Page 18 - Phonebox Magazine May 2009

Mercury Report
Olney Town Council Meeting of Monday 6 April 2009
Public participation
No member of the public spoke at this point in the meeting.
Nunn Wood construction traffic
David Rumens explained that plans for the Nunn Wood wind farm list two alternative routes by which construction traffic, including a number of abnormally wide and heavy loads, will get to the site in Podington, Beds. The first route brings traffic in from the North and the second from the South, including the A509 through Olney. If the South route is chosen, it would involve the temporary removal of various pieces of street furniture such as bollards. While he felt that, as the North route appeared to have been considered in more detail it may well be the one chosen, he felt the Council should fight to get the South route deleted from the plans.
Olney Town Council (OTC) agreed to send a letter requesting this deletion to the Milton Keynes Council (MKC) Planning Authority, copied to the Planning Authorities of the other two areas affected.
Neighbourhood Action Group (NAG) John Sharp reported on the most recent
NAG meeting. It was attended by a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) who gave crime figures, presumably for March. There were 13 criminal damage incidents, five thefts, three assaults, one burglary of a non-dwelling, one of a dwelling, two thefts of motor vehicles and two public order offences. He felt these were quite good figures, down on those for recent months and that this was partly the result of the Police targeting youngsters in various parts of the town over the last few weekends. He concluded by noting that the local PCSOs are now able to issue fines for leaving litter and dog fouling.
Chamber of Trade
Deidre Bethune noted that the Olney Chamber of Trade will shortly be relaunching its website. It also plans to build on the success of the Wednesday late night opening held last December by holding a similar event this year on Wednesday 2nd December.
Balls
Tony Evans reported that the Council had received a letter from the allotment holders, concerning Olney Town Colts’ placement of a goal too close to the allotments. This has resulted in footballers foraging for their balls
in the allotments, causing damage to the allotments’ fence and some of the seed beds.
The Colts have two pitches in the Allotment Field. Tony felt that the second of these was indeed too close to the allotments and that the Council should tell the Colts to move it. Councillors discussed the issue. The main points were that it may not be possible for the Colts to move the posts before the end of the season – they are in concrete sheaths – and that, given that the problem will be much worse when the goal is used without netting than with it – it could be acceptable for the offending goal posts to be removed at all times bar during matches.
Councillors voted to tell the Colts to remove the posts at all times bar during matches and to move the second pitch further from the allotments for next season.
Veterans’ Day lunch
The annual Veterans’ Day lunch will be held on Friday 26th June.
Best Kept Village and Britain in Bloom
Councillors decided that Olney will enter this year’s Best Kept Village competition but will will not enter Britain in Bloom (BiB). The reasons for the latter decision were summed up by Deidre Bethune and Tony Evans: sadly, the BiB competition has fewer entries and less local support than before.
Olney Town Council wards
As reported in previous articles, MKC has conducted a review of wards in its area which has recommended that Olney be changed from one ward to either two or four wards. This would mean that each Councillor would represent only people resident in their ward and that there would be a certain number of Councillors elected from each ward. Olney Councillors remain against this proposal.
David Rumens reported that he’d attended a somewhat farcical meeting of MKC’s Parish Review Working Group (PRWG). The purpose of the meeting was to review and adopt a document concerning the warding issue but, in the event, the document was not ready. At that meeting, a new three ward option for Olney was presented, consisting of an Olney Central ward with seven seats, an Olney East ward with five seats and an Olney West ward with four seats. He noted that the option to keep things as they are, with one ward, was not on the table. At the
meeting, he had made it clear that OTC felt the warding was being imposed on it without the chance of proper consultation and, according to Michael Hughes, had succeeded in ‘trying the patience’ of the meeting chair.
David continued that he planned to attend the next PRWG meeting when, apparently, the warding document would be adopted then made available for consultation until the end of July. He then explained the time- line of the decision process thus far: the idea for warding changes was passed by MKC’s Cabinet around two years ago, should have appeared on the Parish Assembly’s agenda but did not and OTC didn’t even hear of it until November 2008, by which time the decision to ward Olney had already been taken. He felt strongly that MKC should have contacted the Parish Councils to inform them of its plans, but that this had not been done.
Michael Hughes concluded this topic by noting that the PRWG had agreed to place a notice in the Phonebox explaining the warding options.
Driftway
Tony Evans introduced this item saying that, while the Driftway verges looked reasonable at the moment, he was concerned for how they would look in future. The design that MKC’s planners had given to the developer, Wimpey, was for it to create a mound of clay, with some chunks of limestone, on which to create a wild flower meadow, an aim that Tony felt was near impossible to achieve.
He outlined two options, the first being to continue with the wild flower meadow. He reported that, according to the developer, the verges have been seeded but, having investigated, he could not see any growth of the seeded plants – the seeds appeared not to have taken. He was sceptical as to whether the wild flower meadow plan was achievable but noted that, even if it was, there appeared to be no plan of how to manage it. In particular, the verge slopes are too steep for the plants to be cut by machine so, instead, they must be cut by hand – harder and, therefore, less likely to be done regularly. This would need to be resolved.
The second option, which appeared lower risk, was to accept that the current design was flawed, remodel the clay mound to have shallower slopes, allowing machine cutting, and put the area to grass.
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