Welwyn Garden City Society

Welcome to the Welwyn Garden City Society website.

Welwyn Garden City, founded almost 90 years ago by Ebenezer Howard, is a thriving town around 20 miles north of London.  Designed around ground breaking town planning concepts by Ebenezer Howard, Welwyn Garden City  became “A town designed for heathy living” as was the remit. The diagram shown below, now  famous amongst town planners across the world, shows the thinking behind the design of the Garden City:  the marriage of town and country as expressed by Ebenezer Howard himself.

Howard's Three Magnets concept

Please have a look around the site and discover more about the town, and contemporary issues.

Administrator | Uncategorized | 12 11th, 2009 | No Comments »

The Welwyn and Hatfield Times of 27 January carries a PR response from the Borough Council that seeks to explain why things went wrong when the snow arrived just before Christmas.  The response is in part due to the story we cover below on “Gritting of Pavements” and from widespread criticism from residents across the Borough.   The response follows our letter of 4 January that can also be found below.

We think that the Borough’s response is quite misplaced.  Residents who pay substantial taxes want solutions for the future and not explanations why things went wrong.  What it conceals is a lack of real communication between the Borough and those who live in the town.  This is what needs to be addressed instead of seeking to rectify things by PR action.  Most people across the country are simply fed up with this approach.  It is a shame that the local councils seem to have to follow national leadership this way.

Society letter to Welwyn Times of 10 February: click here

The response from the Council came in the form of three  letters that can be found below:

Letter from Councillor Colin Couch to Welwyn Times: click here

Letter from Councillors Colin Couch & Stuart Pile: click here

Letter from George Saba Senior Supervisor Serco: click here

Secretary | Uncategorized | 02 13th, 2010 | No Comments »

A group of local Quakers has organised a talk and discussion called “Transition Town Welwyn Garden City?” on 16th February at the Free Church, WGC. Refreshments are at 7 pm, the talk begins at 7.30 pm. 

For more info on transition towns, please see http://www.transitiontowns.org/

Secretary | Uncategorized | 02 1st, 2010 | No Comments »

Residents must be exasperated about the fact that, once again, the pavements in town centres and outlying shopping centres are not gritted before the snow arrives and then, if they are gritted, then they are not all done.  Some pavements  are whilst others  are not.

A example of an ungritted road in Welwyn Garden City

We have been trying to get to the bottom of this for some while and it transpires that, quite apart from the logistics of just getting the work done, there appears to be an ongoing dispute between the County authorities and our local Borough.  This is clear from an email we have received from County Councillor Stuart Pile who is responsible for County highways. The email thread also sets out our position clearly, that can be downloaded and read by clicking HERE.

We have now written to the Welwyn Hatfield Times and our letter can be read HERE.

Residents should not have to put up with these problems while politicians argue over who does what or who pays for the work to be done.  These are matters that should have been settled a long time ago.  We have asked Grant Shapps to intervene since it it is his constituents who are running the additional risks of walking on ice rinks when this can be avoided.

Secretary | Uncategorized | 01 8th, 2010 | Comments Off

The Audit Commision released its organisational assessment of Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council in early December. Overall the Borough got an ‘adequate’ rating, with some areas being noted as working well and others not so well. Every local authority will have been through this scrutiny so it is a meaningful gauge and comparative view of how WHBC performs. Clearly there is much  room for improvement though in some areas. Below is a paragraph from the summary which gives a flavour of the report:

“Performance overall is variable. There are services which compare with the best performing councils, such as dealing with housing benefits applications and planning applications. There are also service areas which compare badly to others, such as recycling. There are low levels of satisfaction amongst residents, especially around the Council doing a good job, local people feeling they belong to their immediate neighbourhood, and people not treating each other with respect and consideration. Residents also feel they cannot influence council decisions.” (Audit Commission, 2009, p.2).

The Society thinks that the performance level  of the Council continues to be unimpressive.  Effectively, it continues to provide a minimum level – which is what “adequate” means.  It helps to explain the difficulties many residents have with the Council at many levels and frustration in dealing with it.

It is particularly unfortunate that the Council has failed to publish this report on its web site so far as we can tell (but then again we may simply have failed to be able to  find it) as it is important for residents to be given what is an unbiased and non political opinion of a service that the Council generally reports as good.  Residents will no doubt form their own views on this report,  it can be downloaded from the Audit Commission web site and below:

1) Click Here for full report.

2) Click Here for report summary.

Administrator | Uncategorized | 12 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »