Bedford Borough Council has been asked to prove that Queens Park gets its fair share of funding, with the area being described as a “bomb zone”.
During last night’s Full Council (Wednesday, 9 October) Tracy Wagner, a Queens Park resident, said the community is “constantly being told” that there is no funding available.
“Yet other areas around Bedford do not seem to be neglected,” she said.
“So dirty streets – no funding, community bulky waste collections – no funding, overgrown hedges – no funding, designated parking areas – no funding.
“Queens Park has never got any funding. I would like to see all ward funds that go to every area in Bedford and compare them with Queens Park.”
“Bomb zone”
Me Wagner went on to compare Queens Park with neighbouring Great Denham.
“Streets [in Great Denham] were spotless, there was no rubbish, no cigarette butts,” she said. “There was nothing on any of the streets.
“The minute you come through that bus barrier when you come from Great Denham into Queens Park I thought I was in a bomb zone – it’s absolutely disgusting.
“The drugs that are going on there, the anti-social behaviour that is happening in Queens Park is beyond a joke. A lot of people in Queens Park at this moment in time do not feel safe in that area at all.
“There are a lot of people running riot. God forbid, if somebody gets killed it’s a very hard thing to wipe the blood off your hands.”
Councillor Graeme Coombes (Conservative, Wixams and Wilstead), the portfolio holder for finance and corporate services, replied: “We don’t actually look at the spending across the council on a ward-by-ward basis.
“That really wouldn’t be very practical and you probably might not learn much from it because a ward with a school is going to have more spending than a ward without a school on education matters.
“A ward with a higher demographic of older people will have more adult social care spent on it. So, in terms of money spent per ward, it’s probably not something that is very indicative or very helpful.
“The council targets the money at groups for specific needs under specific criteria, and that goes across all the 27 wards of Bedford borough.”
Another resident, Anita Powell, said: “I think you’ve got the gist of [how] we feel [there’s] under-investment in the area which has a high level of deprivation.
“[And] it has high levels of unemployment. So many calculations are done by the borough. The last time I looked in the borough there was a colour chart showing deprivation by ward.
“I can look up statistics in regards to unemployment. I can find that you allocate a certain amount of money to councillors to spend within their areas.
“You can’t tell me how much money is being spent in [Queens Park] compared to the Embankment? I can’t believe that’s acceptable.”
Councillor Coombes replied, “We just do not store information on how much we spend on each item per ward, it would be impractical to do.
“You are absolutely correct there are statistics that are put together by ward that give deprivation factors.
“If we spend money on education of children that live in Queens Park Ward but they go to a school that’s outside Queens Park Ward, then where are we spending the money?
“Are we spending it in Queens Park or are we spending it in the ward next door where the school is located? In terms of just saying specifically on individual council budgets as to how much is spent in each ward we just don’t do it.
“We’d have to employ tons of people to just go through data and statistics. We’d rather spend the money on the services than people just compiling. those stats.”
Public meeting
Bedford mayor, Tom Wootton, said: “You have our commitment that Queen’s Park’s problems will be looked at.
“We [are] having a public meeting on 14 November with our MP Mr Yasin and with local councillors as well.”
The deputy mayor, councillor Jim Weir (Conservative, Great Denham) said: “We’ve got to come to that meeting with some ideas about some improvements and how we can fund them, so that we can have a proper discussion about it.
“Great Denham is a new location so it does look pretty, but there are some areas that have got the same problems with anti-social behaviour.
“If you look at the crime stats for Bedford overall, we’ve all got the same problems.”
By John Guinn
Local Democracy Reporter
