be essential prior to siting the pod unless complaints were received from local residents.

Throughout all of this, there has been some speculation (and there’s little doubt in my mind) that the rejection was partly a political decision (bearing in mind that local elections are due very shortly), and that the refusal is in some way associated with the fact that many recent developer planning applications have been rejected by the Council.

Firstly thanks for your support.
I have an update for you all; I’ve been told that The Citizen will be next to Kingsway School tomorrow (Thursday 9th) at 1.30pm to get our input on why we need a POD.

If you can come along PLEASE… We need your support.

Hope to see you there!

I think this is very important as the vast majority of the “youth” on this estate are getting labelled with a bad name for no just reason and this POD, i hoped, was to be a catalyst for new things specifically aimed at the age group with nothing to do.

Here is to hoping this can be resolved.