Jim Nagel
Members of the public can submit questions for the Regional Development Agency to answer at a special meeting of the town council on Wednesday January 21, at 7pm.
Questions must be in writing, sent to the town clerk by Monday 19. Councillors, but not the public, will be able to put supplementary questions at the meeting, in order to prevent the session becoming a slanging match.
Carl Budden, the RDA’s head of regeneration, made a presentation to the council’s regular meeting on January 13, defending its controversial decision to demolish the Morlands redbrick buildings.
One councillor said after the meeting, “He took rather a long time to tell us not very much.”
The protesters had ended their occupation of the 107-year-old buildings earlier the same day, on the RDA’s promise of public discussion.
• At the opposite corner of the Morlands site, Mendip Housing recently took over the terrace of boarded-up redbrick cottages. Action on refurbishing them should start soon.
• Avalon Plastics is advancing its plans to build a new factory. The Glastonbury company would be the first new building on the Morlands Enterprise Park.
• Strode College intends to move some of its hands-on activities to the site, but its plans are yet to be shown.
• Some of the people who actually worked in the Morlands factories in their heyday were not so enthusiastic about preserving the buildings, we hear. “They were difficult spaces to work in even back then, and very difficult to heat.”