HIRA Meeting Report

- Mon 31st Jan 2005

Passionate Audience Involvement at Tourism Meeting

A well-attended Residents’ Association meeting on tourism raised passions amongst a number of members of the audience. In particular a range of points were made about the extent to which various members of the Council, both past and present, had or had not done their best to support the Island’s tourism business to the extent that they might have done. While some of the points made were relevant, others of were wide of the mark and need not be taken very seriously.

The meeting consisted of a number of presentations of activities that contributed to the Island’s tourist economy, many of them very recent in terms of the more traditional approach to the matter, compared with the situation as it existed 20 or 30 years ago.

Paul Fisher, HIRA chairman, opened the meeting with a brief overview of the way tourism developed on the Island. This started with the opening of the first bridge in the 1820s, resulting in the start of development of the Crescent and the Royal Hotel. When the railway came in the latter half of the 19th century, all sorts of opportunities arose. The funfair started after WW1 and after WW2 there were five major holiday camps on the Island. In recent years many activities have developed and the subsequent presentations outlined some of these.

The East Hayling Light Railway was described by Bob Haddock and Ian Edwards with pictures, though not as many as hoped, as the projector would not handle card-mounted slides: apologies to the presenters! The railway is now an integral part of the seaside scene and provides a useful link between two major parts of the tourist scene. The provision of specials, Santa, charity and other events allows a developing range of interest.

The role of Funland was presented by John and Marshal Hill, and they described the introduction of new features to keep interest alive. Funland endeavours to be a ‘good neighbour’ in terms of opening times and noise emission and clearly provides a key element to the life of the beach centre.

Nigel Tuttle described the range of water-borne activities on the Island. Hayling was held to be a ‘Mecca for water-sports’. These covered schools, fishing, water-skiing, kite- and wind-surfing, ‘conventional’ sailing activities, international as well as local, together with water-related support services. He commented that over 200 boats p.a. were commissioned at one boat-yard alone and that 17, Hayling-based, boats were exhibited at the recent show in London.

Paul Fisher read a statement provided by the Kite-Surfing group on the Island, saying that a formal agreement now existed with the Golf Club for them to operate and that matters such as mandatory insurance and arrangements to ‘red-flag’ operations, when too many other beach users were present, were now set up. The Club now had 350 members, 90% of whom came from off the Island.

Questions were asked during and after each presentation and there then followed a break during which there was much animated discussion amongst those attending and many views were expressed.

After the interval, Christine Dyer, HBC ‘Tourism Officer’, outlined the approach the Borough took towards the matter and the factors that they tried to take into account. Tourism covered the whole Borough not just Hayling, but Hayling was the main thrust of activity. She mentioned the ‘Vision for Havant’ document of a year ago (The content of this had been derided by most people who had read it. It contained suggestions which indicated that the writer was completely unaware of the nature designations of the area).

A heated discussion took place on parking charges, addressing the issue of balancing the need to raise enough money to clean up the mess left by visitors against the benefit of having more visitors if one had lower charges. This is to be the subject of a Council meeting shortly, in which the charges for the coming year will be set.

What to do with the Creek Road area was discussed and a suggestion was floated to redevelop the main car-park with a high quality, retail, commercial and entertainment complex.

Many other matters were raised and discussed but space does not permit their inclusion. Suffice it to say that the meeting was considered very useful and should be the model for other meetings we hold and the level of participation achieved.


Council Budgets

I have now been to the budget presentations of Hampshire CC, the Police Authority and the Fire & Rescue Authority. All of these present their information in different ways depending on how open they are attempting to be. I missed the Havant Borough one but other people representing your interests did attend.

The Fire & Rescue contribution was well presented, clear and contained the right level of information for the purpose. It contained a forward assessment of their capital needs, e.g. new fire appliances etc. and how these were to be phased into the programme.

One of this Authority’s problems has been that since it is now now it is devolved from the County, it has to bear its own liability insurance. For those who remember the DEC fire some years ago and the financial ramifications of that, it will be apparent that considerable cover is required. This is now contained in the budget, but even so this year’s potential rise is very close to that resulting from pay agreements.

In contrast the County and Police budgets were much less clear and result in rises higher than those due to salary increases alone. Each year there are costs, claimed to be unique to the year in question, that result in the need to raise the level by an amount that is typically similar to that due to inflation. However, on closer inspection many of these costs are retained in the subsequent years and a new lot added. Over the years the accumulation of these costs appears to be one of the reasons why our local taxes continue to rise out of all proportion. It seems that our local representatives should be much more vigilant in scrutinising the budget proposals of the various Authorities to ensure that our tax rises are kept in check. If these representatives do not have the background skills needed to assess these matters, be they engineering, accountancy or otherwise, they should co-opt those who do have such skills to assist in those more critical assessments.

As this year is an election year, the government will be doing its best to provide the greatest possible grants and the Authority members will, on the whole, be doing the same, to maximise their chances of re-election.

In the light of these factors, this year’s tax increase will probably not be much greater than the rate of inflation. What determines the rate of inflation, if it not pay rises, is another matter!

Billy Trail & Liveability

Exhibitions and consultation opportunities on both these topics will have taken place before this is published. There is therefore little to say until those exhibitions have been viewed. HIRA hopes that as many people as possible will have made the effort to attend as both topics are of considerable importance to the future of Island life.

It should perhaps be noted that HCC is spending £250K to improve the cycling facilities between the bottom of New Lane in Havant and the top of the improved Havant section of the Billy Trail. One would reasonably expect the work around Langstone to be next on the list. It is thus important that there is a good plan in place for this section before work starts. The consultation already mentioned is thus vital.

Tony Higham.

Main contacts:

Chairman: Paul Fisher 92461412

Membership: Shirley Adams 92462881

Notice Board: Lois Neale 92469339

Reporter: Tony Higham 92464723.

By forum user, Mat