Reading, the biggest town.

https://bsky.app/profile/themerl.bsky.social/post/3lfakq2l7nk2a

Currently, landlords that have HMOs with four people or less occupying them do not need a licence.

Reading Borough Council wants to extend licensing to all HMOs across the borough for those with three to four occupants.

I am completely unsurprised.
The entire place felt like it had been hastily assembled when I visited. Kinda like a pop-up shop.
At the time, someone told me that they hadn't applied for prospective planning, and it made so much sense.
The site was designed so that anything valuable could be shipped away quickly if the council denied retrospective planning.
Which makes sense I guess: When your primary product is watercraft and inflateables, all you really need is a few portacabins and a fence.

Bonus reading: STiR reviews the private island.

Hello,

Anyone know of a dentist accepting children?

This is in addition to the RMT strikes on 20th, 22nd and 29th July.

Following some eagle eyed readers reporting it's disappearance the other day, I'm happy to say that the Rainbow is back, and brighter than ever.

Is Newbury pronounced:

• (2 syllables) New•brie; or,
• (3 syllables) New•b'uh•ree

I really need to know, and Wikipedia says nothing!

As part of the Reading Climate festival, a guided walk around the ancient meadows between Coley and Southcote is being run this weekend. It's a lovely area of town, and worth a visit.

Walk meets at 10:00, at the corner between Circuit Lane and Sylvan Walk, and will take around 2 hours. 51.44042, -1.00469 ///intervals.middle.icons

I am not the organiser, however I will probably come along.

Thanks to some very efficient work, the Reading discord server is now receiving posts from /c/reading.

This is a positive change, as it allows users to keep abreast of both this community, and the existing one. To join the Discord, https://discord.gg/mVesAGrwRM

If you are reading this from the Discord...Hi! Plz send bus pics.

The platform numbers on the display boards don't use decimal, or are somehow encoded with the wrong number until 30 seconds before the train heads off.

And given the doors close up to 45 seconds before departure, -15 seconds just isn't enough time to storm up the escalator, run sideways and fall down the next escalator to the correct (and-now-empty) platform.

Hello and thank you for being part of the Fediverse experiment. This Community is run by some long term Discord and Reddit community members - as this is a whole new world it's possible many of us have different names - I am LordWarfire from both Reddit and Discord and wanted to welcome you to this new place.

Please make yourselves at home and let us know what you'd like to see here and how you found us!

For anyone who found us via the Fediverse - this is a Community for the town of Reading in Berkshire, rather than for the thing you do with books. I know, it's confusing. We even pronounce it differently - welcome to "Redding" :)

Thanks!

The weather is lovely today, isn't it?

This is mostly a "test post: please ignore", but I just had to comment on the sunny weather.