Page 15 - Phonebox Magazine February 2008

Mercury Report
Olney Town Council Meeting of Monday 7 January 2008
Public participation
The first person to speak was Rachael Passee, who explained that Olney Middle School had been without a crossing supervisor on Yardley Road for more than eight weeks, and that there had been four near misses, with children as young as seven crossing the road to the School. With the help of MP Mark Lancaster she'd organised a petition to be delivered through the doors of houses local to the school and, via the book bags of children attending Olney Middle School and Olney Infant School, of local parents' houses. The petition was signed by 540 people, in favour of a controlled crossing outside the school.
Rachael had performed a traffic survey by the school and, in a 20 minute period near to school opening, seen 243 vehicles passing along and 70 children crossing the road. Debbie Brock confirmed a site visit with Milton Keynes Councillor Chris Williams, who agreed verbally that the crossing was ‘virtually essential’. He’d since emailed Trevor Dove, Milton Keynes Council (MKC) Traffic and Transport Manager saying that: “A controlled crossing would be an ideal solution to the difficulties faced by the children, as young as seven years old”. Rachael concluded by asking Olney Town Council (OTC) for its support with pushing for the crossing.
The second speaker was Hilary Gray, who spoke about the lack of street lighting around 6–12 Dagnall Road. She’d spoken with MKC who'd agreed to pay half the cost of the additional lighting, and asked OTC if it also would pay some money towards it. Councillors replied briefly that, as Dagnall Road is unadopted, it’s nothing to do with OTC so it would not contribute. The Council agreed, however, to write a letter to MKC supporting Hilary's concerns.
As background, anyone interested in what a road being unadopted means in practice might want to Google for ‘unadopted road’ council repair. This is far from being an isolated local issue.
Police report
There was no Police report this month.
Olney Middle School controlled crossing
This section of the meeting effectively followed on from the earlier talk by Rachael Passee.
Paul Watson started by thanking Rachael for coming and advising the Council of the progress towards the crossing. His main
concern was that MKC officers may show a lack of urgency to get the crossing installed unless OTC applied pressure for dates. Paul had done his own traffic surveys outside the school. His morning survey was near identical to the one mentioned above, meaning that a vehicle passed the school on average every 4.8 seconds during a similar 20 minute period. His afternoon survey, around the time that pupils leave the school, showed that a vehicle passed on average every 6.3 seconds, although he noted that the situation was horrendous because of the large numbers of cars parked near the school. He concluded by saying that he hoped that OTC would support the need for the crossing.
Various other Councillors spoke. The main points were that having a crossing would likely reduce the number of cars parked near to the school as more children could then make the journey safely on foot, and that OTC should be careful to avoid associating the need for the crossing with the long-mooted plan to close Yardley Road, a considerably longer term issue.
Councillors agreed unanimously to support the need for a crossing and as such will write to MKC.
Closure of Yardley Road
Although this was dealt with as a separate agenda item, most of the subject matter was covered in the discussion about the Olney Middle School controlled crossing. So, just a brief summary is included here.
As reported in a previous Mercury, it’s been planned for a long time that, once Driftway is open, Yardley Road will be closed West of the Middle School. There was some debate about who'd originally proposed this closure, with Dave Price believing that it was Buckinghamshire County Council and Tony Evans that it was Peter Joel of MKC's Planning Department. Either way, Councilors confirmed that they would not pursue this closure for now, so as to reduce the risk of it becoming tied in with the need for the crossing.
School keep clear (zig zag) markings
Independent of the controlled crossing issue, the Council had received an email from Samantha Morris, Road Safety Officer at MKC, saying that MKC is planning to make Traffic Regulation Orders for all zig zag lines at schools in Milton Keynes Borough by the end of 2010.
This means that MKC's parking contractor (currently NCP) will be able to issue tickets to
those parking on the lines Monday to Friday 8am–6pm, that MKC will see if existing zig zag lines require changing and erect signs, or consider painting the lines if they don’t currently exist.
Olney Infant School, Olney Middle School and Ousedale School's Olney campus are in the second wave of schools whose zig zag lines will be dealt with and, as such, any changes should be complete by Summer 2008.
Olney Town Council voted to support this item.
Farmers' Market
The organic vegetable stall had left the Farmers’ Market and the Town Clerk is arranging for another stall from the waiting list to replace it, aiming to keep a good mix of produce available. Possible delights include the New England Cheesecake Company (twice a guest stall on the Market) and Debbie's Homemade Meals.
Youth funding for the under 13s
Jeremy Rawlings explained that MKC had voted in September (approx) for £25,000 to be made available to support youth work for the under 13s, and he asked if OTC could find out how some of this money could be claimed. The Youth Club has an under 13s night which is run on an entirely voluntary basis as MKC's current policy is to fund youth work only for children of 13 years and over.
Driftway update
As background, the Mercury report for the Town Meeting of May 2006 shows that the Council believed Driftway would be open by the end of that year. Clearly, that date has... drifted.
Tony Evans asked Debbie Brock for an update on the opening of the road. She replied that she believed there was a trench across it that still had to be dug. There followed a heated discussion, the gist being that Tony believed that MKC and OTC were doing little to get the road opened and that it was ‘an outrage’, and Debbie believing that there were limits to what the Councils could do at this time.
Various of those present made the point that MKC should have prevented more than half the houses becoming occupied before the road was opened, as apparently in the original agreement with the developer George Wimpey.
The above is just a brief summary because, since the meeting, the Driftway opened on Friday 11th January, making much of the remaining discussion somewhat academic. K
The next meeting will be held at 7.30pm on Monday 4 February in the Council Chamber in the Olney Centre. Members of the public are always welcome to attend and, if they wish, speak at the start of the meeting.
Phonebox Magazine 15