Druitts Gardens and the Creedy path

At the Community Service committee meeting on Wednesday a more realistic plan for this area was debated and finally passed for action. Included as a separate item was the 'safe route to school' issue which relegates an old bye-law preventing cycling on the Creedy path. This community driven item was passed not without some serious misgivings related to the Borough wide problem of cycling on footpaths and pavements. Essential in my opinion, is the understanding that pedestrians have priority and that those persons children or others who choose to cycle on this or indeed any other path have to get this into their cycle helmets. Further that this change sensible though it is, does not send a message out to all and sundry cyclists that it initiates a relaxing of statutory law which will allow any footpath to be taken over as cycle routes. The program to create Druitt Gardens as a place for relaxation and recreation with grassed areas for picnics and the like is really welcome considering we have been tinkering with it for years. We now have the horny subject of the Druitts Hall about which I have been known to be critical. Not only is the current facility not fit for purpose in my opinion but the grandiose plans for the new hall highly contentious considering the current economic climate and the potential demand for a facility of such magnitude. I am also on record at the original planning meeting some three years ago that this site and design of the new hall was a missed opportunity both in terms of the potential use vision but also in architectural opportunity. If we are going to put anything in place of the existing hall why should it not reflect the modesty required as a result of the lack of finance, fit comfotably into the new gardens and being a gateway to the area, but more so the celebration of modern design and materials akin to the 21st century not a reflection of arts and crafts of long ago.