Taking the Golden out of the Hill + sign the e-petition

Taking the Golden out of the Hill

When alive Margaret Dean put her heart and soul into goldenhill, for years she ran the Goldenhill over 59 club. When the new out and about club was launched Margaret was a honoured guest and gave the new blood much needed encouragement. She was an inspiration to everyone.

Wanting better for the area of Goldenhill, the Goldenhill Out and About club members along with the council, local schools and the community worked together to make it look less decrepit and aimed put a bit of pride and colour back into Goldenhill, one of the gateways into Stoke on Trent.

The project “putting the Golden back into the Hill” started with a struggle to get seating put into the neighbourhood, which was much needed as the area has a high number (50%) of people over the age of 60. The benches were put in place to aid and encourage the elderly to get out of their homes more and enjoy their surroundings.

The next part of the project was to bring colour back into the area giving it a more positive look. This consisted of both planter boxes and planting a large number of bulbs (2000) with the help of local constabulary, Stoke on Trent City Council, local schools, PCSO’s, Staffordshire Firebrigade and out and about members.

The colour was just about to return to Goldenhill when sadly Margaret passed away on the 19th of feb 2011. On the morning of her funeral, council workers came and took the planters away from the railings throughout Goldenhill where they had been placed by the very same council some months earlier.

The Council said that a complaint had forced them to remove the boxes. Even though a original health and safety and site assessment had found no problems, following assessments were also carried out confirming that council engineers and surveyors passed the planters as safe.

It was with great disbelief that the council had an about turn and had the planters removed, stating that after more complaints they regained and stated that the planter boxes did cause some impairment of visibility and should be urgently removed.

The out and about club don’t want people harmed, that was never there intent, the assumption when the council located and put the boxes in place was that they knew what they were doing. Hundreds of these boxes have appeared in both Stoke on Trent and Newcastle Under Lyme located on railings.

The out and about club are now asking for people to sign their petition to have the planters returned back to goldenhill. Where they go is up to the council it’s there job to place them in the right areas, they just want the colour the flowers bring, and give the place a bit of cheer.

If you want to sign the petition please pop into the Co-op or the Community Hall