HS2 Latest

Back in April Bucks County Council stated their preferred alternative route for HS2 was along the West Coast Main Line. They weren't too clear whether they meant upgrading the existing line, or following one of the HS2 alternative routes that swept through Pitstone Green business park and on to Cheddington. Either proposal was equally unacceptable to me and I proposed, and lost, an amendment to a motion at the County Council requesting that this preference be deleted from their submission to HS2 and that all routes through the Chilterns AONB be opposed equally. After the discussion several Aylesbury Vale Conservative Councillors told me they supported me but had not been able to vote for me on party lines.

Many people have subsequently pressed the County Council to come round to this view, including our MP, the Chilterns Conservation Board, and local individuals. At a meeting in July with the cabinet member for transportation Val Letheren, hinted to me that the County were now re-considering their position as expressing a preferred alternative could weaken their overall case - exactly the point I made at Council.

My opinion is that the West Coast Mail line option is so impracticable and expensive it was rightly discarded in the first place by HS2 as a viable alternative; but that the County Council should not have suggested damaging one part of the County in order to protect another 'more valuable' part. Val Letheren in debate said that 'their' Chilterns AONB was 'more valuable' than 'ours'.

The government are currently reviewing the whole thing to see if it can link in Heathrow Airport .

Changes to Adult Social Care Services

Changes have already begun in Bucks and elsewhere so that people needing social care (to enable them to live in their own homes for example) are able to decide for themselves what services they need, through spending their own personal allowance. Eventually everyone eligible will receive their own budget. This means people will need very good advice and information on choices available to them, and a much more diverse range of services will have to be made available to people. As part of these changes the County Council are looking at day care services. They have begun to talk to individual users of day care centres and to the wider public on how the current service might be provided in the future. In Aylesbury Vale they are proposing a new super-centre in Aylesbury, with a subsidiary centre in Buckingham, and a network of community facilities where users can choose to go in the day. The detail on these community facilities has not yet been filled in, nor how people will be supported in choosing what to do if they don’t want or are not able to attend the new day centre. I am expecting a lot more information on which to make a judgement after the consultation has been completed and people’s preferences have been heard, the financial aspects have been looked at and the full plan proposed. Naturally current users and their carers have been very unsettled by this. However it is very early days, and although it is expected day centres will be closing, there are no dates, and changes for people will happen on an individual basis.

Friends of Ivinghoe Library needed to be applied for.

There are NO PLANS TO CLOSE IVINGHOE LIBRARY. But how it is run MIGHT change. We need a re-formed Friends of Ivinghoe Library to meet that challenge when it comes.

The Government comprehensive spending review in the autumn is expected to lead to budget cuts in local government. The libraries are always vulnerable. As it is, nearly all BCC’s library resource has been poured in to the new library at High Wycombe, and it’s still unable to open on Mondays. In the past the County has always closed down what it cannot control. In the last round of library cuts everything was taken out of the affected libraries; computers, books, shelves, even the kettle. The community libraries that were set up in their place started with nothing. The two in the Chalfonts have been so successful that the County are considering a re-think whereby the county could partner a community library. In other words they could call on the community to support a much depleted service, while still providing the building and the IT for example, but leaving the community group to find the books, and even the staff. This would be bad news for Ivinghoe, and I would do all I could to prevent it, but closing the library would be even worse. To help stave off the day when we might be faced with this please contact me about becoming a Friend of Ivinghoe Library


Great Gap Circular Walk grand opening September

This project began as a long held aspiration for a safe footway to link Great Gap to Ivinghoe. A bid put in by Ivinghoe parish Council was supported by other Parishes in the Local Area Forum, and developed in to a circular walk right up to the canal at The Brownlow. The path will open in September once the nesting season is over and it becomes possible to breach the necessary gaps in the hedges. This project, made possible only by the vision of the BCC rights of way team in seizing an opportunity, and the hard work of Jackie Wesley, BCC Local Area Forum Co-ordinator and Ivinghoe resident, in bringing grant funding bodies and landowners together, has so caught the imagination that not only has the BCC cabinet heard all about it in great detail, and sanctioned the grand opening, but BBC Radio is supposed to be making a programme about it ( and may have already done so).

Cheddington High Street and Footpath to Cooks Wharf

The High Street is going to be resurfaced in August, Hooray. The final length of the footpath project has been awarded funding from the Local Area Forum and the Comma Fund and can now be completed too the benefit of three parishes, Marsworth Pitstone and Cheddington.

Community Car Scheme and trial Freight Quality Partnership

These two new projects are being initiated through the Local Area Forum - where the County and District meet the Parish Councils and interested members of the public. The initial car scheme meeting is planned for 14th July and it is intended that two schemes will cover the villages of the Ivinghoe County Division along the lines of other successful schemes throughout the country.

The Freight Quality Partnership is a piece of work that will look at how villages in other parts of the country have worked with local and national businesses to promote mutual understanding of the needs of the haulage industry and residents, with the aim of reducing the impact of freight on the rural environment. Although the County’s emerging transport plan had this as a priority, everything is on hold until the government’s spending plans are known(!) so the Forum has agreed to support the preliminary work by the community in setting up a partnership . Anyone interested in finding out more baout either of these please contact me acdavies@buckscc.gov.uk. or jwesley@buckscc.gov.uk

The Local Area Forum has a delegated budget to spend on priorities put forward and decided on by the members, and is able to attract additional funding for nearly all it does.

Community Leaders Fund

The first call on the fund for this Division this year was to ensure the Great Gap Circular walk didn’t fail ‘for want of a nail’. Subsequently it has been able to pay for deer alarms (that broadcast radio4) for the new Pitstone allotments and benches for the Cheddington School orchard. These small sums have all been little nails completing bigger projects, and there is still a bit of money in the pot.