Letter to residents, 4th November 2014:

Dear all, Thanks for contacting me and informing me over the years about issues and your concerns about the old Showfield. Since 2011 I have raised these issues, including a lack of management, security against travellers, flooding, dogs in the playground and the need for a fence, and the need for major improvements to be made, at Mendip District Council. In autumn 2012 you were consulted by Frome Town Council and Vision for Frome about how best to spend the £40,000 earmarked by the Frome Health Centre development for an improvements scheme. A report of what you all wanted was written up, and the works were costed and agreed by Frome Town Council. (The plan included a dog fence around the playground, areas of shorter grass for picnics and kickabouts, new and improved footpaths, more seating, trees and bins, an outdoor fitness trail, and possibly a new mini-pitch). After protracted discussions with Mendip about who would implement the plan, it was agreed that Frome Town Council would apply to take over the leases. Mendip was not willing or able to do any more than minimal maintenance or to involve local residents. I then helped get Mendip to eventually agree, twice formally, in principle, to transfer the site to FTC. When a legal problem arose last year that prevented this, I met with FROGS, FTC officers and the Agricultural Society to try and resolve it. I then wrote a report for Frome Town Council in May this year to raise all these issues. As a result Frome’s Town Clerk has been discussing the possibility of the Town Council buying the land in order to overcome all the problems. The good news is that Frome Town Council now proposes to buy the old Showfield from the Agricultural Society.

At the next Frome Town Council meeting (on Weds 5th November at Frome Health Centre, 7pm, item 7) the Town Council proposes to buy the main part of the old Showfield (including the main open area, Collegians pitch and children’s playground) for a price agreed with the Agricultural Society and to take on a 99 year lease for the ‘back fields’.If the purchase goes ahead, the old Showfield will be safe from development, the legal wrangles which prevented the playground fence and other improvements being made will all go away, and it will enable you and other local residents to be involved in working out the improvements that should be made and how to manage the site better, through an updated management plan prepared by FTC working with residents.

So I am supporting the recommendation that Frome Town Council buys the old Showfield, as I think this will improve the area for and with the whole community that uses the area. I hope you can also support the purchase, but please let me know what you think or if you have any concerns or questions before the meeting. Please do come along to the meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) 7pm at Frome Medical Practice, on the old Showfield itself, to have your say.

A ‘Friends of the old Showfield’ group, or Community Association, or some other sort of voluntary group, could form as a result of this, to work with the Town Council on improvements and management, so please let me know if you would be interested in that.

Please see here for all my previous scribblings about the old Showfield.

And here and below for FTC’s report to the meeting – http://www.frometowncouncil.gov.uk/meeting/full-council-2/

All the best,
Adam Boyden

Frome Town & Mendip District Councillor, Frome College ward (Lib Dem)

 

Frome Town Council report, 5 November 2014 meeting,

Agenda item 7. For decision: Freehold purchase of the Old Showfield
Author: Town Clerk

Summary
This report informs Cllrs of discussions that I have been having with Frome Selwood Agricultural Society over the sale of the Old Showfield. It confirms that negotiations have now ended and proposes to purchase the freehold for £125,000.

Background
At the Council meeting in 21 May 2014, I had an action to “explore freehold acquisition with the Agricultural Society and if it is possible, in principle, explore how much this might cost and where funding could be sourced.”
I have been in informal discussions with the Agricultural Society over the summer following their confirmation that they would be prepared to consider a sale. I commissioned an independent valuation which revealed a value of the site as £125,000. This price was acceptable to the Agricultural Society.

The site that is proposed to buy is the red area on the map at the end of this report. The blue land is on a 99 year lease with a six month notice period. The Agricultural Society has confirmed that they have no intention of selling the leased land but want to protect its potential value, hence the leasing arrangement.

Currently, the Old Showfield (both the red and blue parts) is owned by the Agricultural Society and leased to Mendip on a long lease with a pepper corn rent. The red area includes the Collegians football pitch and excludes the Cricket Field, pavilion and car park area.  The Old Showfield is a popular area for young people, dog walkers, cricketers and footballers and provides an important green lung on the north side of town. This is especially important now that Rodden Lake Stream Meadows has been closed to the public.

The local community has been concerned that Mendip’s management (as leaseholder) of the Old Showfield has been poor in recent years. The grass is left long for much of the year, litter and dog poo are a problem, seating is scarce and the play area unfenced. In addition, the hedges are overgrown and drainage ditches neglected, causing minor flooding in wet weather. Mendip has allocated a limited budget to grounds maintenance and The Landscape Group – Mendip’s ground care contractor – struggle to do anything other than the absolute minimum. As far as I can tell, there is no capital budget for hedging, ditching, new benches, bins, play equipment or fencing. We also remain concerned that a S106 budget for improvements to the Old Showfield linked to the development of the Medical Practice is in danger of being returned to the developer as Mendip had not yet spent it on improvements to the site.

FTC has an open spaces strategy which identifies the Old Showfield as a priority area for improved protection and management. Knowing there was a S106 budget held by Mendip and an indication from them that they would transfer the lease, we carried out a public consultation two years ago asking the local community what was its priority for the area and what capital items were top of that list. A map was produced identifying the type and location of investment wanted. Items included, fencing the play park, keeping a much larger area of grass mown short, more bins, seating and tree planting. In addition, a mini football pitch was very popular. Simon Woollen got quotes for all the works and FTC allocated an additional sum of £20,000 in this year’s budget to complement the S106 to cover the cost of the works. This was all on the understanding that the leases would be transferred.

For various reasons related to a Village Green Application, the Agricultural Society and Mendip felt they could not agree to transferring the lease and Mendip also decided it was inappropriate to spend the S106 budget on many of the capital items. By FTC offering to acquire the freehold of the site and protect it for the community, this stalemate has been removed.

Advantages of owning the Old Showfield
1. It will be as safe as possible from future development.
Following legal advice from our solicitor on how best to protect the site for as long into the future as possible and if Cllrs agree to acquire the site, I propose to transfer it as soon as possible to the Theodora Ann Le Gross Trust for Open Spaces. This trust can then ask the Government’s Official Custodian for Charities hold the title on its behalf. I understand that this means that if a future Town Council wanted to sell the site it would need to persuade the Charity Commission that the charitable objectives of the trust need to be suspended. This is evidently extremely difficult.

2. It will enable the community to be engaged with the management of the site.
One of the problems with Mendip’s approach to the management of open spaces is that it does engage or consult local people over how it is done. This is also true of Weylands and Welshmill Park in the past and of the Dippy and the old Showfield now. If the Town Council managed the Showfield it would work with local people to create a place that people wanted and were engaged in. Creating a sense of community ownership.

3. It will be managed to a higher standard.
If the Town Council was responsible for the old Showfield it would allocate sufficient resources and work with local people to raise external funding for extra investment, as we have done for Welshmill. These resources would mean that the site would be managed to high a standard.

4. It is a crucial open space in the Frome urban area that needs linking with other sites.
The Showfield is the most important open space on the north side of Frome. Coupled with the Dippy and Victoria Park these three sites provide the backbone for open spaces in the town. In the near future, we should explore managing these sites and the smaller sites and corridors linking them as one; creating an exciting interlinked network of open spaces rich in biodiversity and of high public amenity value. I hope that the newly advertised Environment Manager post will take this initiative forward.

What would happen if we did not acquire the Showfield for the community?

In short, the management of the site would remain as it is at moment and the impasse between the Agricultural Society and Mendip would continue. The community would lose out and the risk of losing the £39,000 S106 budget would increase. The sense of ownership the community would establish under Town Council management would remain low and the complaints about poor management would continue.
Sources of funding.

If Cllrs agree to the proposal to acquire the freehold, we have three ways of purchasing it.
1. We could take out a public works loan board loan over 25 years for £125k with repayments of approximately £7.6k per annum.
2. We could buy the site from our current reserves and budgets (see the table below for the detail)
3. We could take out a public works loan board loan for, say, half the amount – £62.5k – over the same 25 year period with repayments of £3.8k per annum and use reserves for the remainder.

It is possible to take out other amounts over different periods and if anyone would like to know any of the calculations please contact Jackie Wheeler (RFO).

Recommendations
1. Acquire the land shaded in red on the map from the Frome Selwood Agricultural Society for a price of £125,000. Both parties to pay their own legal fees.
2. Choose one of the three funding options listed below:
i. Take out a public works loan board loan over 25 years for £125k with repayments of approximately £7.6k per annum
ii. Utilise current reserves and budgets
iii. Take out a public works loan board loan over 25 years for £62.5k with repayments of £3.8k per annum and use reserves for the remainder.
3. Transfer the ownership of this land to the Theodora Ann Le Gross Trust for Open Spaces as soon as possible and for the trust to ask the Official Custodian for Charities to hold the title on its behalf.
4. To take on the existing lease (approx. 85 years remaining) of the land, shaded in blue on the map, from the Frome Selwood Agricultural Society on a pepper corn rent. Note that this lease is on a six month notice period.
5. Review the current unimplemented management plan for the site (following public consultation two years ago) to confirm community views remain unchanged.
6. Implement the plan with community with the help of the £39,000 S106 budget currently held by Mendip.

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