Claire Jarvis tells us: There's been a sudden rush for Auction
tickets today but there are still a few left So HURRY HURRY!! .If
potential bidders would like to view the list of lots, it’s at
www.chippylido-auction.co.uk Top lot is
possibly the day driving the latest Aston Martin at their
performance track, although there are some other intriguing
offers, such as Mark Billingham writing you into his next thriller
featuring DCI Thorne (Sky One are currently making a drama using
the first two in his series) or a private tour of Aynho Park which
is not normally open to the public but has the largest collection
of plasterwork in Europe. See you at the Lido
The Planners
obviously have lots of spare time on their hands.
On Monday afternoon the full Planning Committee of West
Oxfordshire District Council (about a dozen people including our very own newly-elected
Annie) will be sitting down to solemnly consider whether a couple
of replacement uPVC double-glazed windows at 21 Horsefair should
be removed and replaced by "approved" ones. Approved would
mean wooden, single-glazed sash windows - the kind that are never
windproof in old stone buildings, where the single-glazing lets
the cold in, where the sash mechanism invariably breaks and the
wooden frames rot. Just the kind of thing you want in a
street which is being rattled to bits by HGVs and which has the
worst air quality in West Oxfordshire. The committee will be
considering a detailed report drawn up by a Planning Officer who
must have spent some time visiting the site and weighing her
conclusions - including whether an enforcement order would
infringe the householders Human Rights (I'm not kidding about this
- read the report for yourself here http://www.westoxon.gov.uk/files/reports/10553.pdf
) If the committee in their wisdom decide on an
enforcement order the householder will be required to make the
change within six months at a cost of god know how many thousands
of pounds. Apparently some local do-gooder has complained to the
Council - probably somebody who lives in a modern insulated house behind nice tight-fitting double-glazed PVC windows
where there is no street noise and you are not poisoned by
nitrogen dioxide.. The Planning officers recommend that an
enforcement order should be issued because... "the replacement
windows are considered detrimental to the architectural integrity
of the building and the character and appearance of the Chipping
Norton Conservation Area". What a load of tosh. Leave aside that
this is the same Planning Committee that is about to allow the
Co-Op to completely demolish the historic Burgage Plots at the
heart of the Conservation Area and allow them to build a modern
monstrosity which would be detrimental to any area. The same
Planning Committee that has allowed all the shop fronts in the
market Square to be ruined by garish fascias. The same Planning
Committee that has allowed garden grabbing all over the
Conservation Area and allows a Kebab van with an illuminated sign
to desecrate the Market Square every day of the week. Leave all
that aside. The fact is that there are PVC windows all along
Horsefair and Spring Street. Scores of them. There are uPVC
windows all over the neighbouring houses to No 21. Either the
planners haven't noticed or they have allowed them to take over by
default. To start picking on one householder at this late stage of
the piece is just plain daft. Is this some kind of witch hunt?
Don't the Planning Committee have better things to do with their
time? Their conclusions say....."The objections to the
installation of the windows are serious ones" Who are they
kidding? I thought local planning decisions were being
handed back to town councils? The sooner the better if this case
is anything to go by!!
The
Leisure Centre are holding a 8 week
swimming course for people who are aged 50+. It is free of charge
and it's for non swimmers and weak swimmers only. The course
starts on Thursday 9th Sept from 11.00am till 11.45pm. Anyone
wishing to join in or would like more details then they can ring
the centre 01993 861951.
Sunday 26th September
Time
Venue
Event
12.00 – 2.30
The Old Mill
Four Play Jazz
12.00 – 1.30
Jaffe & Neale Bookshop
CNS AllStars taster
1.00 – 4.00
The Blue Boar
The Dave Barry Jazz Band
1.45 – 4.15
Walking Jazz Players
Dickie White’s Jazz Allstars
2.00 – 5.00
The Theatre
Youth Jazz Bands
2.30 – 6.30
The Crown and Cushion
Eric Stevens Jazz Band
3,30 – 5.30
The Chequers Inn
The Spats Langham Trio
6.00 – 8.00
The Blue Boar
Freddie Fingers and the
Trois Tétes.
6.00 – 8.00
Bitter and Twisted
to be confirmed
7.00 – 9.00
The Crown and Cushion
Perry and his Trio
8.00 – 10.30
The Theatre
Evening Concert
Terry Lightfoot and Martin Litton’s Rhythm Aces
9.00 – 11.00
The Crown and Cushion
Eric Stevens Jazz Band
Perry and his Trio
The next Kingham Farmers Market is to be
held on the Village Green (Hall if wet) on SATURDAY 18th
September (swapped with Chippy due to Mop Fair) from 10-1pm.
All the usual stalls including bread, cakes, pastries & pies;
meats (beef, lamb, pork & chicken); cheeses; plants; pottery;
chocolates; honey; vegetables & salads etc. Please come along
and support local producers on a local village green.
Garden waste recycling (free from November 2010)
Free garden waste collections are being
introduced at the end of November 2010 as part of a new
waste and recycling service.Householders
have the opportunity to receive FREE fortnightly garden waste
collections by signing up. Simply register now: Complete an
online form or Call 01993 861025
Anyone who does not sign up will not receive garden waste
collections when the new service starts. However, if you are an
existing garden waste customer please see the information at
the bottom of this page. It is the first time that
free garden waste collections will be available in West
Oxfordshire. At present, this is a paid-for service available to
only around 5,000 households.Anyone who signs up
for these collections will have a wheelie bin for their garden
waste.
What you can put in a garden
waste bin
Grass cuttings Plants and leaves Prunings Cut
flowers Pet straw and sawdust Windfalls
Is somebody trying to tell us
something?
The sky last night over Chippy. Photographed
by Geoff Weighell
ALL TOGETHER NOW.....aaaaahh!!!
The Queen, the Pope, President Obama The
Prince of Wales, Gordon and Sarah Brown
and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were among those who sent
messages of congratulation to the Camerons.
chippingnorton.net and its many readers
would like to add their less exalted but nonetheless sincere best
wishes.
Meeting on
future of Highlands
A MEETING is being held to discuss the
relaunch of the Highlands Day Care Centre in Chipping Norton.
It follows concern about the future
direction of the centre, which provides day care services for
elderly people from the town and surrounding villages. The
meeting, which will be chaired by Bill Norton of Age UK, is due to
be held at the Methodist Hall in Chipping Norton on Tuesday,
September 21 at 7.30pm. Anyone interested in becoming chairman,
treasurer or trustee of the centre is asked to contact Jenny
Timmis on 01608 642946 or jennytimmis@sky.com to arrange a
meeting.
Tiger's head stolen
from Chippy
Between
11.59pm on Saturday August 14 and 10am on Sunday August 15,
thieves entered the rear garden of a Chippy property and stole a
tiger's
head. PC Geoff Allen said: "This is a very unusual item and
I would like to hear from anyone who may have seen something like
this, or who has been offered something like this for sale. "I
would also like to hear from anyone who was in the Chipping Norton
area at the time who may have seen anyone acting suspiciously or
who saw someone carrying this stuffed head around the town."
Bowls Club
Competition Finals
This
Friday/Saturday (27th/28th August) Chipping Norton Bowls Club
Competition Finals will take place.On Friday from 6pm onwards
various Singles Finals will be played – followed by one of
Desmond’s famous BBQs. On Saturday from around 3pm onwards various
Pairs Finals will be played. Do come along and see what is
happening. If you are interested in the BBQ please email
chippybowls@hotmail.co.uk
August Lido Lottery Results
The results of the August Lido lottery
were as follows:
Tickets sold: 157 Total
prize fund: £235.50
1st
prize: £117.75 Mr & Mrs Dickinson (no 130)
2nd
prize: £70.65 Joan Thomson (no 83)
3rd
prize: £47.10 Mr & Mrs Gibbard (no 62)
The lottery is open to anyone over the age of 18 years and raises
funds to support Chipping Norton Lido. To find out more, visit
www.chippylido.co.uk or pick up a leaflet from
Jaffe & Neale.
CHIPPY'S VERY OWN
IRON AGE SETTLEMENT
Just two miles from the Town Hall steps a lecturer
from the University of Central of Lancashire - Dr Duncan Sayer -
is leading twelve of his archaeology degree students in a major
four week excavation of an important Iron Age hilltop residence -
surrounded by what seem to be stockyards. Already there have been
numerous discoveries of pottery fragments. In the picture below Dr
Sayer is seen examining one from a first century jar. Some
beautiful hairpins made of bone and an exquisite bronze brooch are
among other finds so far. More grisly are the skeletons of two
babies found amongst the rubble.
Dr Sayer was kind enough to spend time on
Wednesday showing your editor round the site. When you know
nothing about a subject or historical period everything is
fascinating new knowledge. Here are a few basics. In Britain the
Iron Age lasted from 800 BC to the Roman Invasion of AD 43. Its
pre-history. There is no written record of anything. Community
structure was less visible and religious practices very
different to ours today. Life was based on individual
settlements. These were on the tops of hills where the land
drains quickly. Iron Age tools were not sturdy enough to plough
heavy clay in the valleys. Houses were made of wood, clay and
thatch so none have survived. The floors were not tiled. But
decorative arts had become important for identity - seen on
designs on brooches and pots. The Chipping Norton site is a huge
area consisting of an inner circular compound and a much bigger
extended boundary marked by two substantial ditches - the
precise function of which is not entirely clear, though probably
in part to keep the animals in and unwelcome visitors out.
Fences would have required too much wood - a hugely precious
resource. In this extended farmyard area stock was sheltered and
crops stored.
The plan of the site marked by a complex pattern
of ditches and gullies was first observed from aerial
photographs in the 1990s and more recently surveyed by Dr Alex
Lang - a distinguished Oxford archaeologist and Chippy resident
(and co-director of the site). You can only see these patterns
when crops have grown. On land previously dug out and
subsequently filled crops grow to different heights - producing
a sort of contour map. These patterns allow you to identify
possible settlements and locations for detailed surveys. Once
you actually start clearing an area with a JCB to a depth of a
foot or so you can then see the underground patterns very
clearly from obviously different soil colouring.
Anyway these archaeologists have hit the jackpot
with the Chippy site. Everything I have mentioned so far is
evidenced in different features of the Chipping Norton site. It
is clearly a major settlement and further exploration should
answer some of the questions which still exist about Iron Age
life. Already digging sample areas of the large ditch around the
camp has revealed amazing ritualistic relics which seem to echo
pagan worship - as well as the baby's bones.
Things have got complicated since some kind of
Roman troop station was plonked right on top of the Iron Age
settlement - presumably soon after the Roman invasion - which
makes the identification of specific structural remains
difficult for the moment. But all will become clear eventually.
According to Dr Sayer North Oxfordshire was a
very important geographical area in the Iron Age. The main Iron
Age trading route in the country runs along the ridge between
Hook Norton and Chastleton (with Chippy close by) and alongside
the Rollright Stones across to the Cotswold escarpment. Salt
went one way and Iron the other. It’s obvious from all the stone
circles and tumuli that the area also had an enormous spiritual
importance that date back even further into the distant past.
This excavation has only just begun. It will take
years. Soon the site will be filled in until next summer when an
even larger invasion of volunteers is planned. Drs Lang and
Sayer have promised that next year they will organise some
opportunities for local people to be shown around - perhaps have
a couple of open days. That is not to be missed - Dr Sayer is a
really splendid guide. He thinks they will unearth lots more
artefacts but believes these are more likely to be bone and
pottery rather than metal. He would like to think that perhaps
the finds could be accommodated in a local museum - rather than
be carted off to the Ashmolean. Now that would be really good.
The webmaster is indebted
to hawk-eyed Joe Johnston who spotted the excavations from his
van and took the trouble to make contact with Dr Sayer and
then fixed up our visit. Joe has taken lots of pictures and is
preparing a more detailed report on the project which we will
hope to print here.Wouldn't it be great if we could find
a way of funding a corner of the museum for a section on
Chippy's very own Iron Age settlement?.
Chippy students
celebrate A level success
THOUSANDS of students were celebrating last
night after Oxfordshire’s A-Level pass rate topped the national
average. Seven schools had three or more students scoring at least
three grade As — Bartholomew, Burford, Chipping Norton, King
Alfred’s in Wantage, Matthew Arnold at Cumnor Hill, Woodstock’s
Marlborough School and Wood Green, in Witney.
A total of 45 per cent of students from
Chipping Norton School achieved A*s to B grades. Headteacher,
Simon Duffy, said: “Those students who deserved to get the very
top grades did so, those students who had to work equally as hard
to achieve the lower grades also did themselves proud.”
Among those preparing to celebrate were
head boy Rory Goodman from Chipping Norton, who gained an A* in
art and design, two As in biology and maths and a B in further
maths to gain a place at Durham University to study economics.
Rory, 18, said that, as head boy, he had tried to promote working
as a “decent thing” rather than “uncool”.
Is Kingham the
perfect village?
The
essential ingredients of the good village are known in the
property business as the seven Ps – pub, primary school, post
office, parson, public transport, phone box and petrol station. To
find the best, we conducted a straw poll of estate agents across
the country and assessed more than 100 popular villages. We then
married this with work by a team of researchers for The Telegraph
Guide To Commuterland, balancing beauty with accessibility,
landscape with community and the need for good working services.
Kingham in Oxfordshire, the darling of the Cotswolds, topped
the list as the best
village of them all. “This is a star village which
buyers just always want to move into and don’t move out of
easily,” says Harry Gladwyn of Knight Frank. “It combines Cotswold
architecture with commutability. It is a proper village and
retains an air of what the Cotswolds were like several decades
ago, yet it isn’t a tourist honeypot like Stow-on-the-Wold.”
Kingham
is indeed that rare thing, an unspoilt village. The water still
flows along the Evenlode Valley, stone and thatched cottages still
trim the village green. The Village Stores caters for every need,
including wine and meat from a local herd, and also takes in dry
cleaning. St Andrew’s church spire, built as a slim replica of
Magdalen Tower in Oxford, looks out over fields necklaced with dry
stone walls in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. “I have
lived here for 28 years,” says Donald Harris, who is selling The
Old Rectory Cottage through Knight Frank (it has six bedrooms). He
is downsizing but plans to stay in the area. Prices in Kingham
range from £250,000 for a two-bedroom cottage to £1.5m for a
six-bedroom house. “It has hardly changed though some houses have
been added around the edge. They are bought by young families, so
we have lots of children in the primary school,” says Donald.
And the village isn’t losing its young to
nearby towns. “We have everything we need to keep a village alive
– the church, the pub, the school and the shop, which has a post
office. Other villages have lost their post offices and have to
come here now.” Life here is pleasantly busy, he adds. “I am
involved in organising the harvest festival supper, where we have
a magician to keep the children amused. And we have a duck race on
the river every year. There is a gardening club, book club, choir,
music club. So there is a very active social life and lots of
interesting people live here – High Court judges, QCs, a former
headmaster of Eton.”
The Noughties have swept in new trends and
celebrity interest. Blur bass player Alex James now farms sheep
just outside the village and Lady Bamford runs Daylesford Organic
nearby, selling milk straight from her Friesians, as well as
handmade cheeses, breads, fish and organic greens (not to mention
providing yoga and holistic health treatments). Part of the appeal
to buyers from London or Oxford is the good schools. “We have a
lot of families wanting to buy because of that,” says Sara Parker
at Carter Jonas. “People pay a 15 to 20 per cent premium on a
little cottage in Chipping Norton.” The local primary school is
well-liked and Kingham Hill School, the independent day and
boarding school founded in 1886 as a school and home for deprived
boys, was more recently attended by Lord Adonis and Pink Floyd
bassist Guy Pratt.
The key to Kingham’s success, however, is
the railway station, from where trains chug through the Cotswold
villages and on through Oxford to deliver passengers to Paddington
in 90 minutes. Sebastian and Nicholas Blakemore are developers in
the area and have snapped up three cottages in Church Street to
restore. In two weeks they have attracted 20 enquiries and seven
viewings. “We had to buy them,” Sebastian says. “In Kingham an
opportunity like this doesn’t come up often and you can’t go
wrong. The first train every morning at about 6.30 is packed, a
lot of people keep their London jobs. On the weekends, friends
come down to cottages around the village and spend hundreds of
pounds routinely on food at Daylesford on the way. But people
actually live all year round in Kingham. Many families have been
there for generations.”
CHIPPY
AIR QUALITY GETS DE-PRIORITISED YET AGAIN
I hope you like my new word. I just made it
up. It follows a long session at the Town Council when I almost
climbed up the walls with frustration at the County Council Head
of Transport - Steve Howell- who kept talking about how part of
the county's main strategic plan for solving the Air Quality
problem in Chippy was to de-prime the A44. If he said it once he
said it fifty times - de-priming was the first step to a solution.
De-prime. De-prime. De-prime. Sounded just like a Dalek. Where do people find these
gobledegook words? I think Mr Howell made it up so I am following
the fashion. De-prioritised means that they have pushed the
problem of HGV's polluting our town centre - back to the bottom of
the "things to do" file.
But first a quick re-cap for
new readers (Annie might find it helpful too since I'm not sure
she knows much about Air Quality in Chippy!)
Two years ago this article was published on chippingnorton.net:
The
traffic in our town is horrendous and getting worse. The Air
Quality in the Town Centre is way below government standards.
Nitrogen Dioxide levels are way too high. Five
years ago in 2003 the Town Council proposed in a submission to the
Oxfordshire Transport Review that a weight limit should be
introduced through the town - to drastically reduce the number of HGVs. It
included the following statement:
"Chipping Norton Council are convinced that a
weight restriction plus an alternative lorry route around the town
remains the only viable answer".
Our proposal was not accepted because it was
claimed there was too much "local" traffic (exempt from a weight
limit) which would make policing impossible.
In 2005 the area of Horsefair, High
Street and West Street was declared an AQMA (Air Quality
Management Area). Among other things this means that the County
and the District together have to come up with an Action Plan
telling the government how pollution levels are to be reduced to
meet the required limits. After three years of measurements,
surveys, another consultant brought in to advise, studies,
reports, consultations (remember the list of 50 ideas which the
District published earlier this year - including one-way systems
and gated flows?) a report was presented last week (4th September
2008) to the Oxfordshire County Council Cabinet Member for
Transport. Read the quite surprisingly short report here.
http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/content/public/Resources/hlpdownloads/XT/XT040908-06.htm
All the different ideas which had
been put forward and discussed during the consultation - including
by-passes of all shapes and sizes - were thrown out . All
the ideas that is except just one. A weight limit!
In September 2008 the conclusion
was....
"...the
option which appears to be the most suitable for inclusion in the
Action Plan are measures to control lorry passage through the
town. It should be stressed in the Action Plan that all of
these measures will require the consent of neighbouring
authorities, which cannot be guaranteed, and that the
effectiveness of such measures in reducing lorry numbers is
variable. The measures will require additional investigation
before specific proposals can be submitted for approval.
This investigation will includeimposing
an environmental weight limit, including the scope and extent of
any limit, costs, timescales and consultation with neighbouring
and other affected councils."
However getting a weight limit was not going
to be simple. The recommendation said:
The most straightforward
method of controlling heavy goods vehicles would be through the
imposition of an environmental weight limit through the town.
To be effective this would require advance warning and signing of
alternative routes. For A44 traffic this could use the
existing advisory route via Northleach, for traffic travelling to
Banbury via A361 there are no obvious alternatives and this would
need to be negotiated with the relevant neighbouring authorities.
A weight restriction is already in place on the parallel A3400
through Long Compton so this route would not be suitable. A
complicating factor to this is that the A44 is designated as the
national Primary Route between Oxford and Evesham. While
this does not preclude the imposition of a weight limit there
would be a contradiction if a restriction was placed, given that
Primary Routes are a major component of the National Lorry Route
Network. This would be likely to place a limit on the level
of compliance with any local restriction. Removal of Primary
Route status from the A44 would require the designation of an
alternative Oxford-Evesham Primary Route with the agreement of the
relevant highway authorities and government offices. There
would also be considerable cost given that this would require the
replacement of green backed signs with white ones – without which
the change in status would not be evident to drivers. Enforcement is a
considerable issue with any environmental weight limit given that
the general exception for access makes identification of offending
vehicles very difficult.
So two years ago
it was clear that the first thing that had to be done was that
Primary Route status must be removed from the A44 (or the A44 had
to be de-primed as we now say) before you can even start
discussing an environmental weight limit.
Two years later
in late August 2010 Mr Howell and his political boss County
Councillor Ian Hudspeth had been invited by County Councillor
Hilary Biles to come to the Town Council to tell us about
progress. It became clear almost immediately that there was no
progress to report. In two years things don't seem to have
progressed at all. Mr Howell said that he had checked the
previous week to make sure that the County's application to
de-prime the A44 had been submitted. But to his surprise he found
that it hadn't been. Hilary looked absolutely furious. Clearly the
script was falling apart. More than that Mr Howell explained that
getting a road de-primed was virtually unheard of so we needn't
get our hopes up too high. And what was now happening was that
county authorities were competing with each other to offload
heavy traffic on to adjoining areas so there was no co-operation
any more. The alternative route signs which were fundamental to a
weight limit had not been put up - indeed the alternative A361
route had not been agreed yet. There was now no money because
budgets were being cut all round. Spending a
fortune on changing all the A44 green and yellow road signs to
"de-primed" black and white ones wasn't likely to happen.
Yes there was a statutory duty to lower pollution levels but that
duty was the District Council's and NOT the County's. Its not me GUV
say the County. Over to you Witney, You find the money. Why had Messrs Howell and Hudspeth bothered to come
at all?
In 2008 your editor concluded his article as
follows:
"And so they are
recommending yet more investigation and consultation before
actually proposing anything to government. This makes any action years away! For goodness
sake Heathrow Terminal 5 was agreed faster than this. For myself I
think they are just having a laugh - at our expense. Nobody has
the slightest intention of doing anything about air quality in Chippy! I think both councils (County and District) believe
that if the talking can be strung out long enough low emission or
even electric lorries and buses will have arrived and the problem
will disappear. So meantime carry on wheezing Chippy. Just don't
hold your breath".
I
heard nothing on Monday at the Town Council meeting to change that
view. They are giving us the runaround. The talk shop continues. Air quality has been well
and truly de-prioritised.
Hilary Biles told the Town Council on Monday
evening that the County Council were now ready to submit their
planning application for the new Youth Centre but were not
prepared to begin construction until they had received cast iron
guarantees from Central government about the funding. This was not
likely to be forthcoming for several weeks. Fingers crossed
everyone.
The Mystery of the
Elected Mayors
Strange goings-on at the Town Council. A
letter had been received from WODC telling the Council that if
they wanted to express a view about whether West Oxfordshire
should have an elected mayor - instead of a Leader - they only had
until the end of September to comment. Councillor Alcock in his
usual pushy way wanted to know more details about all of this.
Where could he read the proposals for himself. The Town Clerk
referred to the WODC letter. It said..."Further information can be
found at" and the rest was blank. This was beginning to look like
a very fishy manoeuvre. District Councillor Coles said she had
been paying very careful attention at recent Council and Cabinet
meetings and this was the first she had heard of the idea. Perhaps
suspecting a Tory cover-up she turned to newly-elected Tory
District Councillor Annie Roy Barker (Patrick was missing) and
asked her what she knew. Annie knew nothing (situation normal).
The Mayor had a troubled expression throughout the discussion. He
was perhaps imagining that life in future would be complicated by
having a whole new crowd of Mayors at Civic Functions. How on
earth would they sort out the order of precedence? We await
further information. But many councillors were asking themselves
the question.. If West Oxfordshire can have a directly elected
Mayor why can't we? Perhaps we can.....but we won't know until we
catch up with the missing proposals.
Concern for future
of day care centre
THE
future of a Cotswold day care centre for the elderly is being
discussed at a meeting today amid fears for its future funding.
The Highlands Day Care Centre in Burford Road, Chipping Norton,
provides care for up to 88 elderly people from the town and
surrounding area, four days a week. However, Oxfordshire County
Council (OCC) which, in common with other local authorities is
facing a financial squeeze, has indicated it may not be able to
continue its £30,000 contribution to the centre.
Centre trustees say that without this
grant, charges to the elderly people attending the centre might
have to double from £6.50 a day or, in the worst case, the centre
may have to close. Trustee Monica Beadle said they would not know
OCC’s funding decision until September but admitted things were “a
bit dicey”. Members are collected by one of the centre’s two
minibuses and are looked after by a team of professional carers
and volunteers. They are given tea, coffee, lunch and tea,
encourage to take part in activities and, in some cases, given the
chance to have a bath. “Many of them wouldn’t be bothered to cook
for themselves. Some of the clients we have are in the early
stages of dementia, some are poor sighted and need help and
support, “ said Mrs Beadle.
Former Chipping Norton GP Dr Sheila
Parker, who with her husband Dr Bruce Parker was instrumental in
setting up Highlands 17 years ago, has organised today’s meeting
to discuss the way forward. “What’s so awful is people are saying
Highlands is closing. There are a lot of rumours. “If I can help
it, it’s not going to close. It can provide a safe haven for
people and respite for carers,” said Dr Parker, who has invited a
regional representative of AgeUK, formerly Age Concern, to attend
the meeting at Chipping Norton School.
Trustee and secretary Eve Coles said
recent publicity about the centre’s plight had resulted in nine
potential new clients being referred to the centre. “I’m hoping we
can prove there is a real need for this centre,” said town and
district councillor Mrs Coles. County council spokeswoman Lisa
Mendonca said: “The county council will seek to modernise its day
services to give people greater choice in how these services are
delivered. Discussions are taking place about how this might
happen. The future of our current day centres will depend on which
models of service go forward. Day services will be preserved and
the aim is to deliver better outcomes tailored to individual need
and in a style that is most suited to lives in the second decade
of the 21st century.”
Best
farms in the Cotswolds named: THE
best farm in the north Cotswolds has been named as Messrs C W
Smith & Son’s Kingham Hill Farm near Chipping Norton. The champion
farm was the best medium sized farm in Moreton-in-Marsh and
District Agricultural and Horse Show Society farms and crops
competitions.
LEADING event rider William Fox-Pitt, has
been selected to represent Great Britain at the Alltech FEI World
Equestrian Games (September 23-October 10). He will ride Chipping
Norton-based Teresa Stopford-Sackville’s Cool Mountain at the
Games – which are being held in Kentucky. Fox-Pitt was the first
British rider to become eventing’s world number one, a distinction
he achieved in 2002 and again in 2009. Fox-Pitt said:. “I am
very fortunate that Cool Mountain has performed so consistently
this season and I am very excited for his owner Teresa Stopford-Sackville
who has owned him since he was a yearling.”
Chipping
Norton maintained their Division 5 title challenge with a
nine-wicket victory over struggling Cassington. Adam Wallington’s
three wickets helped to restrict Cassington to 140-5. Wallington
then scored 59 and Ian Widdows 52 not out to see Chippy to 143-1.
Horton Hospital told
to improve cleanliness
CHANGES
have been promised at Banbury’s Horton Hospital after it scored
only an ‘acceptable’ rating for two key areas in its latest health
audit. The Oxford Road hospital recently had its future secured
after a seven-year battle to save the maternity and
round-the-clock paediatric services, which could have been moved
to the John Radcliffe Hospital, in Oxford.
But the annual health audit, carried out
by National Patient Safety Agency, which is part of the NHS, said
the Horton was lagging behind other Oxfordshire hospitals. The
Horton dropped from ‘good’ to ‘acceptable’ in two categories:
environment (which covers cleanliness); and privacy and dignity.
It said the cleanliness rating had been affected by an inspection
which had been carried out during poor winter weather. However,
the hospital retained a score of ‘good’ for food. Banbury town and
Cherwell district councillor George Parish, who is chairman of the
Save The Horton Hospital campaign, said: “I am a bit disappointed
because I always think the Horton is great. Perhaps this is a time
to start looking at any services that need improving.”
Meanwhile, Oxford’s Churchill Hospital has
retained its ‘good’ status across all categories, while the John
Radcliffe Hospital improved from ‘acceptable’ to ‘good’ for
privacy and dignity, while maintaining a ‘good’ in food and
‘acceptable’ for environment. Mervyn Phipps, assistant director of
estates for the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust, which runs the
Horton, said: “We take cleanliness and the environment very
seriously and we aim to do better next year.
Shipton teenager
raises £205 with a charity lunch for six
Max
Harvey (15) of Shipton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire, has raised
£205 for a small donkey sanctuary in France called 'Aide aux Anes',
by cooking lunch for six ladies. Max
is a pupil at Kingham Hill School.This
is his fifth fund-raising activity. Previous events have included
two shops, a cream tea and the
inaugural ladies lunch three years ago.Aide
Aux Anes is located in Gipcy, near Fournay, France. It’s goal is
to give donkeys a good life. It provides free shelter to any
neglected, abused or retired donkey and has a total of forty two
donkeys on site. It is totally self-funding.In
this, his fifth fundraising scheme, Max changed the charity he
supports to a small, self-supporting donkey sanctuary in France
following his holiday there last year.‘I met
Walter Golsteijn in Gipcy, in the
Auverge region of France.’ Says Max. ‘Walter had been a Chief of
Homicide with the Amsterdam police but gave up his job, after many
tough years, to rescue donkeys. I was so impressed with the work
he had been doing because he has no support from anyone. Every
penny comes from charitable donations’.‘I had raised a
thousand pounds, over four years, for the Rare Breeds Survival
Trust and decided this little sanctuary could really do with my
help. We brought back some wine, posters and T-shirts and I
decided to do a lunch as I love cooking,’ he continues.
Max worked out the menu from his own
favourite dishes including chicken ceaser salad and zippy
tagliatelle.The six guests thoroughly enjoyed themselves and, Mrs.
Jill Mavin, who won two bottles of Aide des Anes wine, was
thrilled. It was a lovely lunch and we really enjoyed Max’s
cooking,’ she said. Mrs. Mavin is going to deliver the money Max
raised to the sanctuary in person when she goes to France on
holiday. ‘I will really enjoy meeting the man who gave Max the
incentive to give us all such a lovely time,’ she added.
YOUNG PEOPLE'S
AMAZING ARTWORK AT THE TOWN HALL
Pictures by Glyn Watkins
Eight fantastic paintings by children from the local schools - St Marys, Top
School, Holy Trinity and Penhurst were unveiled by Hilary Biles on
Friday. They are quite brilliant - colourful, vibrant and
imaginative and will be cheering up the panels around the Town
Hall for the next few months. In a short speech Hilary
reminded us that it was two years ago that the Town Council first
approached her as WODC Cabinet Member for Tourism - begging for
help to start refurbishing the crumbling Town Hall. She managed to
find £100,000 for us to kick the fund raising off and the show is
now firmly on the road. She was absolutely delighted that the
Project manager Councillor Greenwell has been keen to involve young people in
the Town Hall project from the very beginning. "We
all hope that this building is going to play as big a part in
their lives as it has done for many generations before them!"
So what a great idea when the big ugly hoardings went up around
the iconic Town hall steps (which are being restored) to ask local
kids to brighten things up a bit. They have done this brilliantly.
Your webmaster had a long chat with one of the carers from
Penhurst who described the sheer pleasure the kids had in working
on their stunning contribution. Part of the process involved
launching paint-soaked balls on to the panel and ensuring that the
colour trail fitted the composition. She told me that more
paint ended up on the floor and the kids themselves than on the
panel. Apparently the Prime Minister had been in town shopping
earlier on before the veils had been formally lifted but
Councillor Greenwell organised a sneak preview for him. He was
mightily impressed. "I will come back later and have a proper look
" he said. "I don't want to steal Hilary's thunder!" Come off it
Prime Minister, not even you could do that.
Detail from the St Mary's Primary panel
Formula 1 is Alice's wonderland
by Debbie Waite
HER
name is Alice Powell, she’s 17 and she left school last year after
taking her GCSEs – and she reckons she’s going to be the first
woman to win F1. Mmmm. Maybe a phase she’s going through? After
all, you don’t see many girls up there alongside Lewis Hamilton on
the podium – unless they’re wearing hotpants and handing out the
Champagne.
Alice rings me on her hands-free while
driving three-and-a-half hours from Snetterton racetrack near
Norwich, to Oulton Park, Cheshire, where she’s testing her car.
“Hope you’re keeping to the speed limit,” I joke. It’s probably
one she’s heard many times before, but she chuckles politely
anyway. “So what are you up to?” I ask.
“I’m halfway though the Renault British
Rally Championships with three rounds left and the next round is
at Snetterton at the end of this month,” she tells me. I’m one of
only two women in 17 drivers, the other girl is in 15th and I’m in
second – I intend to be first.” Her quest is simple – to be racing
in F1 in the next four to five years and to win the title. Her
gender, she says, is irrelevant. It may be less than five months
since she got her driving licence, but all day today Alice has
been pushing her car towards its top speed of 150 miles per hour
and taking corners at speeds that would make many grown men cry.
“Testing means we spend days pushing our
cars and ourselves, running things in, making qualifying runs and
basically getting used to the track. It’s fun, but hard work too.”
It’s got a bit easier since Alice, from Sarsden, near Chipping
Norton, left school last year and can now dedicate all her time to
racing. “Last year was pretty tough,” she says.
From the excitement of competing at 120mph
in a motor race televised live on TV, it was back to earth the
following day when Alice was behind her desk at the Cotswold
School in Bourton-on-the-Water taking her Maths GCSE exam. “It was
all pretty hectic but I did well and passed all of my GCSEs with
good grades. Now I’ve finished school and I’m splitting my time
between training at Renault F1 in Enstone and competing. Passing
my driving test in March was great, because it now means I don’t
have to rely on my mum and dad to drive me everywhere for my
racing. For a long time I would be routinely driving over a 100
miles an hour on the track, but not legally able to drive on the
road.”
She achieved eight podiums in the Ginetta
and BDRC Stars of Tomorrow Championships. And in May this year she
became the first female to win a Formula Renault Race when she won
round four of the Formula Renault BARC Championship at
Silverstone. Last year, racing legend Sir Stirling Moss presented
her with the British Women Racing Drivers’ Club Elite Winner
award. She is also the youngest female to have competed in the
Michelin Formula Renault UK Championship – the 150mph single-seater
race series which provides a stepping stone to F1 and set her hero
(and former Manor Competition) predecessor) Lewis Hamilton, on
track to superstardom.
But is it really possible, I ask, to
actually compete alongside the men and win it. “It won’t be easy
and some people simply don’t believe a woman has the strength and
courage to compete at a high level in sport and beat male
competitors. But I do and I believe I can. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t
be bothering with the training, pushing myself to the limits of my
fitness and asking my family for all their support to help get me
there.” Family is key to Alice’s success. She was introduced to
motorsport by her granddad, racing fan Jim Fraser, now 69. She
learned to drive a car when she was six and began her karting
career two years later. “Many motor racing drivers follow a family
member into the sport, whereas I’m the first, but mum and dad say
I seem to have had racing in mind from a very early age, when I
started racing a ride-on around the dining room table. My family
obviously help me a lot, but sponsorship is key in motor racing
and I’m doing pretty well.”
Having financed Alice’s 2009 season,
Silverstone Hotels continues to support her on her route to F1 and
she also has backing from Travis Perkins and a new Japanese
anti-stress treatment – as well as the support of her team at
Manor Competition and Renault. “If I win the championships I could
attract really big sponsors and could send me even further up the
ladder – this is definitely my biggest year so far.” There doesn’t
seem a lot of time left for the things most 17 year old girls
spend time doing – shopping and hanging out with friends and
boyfriends. “When I was younger it was hard when racing started to
take up all my weekends and I did miss going to parties and seeing
friends for a while, but if I’m serious about racing then it has
to come first,” she admits.
So does being a racing driver make her a
geek or cool? “Most people seem pretty impressed, although girls
my age don’t know a lot about motor racing,” she said. That’s
another reason why I’d like to do well – to be an ambassador for
the sport. If more women got interested in it, more would
compete.” Alice’s hero, Lewis Hamilton, is at the pinnacle of his
success. Having been crowned F1 champ he’s living the dream in
Monaco with a pop star girlfriend. But Alice thinks in miles per
hour, not dollars. “Of course the money would be fabulous, who
wouldn’t say that?” she says. “But right now I’m doing what
Stirling Moss told me and keeping my eye on the prize.” Alice’s
mum and dad, Eileen, 43, and Tony, 51, are very proud. Mrs Powell
said: “We see ourselves as her background support. She’s very
dedicated and works extremely hard and is determined to be the
first successful female Formula 1 driver – we believe she will.”
From Saturday 28 August
2010 we will be holding a car boot sale at Southcombe Farm (the
site of Fairytale Farm) to fundraise for this unique project.
Gates open for sellers at 8am and buyers arrive from 9am.
Seller pitch fee: £6 cars, £7
cars with trailer or vans Buyer entry fee: FREE! Refreshments will
be available and there will be toilets on site. For more details,
telephone Julie Morgan on 01608 644495 or email us at
info@fairytalefarm.co.uk.
Please spread the word!
What is
Fairytale Farm??
"The
vision is to create an inclusive facility, designed to be
completely accessible to, and stimulate the imagination of,
children with varying disabilities, but which these children can
enjoy alongside children and families without disabilities."
There are very few rural
facilities for disabled children and their families. As most
parents of children with special needs know, much of the
countryside is out of bounds. Although there are a number of
centres for disabled children, these tend to be institutional and
require advanced booking, and most mainstream attractions are not
fully accessible, despite the efforts of owners.
Fairytale Farm will be different.
We will be the first family farm attraction where everything
is designed around the needs of children with sensory, learning
and physical disabilities. But we hope that children without
disabilities will enjoy it too!
A day out in
the countryside
There are very few rural
facilities for disabled children and their families. As most
parents of children with special needs know, much of the
countryside is out of bounds. Although there are a number of
centres for disabled children, these tend to be institutional and
require advanced booking, and most mainstream attractions are not
fully accessible, despite the efforts of owners.
Fairytale Farm will be different.
We will be the first family farm attraction where everything
is designed around the needs of children with sensory, learning
and physical disabilities. But we hope that children without
disabilities will enjoy it too! It will just be a day out for the
family, not a day care centre; just turn up and have fun. Nick and
Nicola Laister, whose eldest daughter has cerebral palsy, decided
to acquire a small farm and create a children’s activity farm
where disabled children and their families could spend a day out
in the countryside doing various rural activities on a site where
everything was primarily designed around their needs.
The vision is to create an
inclusive facility, designed to be completely accessible to, and
stimulate the imagination of, children with varying disabilities,
but which these children can enjoy alongside children and families
without disabilities, and which operates in the same way as a
standard rural farm park (i.e. it can be visited without being in
a group or with pre-booking). In other words, the sort of facility
that Nick and Nicola would have liked to have been able to visit
themselves with their own daughter.
This facility would not be a care
facility or an institutional experience, but a family
day/morning/afternoon in the countryside, built around the needs
of the family member whose needs are most difficult to cater for,
but open to all.
Finding a site
Nick
and Nicola embarked on a search for a site. It needed to be in a
rural location, as it would involve farm animals and general
countryside activities. As the use would involve, for example, a
parking area and possibly adventure play equipment for disabled
children, it was felt that a rural location that was adjacent to
other existing businesses and activities would be most
appropriate, outside of landscape designations and where it would
not be prominent on the wider landscape. It would also need good
access from a good quality road, a dwelling for the family to live
in and be located on a flat site.
After searching throughout 2007
and 2008, Nick and Nicola were sent the details of Southcombe
Farm. This had been used as a farm shop and other businesses
(including an engineering business and recording studio) for a
number of years and came with a range of outbuildings, including
several workshops, farm shop, stables, and a farm house, built in
the 1800s.
Fairytale Farm
The
farm will be inclusive and designed primarily around the needs of
children with sensory, learning or physical disabilities. It will
be the location for a day or part-day out in the countryside
undertaking a variety of rural and educational activities (many of
which would be related as closely as possible to the national
curriculum), firmly rooted in the local area, where everything is
designed around disabled children. We will welcome all children,
but we cannot guarantee that everything will be accessible to
children without disabilities.
The existing paddocks will be
used for various activities, including animal petting and
displays, children’s play facilities (including a small play area
made up of equipment designed for disabled children) and sensory
trails. The trails will be educational for children with learning
difficulties, with the aim of stimulating the imagination, and
will comprise small features at child/wheelchair height, mainly
based around local history, culture and legends, with features to
see, touch, smell and hear.
The existing outbuildings
(stables, farm shop, barn, two-storey workshops) will be used in
association with the activity farm for various indoor activities
(especially when wet), indoor education, toilets and refreshments.
Access will be taken directly from the A44 near the Southcombe
traffic lights, only two miles outside Chipping Norton, using the
existing access road constructed in 2000.
Help Us!
Nick and Nicola Laister are
building this unique attraction without any grant funding. They
are looking to acquire, or receive donations, of numerous items to
ensure that this facility can open in 2012.
Oxfordshire’s
Community Hospitals have been given the thumbs up by a patient
programme. The Patient Environment Action Teams programme (PEAT)
assesses all hospitals with 10 beds or more and gives them a score
of excellent, good, acceptable, poor, or unacceptable.
Food at Abingdon, Bicester, and Chipping
Norton community hospitals was ranked ‘excellent’ after an
inspection by the programme Dinners at Wallingford and Wantage
hospitals were given a ‘good’ score. Only Witney was ranked as
‘acceptable’. Privacy and dignity was marked as good at all the
hospitals, apart from Chipping Norton which was deemed
‘excellent’.
Karen Campbell, service manager of
Community Health Oxfordshire, said it was pleased with the
results. She said: “These scores reflect the ongoing investment by
the organisation along with the dedicated hard work being
undertaken by our staff to ensure our sites meet the expectations
of our patients.”
RAF salutes Chippy
pupils' charity campaign
PUPILS
at Chipping Norton’s St Mary’s Primary School collected pennies,
sold fruit pots and organised a mini-fete to raise almost £1,000
for charity. Dave Lewis, chief technician at RAF Lyneham, in
Wiltshire, centre, visited the school this week, just before
setting off on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, to thank children
and to receive a cheque for £461.35. The other half of the money
they raised was donated to the RSPCA.
Anne Strick, senior administrator at the
school, said: “The children had a great time and the Year Fives
were made to feel special by having their photographs taken.” As
well as organising fundraising activities during their charity
week last month the pupils held a debate to decide which charities
should benefit. Mrs Strick added: “They organised all of the
stalls, bagged up the money and counted it with a member of staff.
It teaches them organisational skills, how to look after money and
they had to make sure it was all added up correctly.”
Nell Darby writes in
Perspectives on rural life
I live in David Cameron's constituency, in
the Cotswolds. It's a rural area that is seen by the media as
affluent and somewhat smug. Some local estate agents foster this
image, marketing properties to Londoners seeking weekend
"retreats". But my town, Chipping Norton, is a place conflicted
between the wealth of some of its residents and its ordinary
workers struggling to find decent jobs.
Chipping Norton is in danger of becoming a
dormitory town, where many residents have to commute away from the
area. Many people I know work in Oxford, Birmingham, Bristol or
London, creating a culture of long hours and expensive journeys.
There is a lack of jobs, particularly for those like me – mothers
with childcare commitments. The main part-time jobs offered are in
the two small local supermarkets or the leisure centre – but the
wages are low, and the costs of living are high. I've looked
further afield for jobs, but have still struggled to find one that
pays enough to make the commuting and childcare costs worthwhile.
For several years, I commuted to London, but working 10-hour
shifts with a three-hour daily commute proved to be too tiring to
maintain.
I love this area. I was born here, and am
now bringing my children up here. But the tradeoff is that my
earning potential has been drastically reduced. When a major local
employer closed six years ago with the loss of 400 jobs, the
majority of its site became a housing development. Moves like this
create a town with fewer sites available for companies to relocate
to and little incentive to do so. Conversely, the number of
residents increases – many of whom will work in other places, and
thus contribute little to the economy of their town.
I would like to see incentives for
businesses to relocate to more rural areas – tax breaks or other
benefits. Promoting business sites outside of metropolitan areas
should be made cheaper and easier. Housing developments shouldn't
be built in rural towns without consideration for the impact on
their economy and infrastructure. And, as a last resort, if
working mums have to commute some distance to work, then we need
better and cheaper public transport.
Every speed camera in Oxfordshire will be switched off next
week
EVERY
SPEED camera in Oxfordshire will be switched off next week and
drink driving, mobile phone and seat belt checks will be halted.
Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership - the body that has
co-ordinated the work for a decade - has closed down all
operations in the county after Oxfordshire County Council cut its
funding to the organisation. And Thames Valley Police has refused
to confirm if it will carry out its duty and continue the
essential enforcement work.
Mobile camera vans have already been
withdrawn and 72 fixed speed cameras and 7 ‘red light’ cameras
will be mothballed by August 1. As reported in the Oxford Mail,
Oxfordshire County Council has cut its funding for the partnership
by £600,000 this year in its bid to make £11m savings. The safer
roads partnership is a body set up by Thames Valley Police, nine
highways authorities such as Oxfordshire County Council, the
Highways Agency and other organisations. The highways authorities
contribute funding to it. It 'buys' six police officers from
Thames Valley Police to carry out its enforcement duties.
AN AMAZING
DAY.....BRILLIANT
Thanks to Deputy Mayor Chris Butterworth for the
pics
Brilliant was the overwhelming vote of
townspeople about Sunday's Festival. Let's make it an annual
affair was the consensus. A stage featuring performing groups and
bands was in operation all day. Among a string of great
performances the local favourites Make Make Fire played an awesome
set. The Chippy All Stars from Top School were fantastic as always
and the Retros produced a barnstorming finale which had everyone
on their feet. Everyone had their own favourite. The Market Square
was humming all day. Most people reckon there were at least a
thousand people in the square at the end of the afternoon. There
was a funfair, community stalls and a car show along Market
Street. The Town Council passed a vote of thanks on Monday
evening to the organisers and thanked them for a fantastic day.
Flossie wrote in the Forum...."I must say thank you to all
involved in the town festival today it was absolutely brilliant
and lovely to see the community work together. The groups were all
excellent - such good talent for a lovely town. I have lived here
all my life and I feel very very proud to live in Chippy. Thank
you once again and my family will look forward to next years
festival" Miss Chippy wrote ...."Oh my god yesterday was
fantastic. I really hope it now becomes an annual event...although
why stop there it would be great do this kind of thing a few times
each summer!! Business was booming for those trading
yesterday and the town never had a better atmosphere!" So say
all of us.
Dave delivers fast
on a big promise to Chippy
Well blow me....Dave has already delivered on
a big promise he made to the Town before the election. We were
told that when Dave became Prime MInister he would ensure that it
would be possible for the nurses at Chippy Hospital to stay
employed by the NHS - for at least three years. This was a solemn
promise made in 2007 by the Oxfordshire PCT. That promise was
overruled by the Labour Health Minister last year and provoked
strong protests from the local Action Groups.
Hilary Biles has kindly sent us a copy of a
letter from the new Heath Secretary Andrew Lansley to the Prime
Minister dated last week........Crucial extracts are as
follows.....
.....in 2007, after a local campaign,
Oxfordshire PCT agreed that Retention of Employment (RoE) could be
used to allow the staff to continue being employed by the PCT for
a period of three years without transferring their employment to
the Order of St John...........in 2009, following concerns about
the widespread use of RoE, the last Government passed regulations
that made any subsequent use of RoE subject to Secretary of State
approval. An application was made to use RoE in this instance but
was turned down by the then minister..........it is clear to me
that commitments were made by the PCT to staff and campaigners
concerning Chipping Norton Hospital. With colleagues, I will
therefore be discussing how we can give effect to the commitments
made on an exceptional basis.
Fantastic news. Really fast work. 6000 very
grateful Chippy residents. Three cheers for Dave!
Dave meets the Lido
Staff
David Cameron,
popped in for a cup of tea and a chat last Friday at The Lido.
Patron and long-time supporter of the open-air pool Dave
visited to see for himself the recently installed solar-powered
heating system in operation. The installation marks the completion
of a two-year project to replace all the plant and equipment, some
of which was 40 years old.
“The people here have done a
great job in raising the money to put in the investment and now
that there are ground source heat pumps, that’s going to reduce
the cost of heating this pool massively,” he said. “It shows that
going green can actually save you money, as well as helping save
the planet.” He also met Lido staff and trustees, chatted with
swimmers and complimented the organisation on meeting the needs of
local people, saying, “There’s a social aspect to this enterprise
which is about helping the elderly by making sure they can go on
swimming, getting children swimming, training lifeguards and
generally having a good, useful social purpose.” He praised
everyone who had been involved in saving the pool. “I’ve always
thought this is a great local facility and I remember the threat
of its closure and how bad that would have been for Chipping
Norton. I think that the people who have taken it on and run it
have done a fantastic job.”
Dawne Jay writes: Just back today from
three days camping at the Cornbury music Festival - I had a
fantastic weekend Saw a beautiful sight driving back from
Leafield to Chippy after the festival. As usual I had to stop and
capture the moment!! ....... another awesome sight in the
wonderful Cotswolds
Chippy GP ordained
as Deacon
MEN
and women from all walks of life begin a new ecclesiastical
journey at Christ Church in Oxford today. Forty-three new deacons
are being ordained by the Bishop of Oxford the Rt Rev John
Pritchard during three services. And the new recruits include an
archaeologist, a family GP, teachers – and even an expert on bugs.
They are about to begin a new life as curates in parishes across
the diocese, which covers Oxfordshire, Berkshire and
Buckinghamshire, after training for three years at theological
college. They will now embark on a three- to four-year curacy
under the supervision of a more experienced priest. In their first
year as a deacon, they train to take the special offices of the
church, known as the sacraments, including Holy Communion,
weddings and baptisms. They will then be ordained as priests.
For Chipping Norton GP Stephen Blake,
today’s ordination is the culmination of long journey. He said:
“It didn’t all come at once. It was an inkling 30 years ago. But
my medical training holds me in good stead.” Dr Blake will serve
as a part-time curate in Burford with Fulbrook and Taynton, but
continue as a GP at the Whitehouse Surgery in Chipping Norton. He
said: “I am wondering how I am going to fit it all in, but it will
be fine.”
Some serious
challenges ahead at Highlands Day Centre
Thanks to Peter Barbour for this account of last week's AGM:
The AGM for Highlands Day Centre was held on Tuesday June 29th
in the spacious day room at Highlands. It was as well that there
was a spacious room as there are doubts about the future of the
Day Centre and the attendance was a record. The meeting followed
the normal procedure and the first notable news came with the
chairman’s report. Pat Lake spoke of the relationship of Highlands
with Age Concern, now merged with Help the Age and renamed AGE UK.
Highlands [which also operates the CATS outings] is independent
but part of the AGE UK Federation. He went on to explain that the
County Council, which in the past has subsidised Highlands to the
extent of £37000 per annum, is reconsidering the organisation of
day centres for the elderly. New centres in the larger towns,
which excludes Chipping Norton, are to be set up Next we
learnt that attendances at Highlands had been falling, Capacity
was up to twenty two persons for four days of the week but now
there were on average only 35 regulars several of whom attended
more than once a week. This had led to an operating loss of £23000
in the year to 31 March 2010.
The
current charge to users was £6.50. To continue operating the
charge would have to be raised to about £15 because of the
underutilisation and in view of the current national financial
stringency Pat said it was likely that the subsidy would be
reduced or even completely withdrawn next April and discussions
were continuing and the outcome would not be known before
September. Various possibilities were being considered in
committee, for example transferring the services to the lower Town
Hall. Services include transport morning and afternoon from home
to centre, day care, morning coffee, cooked lunch, and afternoon
tea..
The
Treasurer, Mark Roach spoke on the accounts repeating the details
already mentioned and adding that the loss of £23000 was roughly
offset by a recovery in the value of Highlands investments. These
include the value of the freehold, still on the books at the price
paid on acquisition 20 years ago and the investments - over
£500,000 at book value and actually worth considerably more
Discussion with the floor followed the acceptance of the report
and accounts and next business was elections to the committee. Pat
Lake announced that with immediate effect he was standing down as
chairman - presumably he will still look after the CATS bookings
His resignation was followed by that of the treasurer [who would
continue to keep the books till a replacement was elected or
co-opted] and the secretary. The only position refilled was
that of secretary, Eve Coles offering herself. A vote of
thanks was moved for Pat Lake and the resigning members
It is
urgent that a new chairman and treasurer are found to see that the
service offered by Highlands is not lost and that the valuable
assets invested in this charity remain in Chipping Norton
Here's a good
idea....
People are always banging on about how
negative this site and its webmaster are. Someone is back to the
theme in the Forum today. Well lets be positive for a change. How
can we generate some skilled jobs and get something more useful
than a supermarket built on the Parker Knoll site? A few years ago
we strongly supported a really good idea which was to use the
Parker Knoll Employment site as the location for a "Cotswold
Furniture Village" pulling together a number of the hand-built and
bespoke companies and craftsmen in the area to create a super
showroom surrounded by manufacturing units as a retail
destination. This was rubbished by WODC who said that if you
tried to restrict the occupancy of units to a particular theme the
rentals would suffer. (You can see how much WODC know about all
this since they have not managed to get anything built on the PK
employment site let alone leased in six years.) Since then
others have proposed a grouping of design, film and graphics
companies but Banbury has now beaten us to that. Another idea was
to try and attract a number of F1 component manufacturers from
places like Brackley and Warwick so they could be nearer to
Renault. The challenge is that these kind of initiatives need
pro-active promotion of Chippy as an employment location - with
PR, literature, presentations, attendance at Trade Shows etc. The
District Council is charged with the responsibility of the
economic development of the town and they have never been prepared
to help us do anything. Not surprisingly the Partnership - full of
teachers- never got close to taking on this task. To the best of
my knowledge WODC have never tried to persuade a single employer
to move to Chippy - let alone succeeded. Their sights seem to be
totally trained on Witney and Carterton.
Well here's another great idea. I was
approached by a podiatrist who was looking for a base so that he
could expand his business into supplying equipment and products to
other practitioners. He wanted a consulting room alongside a
storage and distribution area. Somewhere right by the new hospital
would suit him fine. Blow me if a physiotherapist didn't
come up with a precisely similar concept a week later. Once you
start thinking health, beauty and fitness all kinds of other
possibilities come up ............fitness studio & gym, BUPA
health checks, opticians, massage and beauty parlour, dentists,
vaccination centre, aromatherapists, walk-in surgery, sun parlour,
plastic surgery, acupuncturists, organic restaurant etc etc
....welcome to the Chippy Health Campus. I can see folk from miles
around queuing up to spend their money there.
COUNTY PLAN TO WASTE
ONE MILLION POUNDS
TO MOVE DEAN PIT. WHY?
You've all heard what terrible financial
problems the County Council have and how they are having to cut
back on everything - the excuse is being used for anything from
pot holes to youth centres. Well you will never believe this. The
County Council are planning to spend ONE MILLION POUNDS (Say that
again ONE MILLION POUNDS) to close Dean Pit and move it to a new
site in Enstone. The WODC Head of Waste Management came to
the Town Council last night (22nd June) with the whole story. It
beggars belief. Nobody can explain why Dean Pit should be moved.
The Town Council have said in the past they believe it should stay
where it is. OCC officers together with WODC applied to the OCC
Planning Committee for a five year extension - having reviewed all
the options. The OCC Planning Committee refused permission to
their own officers application. And nobody can say why. Last
night we were told it was because of the strong objections of one
Dean resident. This could only have been the Prime Minister or the
Chairman of the West Oxfordshire Conservative Association Lord
Chadlington. Either way it is absolutely clear that the County
Council is bowing to political pressure and is prepared to waste
ONE MILLION PONDS in the process. The man from WODC said they have
now reviewed over 300 sites and the choice is now down to three -
all of them in Enstone. A protest group has already been
formed in Enstone and it is certain that the people of
Chipping Norton will want to support them. Dean Pit is a
much more accessible location to us than Enstone would ever be.
COUNTY COUNCIL WALKS
OFF WITH CHIPPY'S REGENERATION FUND - WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A "BY
YOUR LEAVE"
After the closure of Parker Knoll a Joint Committee of the County,
District and Town was set up under the chairmanship of Barry
Norton (Leader of WODC) to consider ways of mitigating the effect
on Chipping Norton of the loss of 400 jobs and to consider ways to
encourage the development of new employment opportunities. In that
Committee the County Council representative promised that £400,000
of the money the County had received for waiving a covenant on
part of the Parker Knoll land would be allocated to a “Capital
Resources” fund which would be used on projects to help the
economic regeneration of Chipping Norton and specifically towards
the creation of new jobs. No time limit was placed on this
undertaking A number of projects have been considered by the
Partnership since then for the use of the money. A proposal was
developed to set up an Enterprise centre (for which additional
funding was obtained from SEEDA). Another idea taken forward was
to subsidise the purchase by CETA of land at the old council depot
to build a new head office. Unfortunately neither of these
projects came to fruition. Basically because the Partnership
didn't know what it was doing.
At the
Town Council last night it emerged that now the Leader of the
County Council has written to the Mayor saying that there is only
£320,000 of this money left. No information about where
£80,000 has disappeared to? After talking to the District
and Councillor Biles the County don't think there are any viable
projects around in connection with job creation.. Nobody bothered
to ask the town. So the County have decided - again with
absolutely no consultation - to use £200,000 of the money towards
the Chippy Youth Centre and to simply appropriate the rest into
their general reserves.
The whole of this “Capital Resources” fund will be used without
any contribution at all being made to the economic development of
the town.
We will protest but
nothing will happen. This is a huge opportunity missed. We have
let hundreds of thousands of pounds slip through our fingers. Of
course there are a number of very worthwhile projects being worked
on which could have benefited from this fund. Despite being warned
that they had better get a move on and apply, the usual talk
shops in town simply continued debating - the Partnership, the
Town Hall and Publicity Committee of the Town Council and the
Guild of Commerce could all have accessed big money given some
decent worked-through proposals. They have missed the boat.
Later in the meeting
Gina Burrows said that because her Publicity Committee could not
raise the £200 needed to host a Town Council website she was
recommending that the Town Council accept an offer to have some
pages on the website initially funded by the County Council but
now apparently funded by Ken Norman's Breakfast Club. Had she and
her committee woken up a bit earlier in the year she could have
all the money she needed from the "Capital Resources" fund. Now it
seems as if details of Planning Applications will be appearing
alongside advertisements for local builders!! There is no
other local government authority in the country that communicates
with its electors on a site sponsored by local businesses. Indeed
its probably illegal to do so. Its about avoiding being seen to be
under a commercial prejudicial influence. But nobody had checked.
This didn't stop the Town Council from happily agreeing to the
proposal. What a complete fiasco!
Have I got some
Parking News for you?
This morning at the Traffic Advisory
Committee your webmaster was proposing that ten-minute stopping
should be allowed along Topside to allow people to make very quick
visits to shops. . There was a rush to rubbish this suggestion.
Councillors Coles and Graves said it was a stupid idea (but then
Councillor Graves always says that any suggestion from Councillor
Alcock is a stupid idea). The man from the County Council said it
wasn't practical to have ten minutes - who ever heard of such a
thing. Then the Parking Supremo from WODC joined in the onslaught.
In the process of trying to make your webmaster look stupid
he spilled the beans on something which was news to me and I
suspect will be news to everyone else. Remember he was using this
information to show why my suggestion was comple6tely unnecessary.
The fact is you can already park along Topside for six
minutes.......
From the time a warden first spots your car parked
illegally you have six minutes to make a getaway. This means that
anyone can park on yellow lines for six minutes without risking a
ticket.Your dash into the newsagents
is safe.
Here's why. This is what we were
told.....The first step in the process of issuing a ticket is for
the warden to enter your car registration into their computerised
machine. Once this is done the machine then locks for six minutes
and the warden cannot complete the transaction during that time so
if you leave before the ticket is all completed you are away
and clear. That's what the committee was "officially" told this
morning. I reckon six minutes is long enough for most people to
use a cash machine or buy a sandwich so I'm not sure we need to
change things after all. Your webmaster was immediately asked by
Chairman Graves to suppress this information (after all typical
Chippy drivers are not grown up enough to be able to handle this
sort of classified stuff). However in the name of the new
transparency promised by Dave and his coalition friends
chippingnorton.net has decided to "publish and be damned". Enjoy
your six minutes everyone.
Some readers may be aware
that your webmaster is soon to move from his convenient town
centre house so he has suddenly become very interested in how he
is going to pop in to Nash's for his daily Eccles Cake in the
future.
GREAT NEWS CICELY
Absolutely delighted to hear that Cicely
Maunder has just been elected Chairman of the Chipping Norton
Conservatives. About time too. We might now see the possibility of
a few first-class Tory candidates being selected for both the Town
and District Councils after the fiascos of the last couple of
years. Cicely can show the way by standing herself next year for
the Town Council where she has unfinished business. Apparently
Cicely was opposed in the election for the Tory Chairman's job by
the hapless Annie - who thought that
her success in the District Council contest somehow gave her the
right to be in charge. The membership put her right about that.
Annie was lucky to win the District seat only by hanging on to the
coattails of Dave. Cicely is one of those splendid people
who gets on and actually does things - and never shirks from
saying exactly what she thinks. For the last few years she has
been a superb Chairman of the Welfare Charities Committee and
Chairman of Ladies Probus - at the same time as fighting back from
serious illness - winning her many new admirers along the way. She
has also found the time to set about various members of the
Council accusing them of neglecting their duties (including your
webmaster who has suffered the lash of Cicely's criticism several
times recently). Its good to have her back in the thick of Town
Politics. It won't be long before Cicely resumes her term as Mayor
- which was rudely interrupted by a conspiracy of old fogey
councillors who didn't like her reforming ways. Things are looking
up.
Alex from
Chippy is the LION MASSAGER.
British
wildlife expert Alex Larenty, 50, calms the savage cats with
gentle foot-rubs. Alex, originally of Chipping Norton,
Oxfordshire, moved to South Africa in 1999. He started massaging
Jamu, nine, after putting insect repellent on him one day. He
said: "I gave him a scratch and massage and he rolled around with
his tongue out. Now he adores massages - his favourite game is
This Little Piggy." He has also used his techniques to relax
grizzly bears and lull
elephants to give them a manicure. The keeper strolled up to 40st
Jamu at The Lion Park near Johannesburg, South Africa, yesterday.
The big male responded by rolling over and waving his paws
expectantly. Alex then gave him a rub and Jamu showed their bond
by baring his teeth. Alex, still a keen fan of the England
football team, is willing to try his magic on Wayne Rooney and Co
while they stay in South Africa for the World Cup. He said:
"Anything to help them win."
Sainsbury bid for
out-of-town Carterton store rejected
Identical situation to Chippy
A
CONTROVERSIAL plan for an out-of-town supermarket in Carterton has
been rejected. Sainsbury wanted to build a 26,000 sq ft food store
in the empty West Oxfordshire Business Park. But on the advice of
planning officers, West Oxfordshire district councillors voted to
throw out the proposal.
Peter Handley, who was among those who
voted against, said: “It is against the local plan for the area,
which is concentrated on developing Carterton town centre. “There
is new legislation from the Government that says all out of town
development must be refused until the town centres are developed,
as one would starve the other.”
For many years Carterton Town Council has
planned to redevelop the old market site, in the centre of the
town, with new shops and houses. A project team is working on the
long-awaited revamp, which is reliant on a supermarket coming to
the site to attract further shops. Mr Handley added: “The
application by Sainsbury’s would have just pulled the rug out of
the deal on the town centre. As ratepayers, we want to make a
sustainable deal for the town.”
A Sainsbury’s survey claimed that 2,339
households and businesses – 92 per cent of respondents – expressed
their support for a store. Carterton resident Andrew Ashman said:
“The West Oxfordshire Retail Park site has been left empty for far
too long and the new store would have resulted in more interest in
the site. It could be argued that the site is now in the middle of
Carterton given the expansion of the town to the east. A new store
on the old market site would mean more
traffic in the centre of town, including large delivery
vehicles passing close to primary schools. There would be three
food stores in close proximity, all requiring several deliveries a
week.”
Ben Littman, Sainsbury’s development
surveyor, said: “We are naturally disappointed that our proposals
have been refused. Our planning application generated overwhelming
support from the local community.”
Silver
Swimmers
Chipping Norton Lido’s free
Silver Swim sessions for over 60s are continuing this summer with
the added bonus of free tuition for those wishing to gain greater
confidence in the water or improve their technique. The dedicated
sessions run every Wednesday morning from 10.30am until 12.30pm
and have proved extremely popular over the past five years.
Additional funding from an individual donor has allowed The Lido
to provide a specialist teacher who is available at each session
to offer help, encouragement and advice, free of charge. Trustee
Claire Jarvis commented, “We’re very proud of our provision for
older swimmers and are delighted that we can now offer free
teaching alongside the opportunity simply to swim and socialise.
Our teacher Vanessa is very experienced in working with more
mature learners and has an excellent track record in successfully
encouraging even the most nervous beginners into the water. We are
especially grateful to the kind donor whose generosity has ensured
that the sessions remain available to all Over 60s in the area.”
For more information about The
Lido and opening times, call 01608 643188 or visit
www.chippylido.co.uk
Garden Grabbing to
be Stopped. Three cheers for that.
Decentralisation
minister Greg Clark is giving local councils immediate powers to
prevent the building of new homes in back gardens, which has
been on the rise in recent years. According to the Communities
and Local Government Department, the number of houses being
built on gardens rose from one in 10 to a quarter of new
properties between 1997 and 2008.
Town halls have struggled to stop the trend as gardens have been
classified as ''previously residential land'', making them
brownfield sites in the same category as derelict factories and
old railway sidings. Mr Clark said he would be changing the
designation of gardens from brownfield land to make it easier
for local authorities to stop unwanted development, allowing
them to reject planning applications for new houses and blocks
of flats that local people oppose and which would ruin the
character of the area. The step, which he said would not affect
people who wanted to build extensions on their homes, was
welcomed by garden and wildlife organisations.
The move to stop garden grabbing,
promised in both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat
manifestos ahead of the general election, is the latest by the
Government to implement coalition pledges to hand more power to
local communities. Unveiling the plans today, Mr Clark will say:
''For years the wishes of local people have been ignored as the
character of neighbourhoods and gardens have been destroyed,
robbing communities of vital green space. It is ridiculous that
gardens have until now been classified in the same group as
derelict factories and disused railway sidings, forcing councils
and communities to sit by and watch their neighbourhoods get
swallowed up in a concrete jungle. Today I am changing the
classification of garden land so councils and communities no
longer have their decisions constantly overruled, but have the
power to work with industry to shape future development that is
appropriate for their area. This is just the start of wholescale
reform I want to make to the planning system, so councils and
communities are centre-stage in a reformed system that works for
them, and is not just a tool of top-down policy.''
A
BUS company has stopped running regular passenger services after
80 years of giving “rattling good rides” to communities in west
Oxfordshire. Worth’s Coaches, of Enstone, stopped operating the 69
and 71 services from Chipping Norton to Witney and Banbury when
passenger numbers fell by 20 per cent after the firm lost a county
council subsidy in March last year.
The decline in
passenger numbers, caused by running in competition with a
replacement subsidised service run by Witney firm RH
Buses,
meant the family firm’s services ran at a loss. This was despite
many residents remaining loyal to the hourly No 69 service between
Chipping Norton, Charlbury and Witney, via Finstock and Hailey,
with 5,000 passengers using the buses every month.
Director Paul Worth, whose grandfather
Dickie started the firm in 1922 and began running regular bus
services in 1930, said: “It was a sad day to finish the services
80 years after my grandfather began them. When it started in the
1930s, the services were so busy even double-deckers weren’t big
enough, because there were so many passengers, who didn’t have
cars. A lot of passengers remained very loyal through the years
and we wanted to continue the service for them, because we’d been
doing it for so long. It’s a shame to stop but we had to take a
commercial decision at the end of the day, for the long-term
future of the company. The way the economy is at present, we can’t
have things running at a loss unless you have something else
making a good profit to subsidise it.”
The firm which uses the slogan ‘For a
rattling good ride’ will in future concentrate on running
private-hire coaches and contracts to operate buses carrying
schoolchildren in Cherwell and west Oxfordshire. Five drivers were
made redundant in March and April after the firm lost out on
contracts for school runs. However, the firm still owns 12 coaches
for hire and employs 25 staff, who work as drivers, mechanics and
back office staff at the firm’s garage on the A44, where they also
operate a petrol station and shop.
Mr Worth, who rode on the last service
with passengers on Saturday, May 29, had driven for the firm for
27 years until he contracted meningitis and then suffered a stroke
last year. His 68-year-old father Richard, the firm’s managing
director, still gets behind the wheel from time to time to fill in
when drivers are ill. Among the famous passengers who have used
the firm’s services are former Witney MP and Home Secretary Lord
Hurd and ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, who boarded one of the firm’s
coaches with his former Bond girl wife Barbara Bach to get to her
sister’s wedding in 1993.
Planning for the
Future of Chipping Norton
Summary of comments
received by WODC from Chippy residents
From Witney 200 residents submitted comments about their section
of the proposed Local Plan. From Chippy there were 14 about
theirs. Oh well nobody need complain when the hundreds of new
houses are built up at Tank farm. All these 14 responses were
from residents of Chipping Norton. Their comments received are
summarised below.
Expansion of the town to the east ≠
Other smaller sites are available in
Chipping Norton to meet the objective of “modest growth”.
Concern that development of big sites such as Tank Farm and
Fowlers Barn Farm will greatly expand the town boundary
≠
Development of land at Tank Farm will
result in the loss of open fields
≠
Before development is allowed to proceed it
will be important to assess the archaeological potential of the
area to be affected, in particular the Tank Farm site
≠
Support for the location of additional
housing off London Road (Tank Farm) – the site proposed for
housing would link up well with the development on the Parker
Knoll site and the development on the hospital/care home site
≠
One respondent felt that allowing the
Parker Knoll industrial site to be developed for housing opens
the door for the Tank Farm site to be developed as well
≠
Building in the Tank Farm area will
overlook housing in Brassey Close because the land is much
higher
≠
Development will greatly increase the
current average build rate in Chipping Norton
≠
Brownfield land adjacent to London Road
should be used for future housing growth, not greenfield sites.
Further extending the town will harm the objective “to protect
the heritage of the town”
≠
One comment questioned whether it was
appropriate to permit buildings so close to a water tower,
outlining that they are normally only ever located in
out-of-town sites
≠
One comment stated that no consideration
has been given to the microclimate of the proposed housing area.
Being one of the highest, most exposed points in Oxfordshire, it
was felt that insufficient consideration has been given to the
quality of life the landscape would offer. Houses will be
exposed to strong winds
≠
Rural character of the footpath from Wards
Road via Tank Farm to London Road must be maintained
≠
Problem of ground water will become a more
serious problem with further housing. A comment stated that
houses adjoining the site proposed for housing already
suffer from ground water flooding during periods of heavy
rainfall
Shopping, Jobs and Employment ≠
With the closure of the Parker Knoll site,
concern was expressed over how the balance between jobs and
housing is likely to be maintained. Responses felt a key
priority should be to have jobs in the town to give people the
opportunity to work close to home, rather than commute. Job
provision should be the overriding priority for the
Chipping Norton strategy
≠
Important to make land available for
business use – more positive interventions required for to
actively encourage small businesses
≠
High local house prices will mean that new
residents are likely to commute out of the town to achieve
higher paid employment
≠
Encouragement should be given for start-up
businesses, including those run from home in the town
≠
What is the justification for further
employment development when the Parker Knoll planning permission
is yet to be implemented?
≠
One respondent noted that new houses built
in the town when the economy was prosperous were slow to be
sold, pinpointing this issue largely as a consequence of a lack
of employment
≠
Concern over the lack of support for small
market towns, such as Chipping Norton, particularly due to out
of town shopping centres
≠
Concern that major retailers will damage
the vitality of Chipping Norton High Street
≠
Query as to why, now that the residential
element of the Parker Knoll site has been completed, no work has
commenced on the construction of the employment and
services element of the permitted development
≠
Further development of the town for housing
will serve to provide a dormitory for other towns, such as
Oxford
≠
An enterprise development centre should be
prioritised
≠
One of the town areas marked as “land
available for new business and employment” and “main employment
site” is presently Oxfordshire County Council’s road gritting
depot for which outline planning consent has been sought to
erect new covers and facilities – question over public money to
be spent on this when further changes may be made in the future
Traffic, Parking and transport ≠
No firm plans for aim to reduce traffic;
heavy through traffic remains a concern
≠
Traffic problems in the town need to be
addressed; particular concerns raised over heavy goods
vehicles/lorries travelling through the town centre. A mandatory
weight limit was suggested in one response, others suggesting a
total ban on lorries through Chipping Norton
≠
Conflict in the preferred strategy in terms
of aiming to achieve improved air quality whilst simultaneously
permitting HGVs to drive through the town and not supporting a
bypass for the town
≠
Concerns over safety along London Road
coupled with future traffic generation from the new hospital and
residential care home. The former Parker Knoll site and parking
outside the Holy Trinity Church were noted as main concerns in a
number of responses
≠
Need to improve pedestrian and cycle routes
and access to bus services – it has not been identified how this
will be achieved
≠
New developments in Chipping Norton must
have access to public transport within the site, for example the
X8 and X9 bus services route must be extended to include the new
houses on London Road and provide links to the new school
≠
Increased frequency of train services on
the Cotswolds Line must be encouraged along with late evening
services from London
≠
Improved cycleways and footways needed to
connect any new developments to Chipping Norton town centre
≠
What provision for car parking is suggested
in connection with the Albion Street development?
≠
Oxford bound traffic should be compulsorily
re-routed up Banbury Road
≠
Development of land to the east of the town
provides the opportunity for a relief road that would by-pass
the Horsefair stretch of the A44 (AQMA). It would also act as an
alternative route through the town
≠
Expansion should be seen alongside improved
connectivity with transport hubs and major settlements
Community facilities and infrastructure ≠
Opportunities must be taken to use S106
agreements to fund community amenities, not just on the proposed
strategic site. The response includes the example of requiring a
comprehensive approach to be taken as a whole to the development
of the hospital, ex-ambulance station and St John Castle View
care home so that the most appropriate sites are used to meet
community needs, and not driven by current land ownership of the
parts
≠
Preference for a mixture of uses on old
hospital, ambulance station and Castle View sites
≠
Additional housing will have an adverse
impact on local services, for example local doctor and dental
surgeries
≠
Development of additional housing should
not take place until supporting facilities and employment
opportunities are in place
≠
Concern over the implications on local
education provision and facilities
≠
The town requires a permanent tourist
centre
≠
Provision of extra care housing is
particularly important
Other comments ≠
One response noted a “hammer head” in
Cotswold Crescent was provided when the estate was built. Modest
growth in this area has the advantage of being close to the
present schools, leisure centre and facilities at Greystones.
≠
Extreme care required in the design and
materials used for the proposed new Coop building and the
landscaping, in order to retain the historic context of the site
and maintain the character of a sensitive central town location
≠
Integrity of burgage plots and green
boundaries must be maintained
≠
Any development which may affect the
burgage plots in the town centre should include a full
assessment of both above ground and below ground archaeology
(more detailed comments on this issue have been provided)
≠
To maintain a balanced community, care
should be taken to include higher end housing as well as
affordable housing
≠
The provision of affordable housing was a
concern for one respondent - fearing that it would result in
poor quality, high density housing, which will encourage less
desirable occupants to locate within the town; bringing
increased anti-social behaviour and crime into Chipping Norton.
This will require a greater police presence. Further housing
growth within Oxford was suggested as an alternative, where
infrastructure is in place to manage such housing growth
≠
Area to the west of the town and adjacent
to the business estates north of the A44 should be utilised. One
response, although noted that the area falls within the AONB,
felt this status could be overcome and the land would be more
preferable for development due to; the proximity to existing
business uses, and because the land is elevated and is only at
the approaches to the town, therefore minimising the impact on
the appearance of Chipping Norton.
≠
It would be possible to build housing
sensitively within the areas adjoining or within the AONB,
perhaps on several sites rather than one large development. The
comment was supported by the permission granted in 2006 for new
houses in the Old Quarry, which is within the Chipping Norton
Conservation Area
≠
Number of houses proposed is too high to
achieve the aim of maintaining the town’s special character and
vitality
≠
Figure of a “minimum of 800 homes”
conflicts with the statement in the Sustainability Appraisal
that “ a major urban extension of 500 or more new homes is
likely to have an unacceptable impact on the character and
setting of this small market town” – one response suggests a
“minimum of 800 homes” is replaced with “a maximum of 500
homes”. As part of these revisions, the response noted that the
current percentage requirement of 40% affordable housing may
need to be increased in order to ensure an adequate supply of
affordable houses from a reduced number of houses
≠
Development offers the opportunity to
produce a history trail of Chipping Norton, particularly
in relation to the redevelopment of the Co-op store and Castle
View
≠
Measures must be taken to protect existing
hedges and trees
Dean Pit to close
- official
The council announced on 19th May plans to
replace the recycling centre at Dean Pit, near Chipping Norton.
The location of the replacement site has yet to be confirmed but
it will be near the existing facility. County Hall is hoping
this new facility will be running next year, when the existing
site is due to close.
Chippy
has been leading the way with coalitions for ages. It's perhaps
where the new PM got his inspiration from. But there's a local
twist. Its the Conservatives and Labour who team up on our Town
Council. They have voted together many times to waste money
on a Partnership which has now folded. They bleat like crazy
about chippingnorton.net and have been threatening for five
years to start their own "unbiassed" website. Nothing so far.
They voted together against Keith Greenwell as Mayor. Together
they wrote a letter criticising Councillor Watkins for being
rude about Ken Norman and sent it to the local press. Most
shamefully they trumped up a charge against Councillor Alcock
accusing him of harassing Guildhall staff and threatened
to call in a Standards officer. They are a complete joke and
manage between them to achieve nothing and to lead us nowhere.
Be warned Dave. That's what coalitions are like. ............
Everyone is on the move...Hilary is moving from Vice Chair to
Chair of the County Council......the Mayor has switched bus
routes from Witney and now plies his trade between Bicester and
Banbury....There are strong rumours that John Grantham is leaving the Labour Party and joining
his wife in the Tories (Seems as if the switch may not have
happened yet Celia has told your webmaster in several rude
e-mails following the publication of this Paris Pump that it is
none of anybody's business which party John belongs to - now
that he is not on any local council. She is kidding.
John is still a big public figure.). ..... Bob Hayward is going back to Cyprus
so lets hope Cicely is taking over the Chippy Conservative party
and they will start finding some better local government
candidates in future
.... Your webmaster is moving to the Mill (from now on the
phrase "trouble at Mill" will assume a new significance in Chippy) ..... Also our Police Inspector is moving having been
promoted to Chief Inspector so there is a vacancy for a bright
up and coming young Inspector looking for their first posting.
Step forward Inspector Clare Macintosh - available, keen to get
the job, lives in the town and knows it backwards. Clare was a
very popular and effective sergeant here for several years.
Everyone would think that was a very smart appointment. Come on
Jack Mahli you know it makes sense...............and of course,
last but certainly not least Dave is moving from Dean to
Chequers. After being photographed at the Daylesford Farm
Shop over Christmas Dave took the advice I gave him in the last
edition of Parish Pump and started lowering his social sights a
bit in time for the election. Taking the Times Political
Correspondent to the Old Mill Cafe for breakfast during the
election campaign was perhaps a bit extreme. Mind you, it was
very early and the bikers hadn't arrived by then. The big
chauffeur-driven Merc did rather mess things up for the S3 that
morning. Shouldn't complain though because it was the one and
only time that our MP came to town during the election campaign.
That's just the price we Chippy taxpayers have to pay for being
the "safe" ballot box fodder in the "safe" seat which every
party leader needs to be able to safely ignore at election time
so he can spend all his campaigning time where it really matters
- in the inner London suburbs. Having the PM as our MP is - of
course - an enormous privilege (Yawn yawn) Now that Dave is
safely installed in Downing Street we all expect a few things to
happen fast. First (as promised) The Local
PCT will be told that NHS nurses can be seconded to the new
Chippy Hospital after all. Annie (our new District Councillor)
swore faithfully to us that this would happen in her last
leaflet delivered the day before Polling day. Second. Hilary Biles will
surely be
appointed Dave's Coalition Social and Entertainments Supremo for
Oxfordshire (Dave has never forgotten
that memorable fundraising Midsummer Dinner in a marquee two years ago. Hilary
brilliantly organised the whole event including cooking new potatoes for
a hundred people. Yum yum.) Hilary's Plans are already well
advanced for a State Banquet to be held at Shipton under
Wychwood Village Hall in honour of President Obama. The
main dish apparently will be venison from Lord Chadlington's
Dean Manor estate. Hilary will insist that chains will be worn. Third we expect that Dean Pit will
be closed soon since we are reliably told that the Secret Service
regard Dave's Dean pad as almost impossible to protect- before you start adding in the
extra threat posed by a constant
stream of Chipping Norton riff raff taking their rubbish to the
tip. The burghers of Enstone are about to get their payback
for defying WODC's wish to turn their airfield
into a performance car playground for Dave's chum Jeremy (would you believe
I'm fifty this year) Clarkson. The waste dump at Enstone is
about to be re-commissioned. No point in protesting Enstone folks.
The Deal
is done! .......... Bit like the new Sainsbury's. Who is kidding
who with all these phoney consultations going on? The County
only have eyes for all that lovely Sainsbury's money to pay for
a new access road to the council land at Tank Farm - which has
been recommended for residential development by the WODC
planners in their latest submission for the local development
plan (what a cosy setup this all is!). Everybody seems to have
forgotten that those same planners solemnly promised five years
ago that the land Sainsbury's now want to use for a supermarket
would be strictly allocated for building small industrial units
which the Appraisal had shown was what Chippy wanted and needed
more than anything else. The Planners went further and made this
a strict condition of the planning permission for houses granted
to Parker Knoll and Wimpey. They can't just simply ignore their
own binding agreements. If they do one national organisation has
discreetly offered to help fund the costs of a Judicial Review.
Why should we allow WODC to kill off our town centre? They have
already nearly destroyed the character of the place by allowing
every spare square foot to be filled by yet another terrace of
two-bedroom mews house (ie places with no gardens!)
.........Speaking of us being ripped off by the local authority
has everyone noticed how the potholes along the Witney-Chippy
road have all been repaired as far as Charlbury. Past Spelsbury
the craters are of an unimaginable size all the way into Chippy.
What are our councillors doing about this. Absolutely
zilch...........And has everyone noticed that despite the
arrival of the new wardens they have made absolutely no
difference whatsoever to the parking chaos along Topside. The
new wardens are being spotted in far-flung locations like
Cornish Road and Lords Piece Road. Its not clear whether the
Fishing Tackle Shop still retains its attraction for them. But
what are they up to exactly??....And what about the policy
announcement from WODC several years ago that A-boards would not
be allowed outside shops because they represented a danger to
blind and handicapped people. Try counting the number that now
clutter up Middle Row. And when did cafes on narrow pavements
become official policy?? The Old Mill started by putting out a
couple of chairs. Now there is so much furniture and general
clobber outside it is actually impossible for two prams to pass
each other on the pavement........Strange interaction with our
local police the other day. Having noticed two PCSOs spending
ages trying to move on a group of middle-aged drunks from the
Town Hall steps I was surprised to see that a few hours later
the group had moved as far as the bench outside the Fox. Might
be totally disconnected but the very next morning I found hidden
behind our garden gate just along West Street a rucksack with
four very expensive bottles of whisky in it - unopened. Value at
least £80. You can come up with your own theory about how they
got there. I rang the non-emergency police number. They weren't
interested. Our neighbourhood team doesn't have time to come and
collect them. You will have to take them to the Police Station
the lady at the Call centre said. "You are kidding me" I
said........Bet you didn't know that there is a person who works
at WODC called the Street Naming & Numbering Officer. No you
read that right "Street Naming & Numbering Officer". He wrote
last week to the Town Clerk asking him to think up a name for
the new hospital and the street outside it. The Town Clerk quite
properly told him that the name for the hospital had already
been decided. It was agreed by everybody that it would be called
the "New War Memorial Hospital" "Not so fast" says the Street
Naming Officer......."Further
to our discussion, this is an explanation and clarification in
respect of the matter of naming the new hospital in Chipping
Norton. I can't name it 'New War Memorial Hospital' as there is
a 'War Memorial Hospital' already established in the centre of
town. Royal Mail will not allow a similar name to be established
while the original name exists as this would cause extreme
confusion. I understand that eventually the old hospital will be
demolished for new houses/flats etc (no planning approval yet!)
and then we can consider transferring the name 'War Memorial
Hospital' to the new hospital. In the meantime it is necessary
to agree on a current name now, to enable me to establish the
address and new postcode with Royal Mail and all relevant
authorities. I normally support the decision of the Town/Parish
Councils in these matters, so I look forward to your suggestions
to enable me to reconcile this matter".........A
huge row has broken out, Rob Evans describes the dispute as
"bureaucratic bananas". Quite right. Hilary says
"I suggest you
just add 2 after Hospital" Perhaps she has been to the cinema a
lot recently and is thinking of film titles. Councillor
Greenwell says he has just received a letter from the PCT in
which the present hospital is called "Chipping Norton Community
Hospital" so there is no problem after all. Why have a
Street Naming Officer if he can't sort some daft issue like this
out?........All sorts of strange stories are now surfacing about
the selection of candidates in the recent District Council
Election in which Gina Burrows put on a storming performance but
not quite good enough to overhaul the hapless Annie. Chippy
First had seriously considered running Councillor Greenwell in
the hope of splitting off some Tory votes and letting Gina in
(the same tactic that had worked three years ago when Eve Coles
was elected) What nobody knew until last week was that a
number of people had also been trying to persuade Sue
Bartholomew to stand as an Independent - and a little bird tells
me that Chunky Townley (shockingly) was among her backers. Keith
thought it would be a waste of time fighting the Cameron tide
and Sue thought she wasn't quite ready for the job yet. What a
pity. So we are to be lumbered with Annie after all. Here's to
the next time...A
Very Happy Summer to all readers
of chippingnorton.net. Six months ago I wrote...."Any day now the new town website –
masterminded by coalition partners Gina Burrows (Labour) and Hilary Williams
(Tory) will be up and
running so you won’t have to put up with all this biased rubbish
much longer." Six months later and no signs of the website yet.
Keep checking.
Hilary visits St
Mary's
It is Walk to School Week
encouraging pupils and parents to walk rather than use the car.
County Councillor Biles (the Chairman of Oxfordshire County
Council) attended and tells us "There was a fantastic turn out at St Mary's.. The
children really enjoyed the walk and they are great role models
for other schools!!!!" Pssst.......absolutely love the new
chain Hilary
Fantastic effort James. Well done.
James Edgington is 42 lives in Chippy
and works for Cotswold Carriers. He took part in the 1st
Virgin London Marathon running in aid of the children's charity
Barnardos and with gift aid raised over £ 2100. Fantastic
effort! James says: "I have competed in a few half marathons but
this was a much bigger challenge both physically and mentally.
This is the first part of a 'treble' of the 3 biggest runs in
the calendar that I am taking part in with the Great North Run
in Newcastle in September and the Great South Run in Portsmouth
in October. Over 110,000 runners combined! Its good to get the
worst one over with first! I would like to thank all those
who have helped me in the fundraising and to everybody, friends,
family and local businesses who kindly donated money to help me
reach my target"
Prue Leith helps to launch new food festival
There
was a real buzz in Chipping Norton’s Town Hall last week as
visitors poured in to take part in the town’s first Food Festival,
which was a celebration of all things local. The event was the
brainchild of Nick Pullen and his partner Sally Daniel, who run
the Wild Thyme Restaurant, in New Street, Chipping Norton. I have
written about this enterprising couple before after hearing about
their enthusiasm for local food. I was impressed then and even
more impressed now, having seen how they have managed to bring the
community together by organising this splendid little festival.
Running a restaurant together had been
this couple’s dream for many years; in fact ever since leaving
college Nick has been determined to put his skills as a chef into
practice. Since opening Wild Thyme in 2008 he has done just that,
while Sally runs the front of the house. The moment they arrived
at Chipping Norton the couple began seeking out local suppliers
and now obtain almost every thing they need for their menu from
nearby farms and suppliers. Sally said: “Since moving to Chipping
Norton Nick and I have been harbouring a desire to start an annual
food festival in the town and celebrate all the wonderful produce
that the area has to offer. This year we thought we would start
small – well smallish – with an event that provides the
opportunity for the community to meet the local suppliers and look
more about products, sample something new and hopefully be
inspired to try out a few recipes.” She went on to say that it is
their hope that the event will grow over time into something that
attracts visitors to the area and helps put the town on the map as
a foodie destination.
The
couple were particularly thrilled that food writer Prue Leith, the
author of Leith’s Cookery Bible and known for her remarkable
Cookery School agreed to open the festival. During her opening
speech Prue Leith (who lives in the Chipping Norton area and is
pictured on the right with Sally) said that unfortunately people
did not always realise what a pleasure it was to buy locally. If
we are to enjoy our lives we should go out of our way to enjoy
food as it is such an important factor in our lives.” she said.
Producers taking part included Alice
Barnfield who, along with her partner Matthew Eaton, make their
country wines under the Field Bar label from hedgerow produce and
local fruits, using centuries-old recipes that call for basic
ingredients. Her strawberry wine is particularly good. Alice has
achieved a reasonably dry finish by using champagne yeast, so that
while the wine delivers a positive strawberry flavour that
captures memories of a sunny summer afternoon, it has a crisp
medium dry quality. I admit being envious actually, for my own
home-made strawberry wine is often rather too sweet. I will accept
her advice and change my yeast this year. If the final result is
as good as hers I will be very happy.
One of the many events during the festival
was a butchery demonstration by local butcher John Kench. of J.R.
Kench Butchers in the High Street. He demonstrated how to joint a
chicken successfully and then showed how he cut up a whole lamb
into joints.
There were also cookery demonstrations by
Nick and his assistant chef Charlotte Teal throughout the day.
These included one of the restaurant’s popular desserts – dark
chocolate fondant and ginger ice cream served with peanut brittle.
Absolutely delicious! Flavoursome samples of smoked meats and fish
products from Upton Smokeries were there for everyone to try and
artisan cheese makers Roger and Karen Crudge were tempting
visitors with samples of their excellent cheeses. Wykham Park
Farm, near Banbury, who produce a range of vegetables and fruit as
well as rearing their own cattle, sheep and pigs, was represented
too.
No food festival would be complete without
a few recipe books, which is why Chipping Norton’s own independent
bookshop attended the festival too. This gave people a chance to
look at the many excellent books that Prue has written over the
years, including her Cookery Bible which ought to be on everyone’s
bookshelf. I certainly call on it often when I want to check a
basic/classic recipe or need to check just how to prepare a dish
that I don’t cook very often. The great thing about Jaffé and
Neale, in the town’s Market Square, is that book lovers can stop
and enjoy an excellent cup of coffee while deciding which book
they will take home with them. As many of the books on display are
written by local authors, it is a very special shop.
Nick and Sally were overwhelmed by the
public’s response to their festival. Indeed it was all so positive
they are already talking about turning it into an annual event.
Who knows, perhaps the ancient market town of Chipping Norton will
eventually become the food centre of the Cotswolds?
Congratulations
to our Town Clerk Vanessa.
Little Joseph James Oliveri. Born on
Saturday the 8th May 2010 at 9.12am.
Dark hair, blue eyes. Weighing in at 7.7 lb.
Mr Cameron’s
political agent and leader of West Oxfordshire District Council,
Barry Norton, said: “The Conservatives finished first in last
week’s election, and there’s no doubt David has earned the moral
right to Number 10. David has the intelligence, political ability,
and determination to sort out the mess this country is in, and put
Britain back on the road to growth and prosperity once again.”
Cotswold
Journal: You have a home in Dean, near Chipping Norton, where
you currently spend time with your family many weekends. If you
become PM, and therefore have the use of Chequers, what will
happen to the home in Dean, and will you still try to spend some
time there?
DC: Yes, I will maintain my home in
Dean and continue to spend as much time there as possible. There
is nothing I like more than spending time in my constituency at
the weekends with Sam and the children, going for a long country
walk, having Sunday lunch with the family, and being able to
attend local events. As I have said, it is all about striking a
balance between work, constituency and down time.
CJ: What would you say to your
constituents, in particular those in Chipping Norton and the
surrounding area, about your future commitment to their interests
if you become PM?
DC: This election is different, both for
me and for you. I’m not just standing to be Witney’s Member of
Parliament. I’m also standing to be your Prime Minister. But
whatever job I have after the election, I will always stand up for
my constituency and work for everyone who lives in West
Oxfordshire. I’ll be just as contactable, just as supportive to
local causes, and just as passionate about taking up constituents’
cases and fighting for local people. It has been a true privilege
to live in and serve this wonderful area of West Oxfordshire over
the past nine years. I hope that I will be returned as your MP, so
that I can continue in this role, and so that together, we can
build a better country.
The people of Chippy have spoken!
Chippy's district council election result was
an uncanny reflection of the National situation. No overall
majority. No single candidate was able to secure a clear
mandate. The Tory candidate Annie had most votes but a coalition
of Labour (Gina Burrows) and Liberal (Chris Tatton) produces a
convincing broad-based majority. It is perfectly clear that the
electorate of Chipping Norton are demanding that they should be
represented by a "progressive" grouping rather than another tired
old has-been -just like the ones who have been turning up at
Witney as ballot fodder for years. The people of Chipping Norton
have spoken. It's time for a change.
Gina and Chris are locked in discussion over this weekend to see
if they can hammer out a way of working together "in the town's
interest". Both candidates want to see more affordable
homes, both are against polluting traffic, both resist the idea of
"privatising" local hospitals, both oppose a new supermarket on
the edge of town, both demand that Chippy should be represented on
the Planning Committee. But one key issue is proving a stumbling
block on which an agreement looks set to falter. The LibDems want
to introduce a fifth waste collection box - alongside
non-recyclable rubbish, garden waste, and food the LibDems are
demanding that two further separate containers should be made
available one for bottles and plastic and the other for paper.
This move is strongly resisted by Labour who feel that their
members - who generally live in smaller houses than the LibDems -
already have enough problems fitting in the present number. The
LibDems feel that their green credentials and their credibilty
will be completely compromised if they do not insist on a fifth
waste box and they would be heavily punished at the next election
for conceding on this crucial policy point.
Some observers are amazed that the LibDems
would allow talks to fail over such a marginal issue. But it looks
as if we are going to have to wait until the middle of next week
for a final outcome. If there is no agreement Annie will try to go
it alone in representing the town relying on informal support from
the LibDems on confidence votes. Meanwhile the bankers in Iceland
who have £9 million of the District's money are watching all this
uncertainty with increasing interest since with such strong
evidence of a lack of political solidarity in one of West
Oxfordshire's most important towns there is no chance the
Icelandic banks will return our money - thus provoking a huge
financial crisis in Witney. We trust Gina and Chris will work
through coming nights to hammer out a final agreement as a matter
of urgent and vital interest to us all.
Annie's Tories of course have their own
money-saving policy on waste. They propose to turn Greystones into
a tip and tell residents to take their own rubbish down there.
Ever heard of
Chipping Norton Stone?
The
attractiveness of the Oxfordshire landscape is in part due to the
variety and the characteristics of the stone buildings of the
villages and towns. The diversity of the building materials is
being revealed by the results of a pioneering survey by volunteers
of more than 100 of our communities. Bill Horsfield of the
Oxfordshire Geology Trust said: “English Heritage and the British
Geology Survey wanted to find out the main types of building
stones, where materials came from and the locations of existing
and former quarries. The information would be valuable to assist
in the restoration of buildings with the same original materials
or matching stone.”
For the English Heritage survey a small
group of OGT members have been touring the county and have mapped
out 15 different building stones, including Chipping Norton
limestone, Taynton limestone, White limestone and Marlstone, which
is the orange-coloured ironstone found in villages around Banbury
such as Deddington, Bloxham and Hook Norton. It was also used for
Broughton Castle and Chastleton House.
“Although many of the stone types look
superficially similar, it is possible to recognise differences in
the colour, texture, fossil content and the hardness of stones in
most villages, particularly where a stone type is dominant and the
distribution of most types of stone is not difficult to map out,
said Bill. Burford, for example, is easy to identify as it was
mainy built out of Taynton limestone. The better quality Tayton
limestone was used across Oxfordshire for high-status buildings.
As expected, Chipping Norton limestone was
used extensively in the town and neighbouring villages, and the
materials came from a nearby quarry and another at Charlbury. One
of the most familiar materials is Stonesfield slate, a flaggy type
of sandstone found only in Stonesfield village. It was used for
roofing tiles across the Cotswolds. There are now only a handful
of active building stone quarries left in Oxfordshire,” said Bill.
It has been fascinating to find out how —
with few exceptions — builders used local stone that outcropped
and could be quarried within a few miles of where it was to be
used. Stone used in villages and towns was available locally,”
said Bill.
Look at this way
folks......although the Tory steamroller did its work More people in Chippy
voted against Annie than voted for her!
Gina Burrows
Labour & Co-Op
1394
Annie Roy-Barker
Conservative
1673
Elected
Chris Tatton
Liberal Democrat
467
Total electorate 4973 Turnout 71.53%
Hi Gerry
Just read your latest article "A
LOAD OF LAST-MINUTE TOSH FROM ANNIE" and felt I had to write and
commiserate with the residents of Chipping Norton on the
disastrous result that allowed "Annie" to get elected, I bet you
are gutted, I would be if I lived there. Keep up the fight she
will now show her true colours I am sure. Good luck.
Theresa
Witney:
Cameron wins seat
3:00am Friday 7th
May 2010
Dawn Barnes (Liberal Democrat) 11,233
Aaron Barschak (Independent) 53
Colin Bex (Wessex Regionalists) 62
David Cameron
(Conservative) 33,973
Johnnie Cook (Independent) 151
Joe Goldberg (Labour) 7,511
Howling Laud Hope (Monster Raving Loony
William Hill Party) 234
Stuart Macdonald (Green) 2,385
Nikolai Tolstoy (UKIP) 2,001
Paul Wesson (Independent) 166
Turnout: 73.6 per cent
A LOAD OF
LAST-MINUTE TOSH FROM ANNIE
A huge Tory leaflet full of
irresponsible tosh was distributed through letter boxes yesterday.
It is the most misleading collection of claims and
statements I have ever seen - promoting the candidacy of Annie the
hapless Tory Candidate in the District council election.
Annie suggests that she and her party
provided the funds for the new Arts and Science buildings at the
school. This is a really staggering misrepresentation. Education
money comes straight from central government, The County Council
follows ministry orders and simply acts as the bookkeeper. If
there has been any political pressure brought to bear by Annie and
her friends to divert money to the local school, that would be a
serious matter indeed.
Then comes a really big porkie. Annie says
that the Conservative County Council has funded a £1m Youth Centre
in Chippy. Not true. £800,000 has come directly from a Central
Government Fund and owes absolutely nothing to Oxfordshire Tories.
The balance has been raided from a fund set up with covenant money
from the sale of land at Parker Knoll which Councillor Grantham
successfully argued "belonged" to the town
Back to the leaflet.....Annie seeks to
give the impression that she has been actively involved in
fighting for HGV restrictions, a minor injuries unit, a
better ambulance service, getting a grant for the Town Hall, and
providing a MUGA. The public need to know that these campaigns
have all been running for years and up to this point Annie has not
shown the slightest interest in any of these causes. She has not
lifted a finger to help. Her attempts to claim some kind of
association with these projects is a direct insult to the people
who actually did all the work. It is pathetic.
Annie describes the HGV "lorry route" as a
Conservative project. What on earth is she talking about. Has she
not heard of the A44 Group? She claims she will work with a team
at the District Council on the problem of heavy traffic. She says
her previous experience on highways projects and her marketing and
business management skills will help her do this? Only one problem
Annie. Traffic is the responsibility of the County Council.
Absolutely nothing to do with the District!!
Annie says that her friends at the
District Council "awarded £98,000 towards renovating the Town Hall
and this paved the way for matched funding from other
organisations". This is complete tosh. The District Council never
loosened their purse strings until the the Town Council was able
to show in a detailed submission worked through in detail by
Councillor Greenwell that it had secured funding from other
sources first - including a huge contribution from the Town
Council reserves. The District Council then kindly matched the
funding already secured.
Annie now claims to be a big wheel in the
Friends of the Town Hall (FROTH) and is even shown on the leaflet
showing Dave Cameron a FROTH shopping bag. No word that FROTH was
the sole brainchild of her opponent in this election GINA BURROWS
who has worked her socks off to make it successful. I am not aware
that Annie has done much fund raising to date. Promises. Promises.
Annie is also shown in a photograph "taken
by the new hospital discussing the future possibilities" of an MIU
with Hilary Biles. I hope Hilary gave it to her straight about the
possibilities of an MIU. As Hilary knows and we all know the PCT
have refused to contemplate an MIU in Chippy. We will be extremely
lucky to get a First Aid set up. It seems highly irresponsible
that Annie should be suggesting to the Chippy electorate that she
has any chance of influencing that situation.
Another photograph seems to imply that
Annie has had something to do with the new MUGA - which she is
shown "checking out". If I was either Councillor Coles or
Councillor Graves, I would be more than a little put out. Both
councillors attended two years of soul-destroying meetings with
council officials and suppliers to fight for the new playground
and MUGA and achieved a fantastic result. It is cheap - to say the
least - to have someone who has never been remotely involved -
come along at election time and try and claim credit by
association.
Annie also says she is going to
"encourage" CCTV for the town and mentions she has already
obtained a grant of £78,000. Is she delusional? What grant? This
town has been asked for to pay £15.000 a year (10% of our total
precept) for four cameras in the town centre (Witney has 40). The
Town Council have unanimously rejected the deal so how does Annie
propose to make it happen. Looks as if she plans to declare war on
the Town Council's decision. She says that CCTV would eliminate
crime, drugs and alcohol abuse. Annie is bonkers if she really
believes that. It will simply cut down on the number of police on
duty. She says she is a member of the Neighbourhood Action Group.
They have never done anything useful but at least she should know
better than to make these absurd claims.
My contacts in the policy-making
echelons of the Tory Party tell me that a leaflet for a candidate
is only ever distributed on the eve of polling day if the party is
rattled and worried about a candidate's prospects. So it looks as
if the powers that be in Witney are well and truly worried about
Annie's chances. Mind you that's not really surprising. Word is
coming back from Tory canvassers that while Dave is a shoe-in even
loyal true blue party members are drawing the line at supporting
Annie. The mystery deepens about how exactly she got
chosen....Hilary blames it all on Bob Hayward. Bob says it was the
only way to avoid Oliver Herrin being selected. A fellow town
councillor (Tory) tells me that Annie offered because nobody else
was prepared to have a go. Cicely tells me she volunteered to
stand herself but the present committee does not regard her as
posh enough so chose Posh Annie instead. What a way to carry on in
the selection of a prospective District Council candidate...it
just doesn't sound serious. But then Barry Norton only wants
somebody as voting fodder to make up the numbers. The last thing
he wants is somebody who will fight for Chipping Norton's
interests.
Its good that Annie is a volunteer at the
Theatre and supports the Jazz Festival but she should stay away
from politics. Its way above her head - as this leaflet
shows. Her candidacy and this leaflet is an affront to the people
of this town.
If you haven't
voted yet you owe it to the town to get down to the Town Hall and
cast your vote for ex-Mayor Gina Burrows - an experienced,
knowledgeable and conscientious member of the Town Council. Its
the only way to ensure that we don't get represented in Witney by
somebody like Annie who is prepared to put her name to a leaflet
which is no more than a distorted and misleading collection of
irresponsible tosh.
DAVE IS LAUGHING!
Sitting in the Old Mill Cafe in Chipping
Norton, David Cameron insists there are Labour supporters in his
Oxfordshire constituency. “A lot of people were moved here from
Birmingham after the war,” he protests. “It used to be a mill
town, you know.” Maybe so but there’s not a single Labour
placard in its leafy lanes and, as he tucks into a Saturday
morning fry-up, the Conservative leader is greeted by endless
polite constituents, including a glamorous former newsreader,
wishing him good luck. There’s not a finger-jabbing pensioner in
sight.
Sporting his trademark weekend wear of
black jeans and navy V-neck, he looks surprisingly well rested for
a man about to face the toughest week of his political career. He
told me how it was good to have a night in his own home and to
potter around his garden with a coffee when he woke up. “I
feel more energetic and enthusiastic than at the beginning of the
campaign,” he says. “I feel absolutely full of beans, like the
ones I had for breakfast.” As we get down to business, it becomes
clear that the time for levity is gone. Cameron is aware that the
journey from the Old Mill Cafe to No10 is going to be more
tightrope walk than stately procession.
Read the full excellent article.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7114075.ece
"there’s not a single Labour placard
in its leafy lanes"...Cobblers
The Times correspondent clearly never walked down Chippy's Trotsky
Prospekt aka New Street
"a glamorous former
newsreader?"....I
suspect the Times Correspondent was mistaking Cicely for Angela
Rippon. Understandable error but sloppy journalism! ED
After breakfast Dave went walkabout in the
town but it was early and the Tory market stall was only manned by
kids at that hour. Wake up Annie!! Missed a good photo-opportunity
there. Talk about hapless Annie. On the one single occasion Dave
visits town during the campaign Annie is nowhere in camera range!
Meanwhile
back at the Telegraph:
The village where Cameron has his constituency home, near Chipping
Norton, is, like his childhood home of Peasemore, another
tranquil, gilded corner of England. He says that one of his
favourite moments is when he drives up from London on a Friday,
and turns off the A34 at Enstone on the last leg of the journey
home, with the verdant quilt of the Oxfordshire countryside spread
out around him.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7637967/General-Election-2010-How-well-do-we-really-know-David-Cameron.html
All together now say Ahhhhhhh!
ED
Meanwhile back at the Independent Dave discusses
Electoral Reform:
The
problem with the Single Transferable Vote system is you lose the
constituency link. I think of my own county of Oxfordshire. Everyone would
spend all their time in Banbury and Oxford and little old Witney and
Carterton and Chipping Norton would never get a bloody look in. So you
lose the constituency link. And that I think, in all that’s wrong with our
politics, something really to hold on to is this link. Even as Leader of
the Opposition, there’s not much that happens in Chipping Norton or on the
housing estates of Witney or in the RAF mess at Carterton that I don’t
know about. That’s the great strength of our system. And also being able
to throw out the Government. So I am, have been, for as long as I can
remember, opposed to electoral reform.
"Chipping Norton" A guitar piece by Alex
Benitez
who says its one of his favourite towns in England
School excited about its new £4.4m science block
PUPILS
at Chipping Norton School will soon be conducting their
experiments in brand new surroundings as work starts on a £4.4
million project to build a three-storey science block. Funded by
Oxfordshire County Council, the new block will include: nine
specialist laboratories – three each for biology, chemistry and
physics – shared community classroom, new preparation rooms, staff
workroom and an office and new toilets for staff and pupils.
Alongside the construction of the science block, the project also
includes the creation of a new main school entrance and reception
area. On completion of the project the former science
accommodation will be remodelled by the school to provide more
general teaching space and more internal social space.
Simon Duffy, headteacher of the specialist
science school, said: “Science learning is crucial to
understanding the world around us and, more importantly,
understanding how we can shape our own global future. The
enthusiasm for science learning that I see on a daily basis will
be greatly enhanced by the excellent new facilities. The new
science block, right at the front of our school, will stand out as
a beacon to let people know that we are serious about science and
serious about high quality learning. It will also help us to
ensure that we maintain our record of getting students to
university to study sciences and mathematics, often at Oxford or
Cambridge, and to develop young scientists who have the
wherewithal to meet the huge demands of an increasingly uncertain
world ahead of them,” said Mr Duffy. The new block is due to open
in June 2011.
CRIME DOWN!
CRIME
across West Oxfordshire has fallen by almost 400 incidents in a
year. New figures released by Thames Valley Police show the number
of crimes reported in the west of the county dropped by 6.8 per
cent, from 5,589 offences in 2008-09 to 5,209 crimes in the same
period to March this year. Police say they have had notable
success in combating serious crime such as robberies, burglaries,
and thefts from and of vehicles. Serious violent crime fell by one
crime to 22, although serious sexual offences rose from 65 to 73.
Chief Insp Jack Malhi (pictured left) told
the Oxford Mail the area had the best detection rates for serious
robberies and thefts in the whole Thames Valley. He added this
type of crime was at a three-year low, and said: “If I was living
in the Thames Valley, I would want to live in West Oxfordshire. It
is the safest place. We have one of the least amount of offences
in the whole force and we have the least property-type crime. It
really has been quite a success. Maintaining this will be a
challenge for us and we hope to continue with the challenging
targets next year.”
A total of 528 serious incidents of
robbery, burglary and theft were reported in the district between
April 2009 and March 2010. In 2008/09 there were 580 and in 2007/
08 there were 565, meaning there was a nine per cent fall
year-on-year. Across the force, there was an 8.5 per cent decrease
in this type of offence.
Ch Insp Malhi said thieves were convicted
in 14.8 per cent of cases of robbery, burglary and theft in the
district – 78 people caught for the 528 crimes committed. The
average Thames Valley detection rate is 8.5 per cent. Ch Insp
Malhi attributed the overall fall in crime to working well with
partners in West Oxfordshire. He said: “We work with community
initiatives, our partners in the local authority, the fire brigade
and housing and many volunteer agencies. It’s also down to the
community taking ownership of the problem and using the agencies
to support community-led initiatives, which has made quite a major
difference to our performance this year.”
A
SMILE was brought to the face of quadriplegic teenager Georgie
Reeves after she was given the chance to become a zookeeper for
the day. The animal-loving 15-year-old, who lives at residential
Penhurst School, in Chipping Norton, was invited to spend the day
behind the scenes at Cotswold Wildlife Park, near Burford, by the
Make A Wish Foundation Make A Wish is a charity which aims to make
the dreams of youngsters with life-threatening illnesses come
true. Georgie was referred by a nurse.
Georgie has a number of serious health
conditions which include being registered blind, epileptic,
needing a special supply of oxygen 24 hours a day and she is fed
through a tube into her stomach. She communicates by blinking. Her
parents, Ernie and Gill Reeves, cared for her full-time until she
was 11, when they decided she needed more care than they could
give. Mr Reeves, 66, said: “She really loves animals, and when the
school had a visit from some reptiles and tarantulas her carers
said she loved it. When Make A Wish were speaking to us about what
Georgie would want, we said we would love for her to swim with
dolphins, but they would never allow her on a plane because of her
condition. We thought she likes animals so why not become a
zookeeper for the day?”
Nearby Cotswold Wildlife Park was happy to
oblige, and Georgie, accompanied by her family and her two carers
from Penhurst, visited the lemur house, where the lemurs climbed
over the teenager in her wheelchair to say hello, the reptile
house, the farmyard and the penguins. Mr Reeves said: “They gave
us a fantastic day and she thoroughly enjoyed it, I can’t praise
them enough. t may not sound like much, but Georgie stayed awake
all day and showed interest and that was a massive thing for her.
There were lovely smiles and all sorts and I think it was
brilliant for her.” Mrs Reeves, 42, said: “It was such a
fantastic day. Georgie was treated like royalty. t was wonderful
to see her so relaxed and for us to have such lovely memories.”
The family visits Georgie in school at
least every two weeks from their home in Devon and Mr Reeves was
full of praise for the school. He said: “She’s doing very
well. The staff there are fantastic and I believe there is no
better place for her.” The couple also phone and although Georgie
cannot reply, carers say she responds to the sound of their
voices.
The town hall should
not be a mausoleum
MAJOR
work will make Chipping Norton’s polling station safe. The town
hall, in West Street, was originally built in 1842, and is in a
desperate need of repair. It is expected that work to refurbish
the crumbling parapet will start shortly, while work to remove
asbestos from the building was finished on April 7. Keith
Greenwell, Chipping Norton town councillor and chairman of the
hall working party, hopes that this will be finished in time for
the elections on May 6. He said: “It should happen in time, it’s
our target.” He could not say where votes would be counted if the
hall was not finished.
As part of the first phase of the £200,000
project, work will start on Monday, June 14, to replace the
entrance steps, hall floor and kitchen ,and to create a new bar.
Mr Greenwell said: “The building was burnt down in 1950, and since
then, it has been subject to neglect.” Water has been seeping into
the side of the hall, causing the steps to weaken, and they will
eventually collapse. Before these can be replaced, asbestos must
be removed from the hall, and the crumbling parapet needs to be
made safe.
Funds have been granted from various
organisations, including West Oxfordshire District Council, which
donated £100,000, £75,000 from the town council, £10,000 from the
Friends of the Town Hall, and £12,000 from the Trust for
Oxfordshire’s Environment. After the first phase of work is
completed, the working party wants to raise another £500,000 to
re-build the roof. A survey found that this must be replaced
within two years. Mr Greenwell said: “It’s essential to transform
the hall to a feature of the local community. The town hall should
not be a mausoleum.”
In front of the town hall are
pictured councillors Rob Evans, Keith Greenwell, Glyn Watkins and
Gina Burrows
Don't transfer
nurses to care trust, say campaigners
MORE
than 200 people marched through the centre of Chipping Norton to
call for nurses at the town’s new community hospital to remain NHS
staff members. Work is currently under way on the hospital
and a care home in London Road, to replace the War Memorial
Hospital. The care home will be run by the Orders of St John Care
Trust. NHS Oxfordshire, the county’s primary care trust, planned
that St John would run cleaning and catering for the entire
complex, but it then proposed that the nurses be transferred to St
John as well. After protests, the PCT agreed the NHS would remain
as the nurses’ employer, but for them to be seconded to St John.
However, it says that new Government guidelines forbid this and
the nurses cannot be on the NHS’s books. Protesters want the
nurses to remain as NHS staff so they can continue to enjoy the
associated benefits, and because they question whether St John has
the same expertise and training standards.
Gerry Alcock, who has been involved in the
hospital campaign committee for the past five years, said: “We
were extremely encouraged by the show of support at Saturday’s
protest, although we were a bit disappointed there weren’t any
nurses.” The care home is expected to be ready in the summer,
while the hospital should be finished by the end of the year. Dan
Hayes, county director for the Orders of St John, said: “We
understand why people are concerned about the future of their
employment. “We would like to reassure the staff and the wider
community that we’re an experienced provider of nursing services
and we do invest significantly in training.” Conservative Party
leader and Witney parliamentary candidate
David Cameron has lobbied for the NHS to be allowed to second
nurses at the hospital to the trust. In a statement read to the
protesters, he said: “It is clear from this vigorous campaign how
concerned local residents are about this matter.”
NHS Oxfordshire said: “We have written to
the Department of Health asking for an exemption. We expect a
formal response next week.”
Sainsbury's - let
the politics begin!
When the OCC Highways Department officer
inadvertently let slip to Eve Coles at a Highways Committee
meeting that Sainsbury's were in (secret) discussion with the
Planners at West Oxfordshire to build a new Superstore on the
Parker Knoll site, the manoeuvring began in earnest.
The construction of industrial units on that site was a strict
condition of the permission granted to Parker Knoll/Wimpey to
build all those houses. Legal experts are of the view that it is
impossible now to simply ignore those provisions. In the event
that the Planners decide to do so then the words "Planning
Enquiry" and "Judicial Review" keep cropping up. Some folk,
of course, are very happy at the idea of no industrial units being
built - that would probably push up the rents of the few that are
currently available in the town! But nobody yet seems to have
consulted the shopkeepers. Does the Guild still exist? If not then
somebody else needs to canvass opinion fast. Speaking myself as a
small shopkeeper I am violently opposed to the scheme. What about
John Kench acting as our spokesman? The Labour Party is a bit
compromised by their association with the Co-Op who are of course
an interested party in all this. They have plans for a major
extension in the Town Centre. Would these plans go ahead if the
new Sainsbury's store is built. Difficult to imagine. The
candidates in the District Council election have declared their
positions. Annie Roy-Barker is in favour. Gina Burrows much
prefers town centre development. Apparently District Councillor
Patrick McHugh is opposed but is being brow beaten by Hilary who
approves. (Stick with your own views Patrick) Eve Coles has not
yet disclosed her hand but its difficult to see her welcoming a
Co-Op competitor. (Eve still collects dividend stamps) I suspect
the County Council are in favour because they would be able to get
Sainsbury's to pay for a huge new access road which would open up
all the Tank farm OCC-owned acres behind the new Superstore for
residential development (as proposed in the draft Local
development Plan). This would be worth millions to the County. If
the County are in favour they have ways and means of twisting the
arm of the Witney planners. Most shocking of all is the fact
that Sainsbury's have approached Councillor Greenwell to advise
them on how to promote their plans to the town - including
organising an exhibition. This follows the favourable comments
Councillor Greenwell has made over the last week about the
development. In his view small shops closing is all part of life's
rich economic pattern. Apparently he is off to a meeting with
Sainsbury's next week to see how he can help and is hoping to
recruit other influential citizens to join him. (Councillor
Greenwell's loyalties do seem to be getting well and truly mixed
up. He works for Tesco!) Sainsbury's of course have banks of
computers and hundreds of staff and millions of pounds to prepare
their planning applications. All these resources have been
deployed on a massive exercise to calculate just how many jobs
might be lost in the town centre if a Superstore is opened on
London Road. The scientific answer is allegedly 20. If you
believe that you will believe anything. Sainsbury's also plan to
quote the results of the poll currently being taken on
chippingnorton.net which shows a majority in favour of a new
store. Hopefully somebody will explain to them the complexities of
multiple voting by tech-savvy surfers before they rely on the
results too much. Those scores mean nothing! And lastly it now
becomes clear why the Care Home have chosen to site the rooms for
their elderly residents facing London Road. It is generally
thought that when the Volvos from the present Parker Knoll estate
and the 4 x 4s of the Holy Trinity parents and the Audis of the
residents of the new Tank Farm estate and the normal constant flow
of HGVs using London Road meet the tsunami of shoppers arriving at
and leaving the Superstore there will be scenes of carnage which
will keep the old folks - peeking out of their windows - rocking
with laughter all day.
Hospital protest
brings out the crowd
The head of the column of 200 people waits to move off
Chairman of the League of Friends Jo Graves
and District Council Candidate Gina Burrows
sign their letter to the Health Minister
Hospital Action Group Committee members Dave Hawtin and John
Grantham flank
County Councillor Hilary Biles as they lead the procession past
the Lower Town hall
The Tory "Gang of Three" County
Councillor Biles. District Councillor Candidate Roy-Barker
and retiring District Councillor Townley
"What do we want" Nurses in the NHS "When
do we want them?" Now!
Thanks to Clive Hill and Glyn
Watkins for the pics
Hapless Annie's
first campaign gaffe - Doubtless the first of many!
Hapless Annie turned up at today's hospital
protest wearing a Tory rosette. For the last five years this
Hospital campaign has been strictly non-political. Indeed the main
strength of the campaign has been that it speaks for the whole
community and not just some faction of it. It's sheer naivete to
turn up at non-party-political gatherings wearing party political
gear.
If this is typical of the behaviour we can expect from
Annie Roy-Barker over the next few weeks then its time somebody
took her in hand. First time out in public and egg all over her
face!
Annie's main opponent in the District Council election Gina
Burrows was also present at the protest. She did not make a
similar gaffe. But then Gina spent years as Town Mayor being
non-political so she has got the hang of it. Some members of the Hospital Action Group are
not best pleased and that's an understatement as far as Councillor
Alcock is concerned.
Who's best for Chippy?
David Cameron for Westminster
Gina Burrows for the District Council
The webmaster writes:My old
and much-missed friendSidneyScarsbrook (who was
President of the local Conservative Association) used to tell me
that the Conservatives could put up a nodding donkey in Chipping
Norton and it would get elected.
This certainly
seemed to be true at the last District Council election when their
totally inexperienced candidate Patrick McWho was elected. Since
then - as far as we know - he has done absolutely nothing. He has
certainly not reported anything at Town Council Meetings about
what he has been up to in Witney.
However, the
Tories then tried the same trick again at the last Town Council
elections but it didn't work. Even the local Tory faithful drew
the line at supporting Mr Hasan who - for obvious reasons - did
not conform to their idea of what a Chipping Norton Conservative
should look like.
And another of
their candidates - Annie
Roy-Barker - also failed to
get elected to the Town Council because she was completely
unknown, had never been seen anywhere near a Town Council meeting and knew absolutely nothing about key town issues. She
turned up at the Annual Parish Meeting in search of publicity -
egged on by her mentor Mike Howes - and
started berating several of the hardest-working town councillors
about their disgraceful behaviour at council meetings which she had
never attended. This vicious attack all fell a bit flat because
nobody knew who she was. We all assumed that we had seen the last
of Annie on the Chippy political scene after that debacle. After
all, if you can't even persuade people to vote you on to the Town
Council what other political prospects can you possibly have.
Having polled fewer votes than Mr Hasan, Annie - incredibly - is now trying to get elected straight
on to the the District Council - continuing the McWho tradition of relying on an unquestioning
Tory vote. The Chipping Norton Tories must be having a laugh at
the electors expense. The town deserves better. One prominent
townsperson who knows Annie well describes her as a “complete airhead”.
I suppose to be fair to her, she did at least try and get elected
to the Town Council - which is more than Patrick McWho ever did.
Surely the time has come to show the local Tories that unless they
are prepared to dig up some quality candidates from among their
hundreds of members they will become a laughing stock.
Chunky Townley
has been an excellent District Councillor for the last four years
- following in the great tradition of John Hannis. Chunky has some
real achievements to his credit - not least his fight for hospital
resources and his recent work on an influential report about the
failings of the Ambulance Service. It is disastrous that he his
standing down but it is essential we now elect someone capable of
following in his footsteps. We need someone as passionate and as
likely to be taken as seriously in Witney as Chunky was. Somebody who will be as
prepared as he has been to fight the town's corner.
In one of her
election leaflets Annie has unashamedly tried to jump on the Chunky Townley/Hilary Biles bandwagon by suggesting that she is in some
way associated through them with the Hospital campaign, fighting
for a Youth Centre, refurbishing the Town Hall and other
activities in which she has had absolutely zero involvement. She
claims she will somehow continue Chunky’s good work. It is all a
scandalous misrepresentation and the Tories should retract these
weasel words forthwith. Annie quotes her experience in the town as
consisting (among other things) of being a member of the
Neighbourhood Action Group (what have they ever done?) a volunteer
at the Theatre, a member of the Salford Players and on the
organising committee of Jazz Day.........Big deal!
Contrast this
track record with that of her opponent Gina Burrows. There is no
contest.
Gina joined the
Town Council in 1999 was Mayoress for three years and then Mayor
for the next two. Gina single-handedly organised a glittering year
of events to mark the town's Charter anniversary. She was heavily
involved in organising the influential Town Appraisal -
managing the economic aspects of the exercise and conducting a
survey among Chippy businesses. She has chaired a Working party on the contentious issue
of Parking in the town. Gina became a member of the School
Governors and was co-founder of the Town Partnership. She is
active at St Mary's and is a member of the parochial Church
Council. She is Chair of the Town Hall Committee and has been
leading fund-raising efforts for the long overdue re-furbishment
of the Town Hall. She founded Friends of the Town Hall last year
and has nearly notched up the first £10,000. In recent years Gina
has also chaired a group of councillors and ex-councillors who
meet and publish position papers on Planning matters affecting the
town. This year the group has prepared a response to the first
proposals from the District for a Local Development Plan. When the
District Council closed the Visitors Centre it was Gina (working
with Peta Simmonds) who quickly organized a volunteer
replacement. There is more - like leading groups to clean-up
litter and monopolising the news pages every month of Chippy News
- but hopefully you get the idea!! In between all this selfless work for the town she finds
time to be the Chair of the West Oxfordshire Constituency Labour
Party and has bravely tried to keep the party flag flying out in
the villages where she has often stood as a candidate in local
council elections.
I think (but I
am not sure) that this is the first time that Gina has stood in the
town for the District Council. She will make an absolutely superb
standard bearer for Chippy when she is elected to the job in
Witney.
I have worked
for many years now with Gina on the Town Council. It is well-known
that we have had our differences – often quite robust, She can be
stubborn and exasperating. She can seem a bit too politically
correct for some tastes. She is the original do-gooder and some of
her supporters describe her as having a "mother earth" quality.
But nobody can say that she does not have strong and sincere views
and a deep sense of commitment to the town. And when it comes to
representing the town’s interests in Witney that is what we want.
We need an experienced and knowledgeable pair of hands – not some
amateur airhead. Gina can be remorseless in her advocacy of a
cause she believes in. She will certainly continue to fight like a
tiger to try and secure funds for youth facilities, social
services for the elderly and recreational opportunities. She
understands the importance of maintaining the economic well-being
of the town - by supporting employment initiatives, encouraging
local traders and promoting tourism. Gina has shown that she cares
deeply and is prepared to work like a trojan for the community.
Chippy First as Chipping Norton’s biggest political grouping on
the Town Council are
happy – not only to support her candidacy - but to commit to
helping her make things happen once she is elected. We are all
privileged to have Gina as a candidate. It
will be deeply disappointing if a few independent-minded
Conservatives do not refuse to behave like mindless ballot fodder,
break ranks, disobey the Witney hierarchy and vote for Gina. Roy-Barker or
Burrows? That’s a no-brainer!
Below are a few snaps from our
archives of Gina over the last ten years out and about performing
various civic duties. For the sake of political balance we would
have liked to have included some of Annie Roy-Barker but
unfortunately she has never been captured by chippingnorton.net's
news cameras!!!
Sainsbury's bid divides opinion
by Jen Rivett
NEWS
that Sainsbury’s has expressed an interest in building a store in
Chipping Norton has received a mixed reaction. The supermarket
giant – which already has a Market Place store – is considering
building on the disused Parker Knoll site, off London Road. It
claims it could create up to 200 jobs. Last night,
Chipping
Norton town councillor Gerry Alcock (pictured right) said he would
prefer industrial or commercial units for the site. He said: “I
think it will kill the town centre – it will be a disaster, but
people seem to be willing to accept that the town centre is going
to suffer.” However, fellow councillor Keith Greenwell (also
pictured right) said: “It has long been my belief that there was
never any prospect of industrial or commercial units being built
on the site and I fear the area Sainsbury’s is now interested in
would just become more housing. “A large Sainsbury’s will have an
impact on the other businesses in the town, but that is the
difficult side of economic progress and giving our local
population what they are clamouring for. The future of our town
and its town centre will not be solved by denying Sainsbury’s the
right to build a supermarket on a site that will soon be totally
surrounded by housing.”
Town councillor Gina Burrows said: “It has
never been our policy to encourage edge-of-town development if it
would compromise the nature of our town centre. I don’t think I
could let this go without a fight.”
But resident Annie Barker said: “Many
residents currently travel out of town to shop and top up in
Chipping Norton. A local superstore, therefore, could encourage
shoppers back into town, enhance existing facilities rather than
compromise them, and enable the small traders in Chipping Norton
to retain business by continuing to offer personal, friendly
service.”
Town councillor Rob Evans, 60, of New
Street, said: “I am not very pleased with the idea as I feel quite
strongly that we need to develop retail in the centre of the town,
whereas this seems to be an out-of-town supermarket.”
Mark Sanders, 42, of London Road, said: “I
would be worried that people would just come in and out in that
part of the town and not park in the town centre to do the rest of
their shopping. I think the town centre could suffer.”
Sainsbury’s spokesman Paul Vicary claimed
most Chipping Norton residents shopped in Banbury. He said:
“Sainsbury’s has been very pleased with the popularity of its town
centre store in Chipping Norton and is keen to provide an even
better offer to residents of the town. As such, the main food
shopping choice in the town does not meet the needs of local
residents, forcing them to travel elsewhere to shop, with a
resultant increase in car journeys.”
Sainsbury’s does not own the four-acre
site, but the supermarket claims it is in talks with the owner. Mr
Vicary added: “Sainsbury’s does not believe it is possible to
develop a suitable store in the town centre and has therefore been
considering the vacant Parker Knoll site in London Road.
Discussions are still at a very early stage and we need to
undertake a number of technical studies to understand the key
issues. Once these have been concluded we will undertake
widespread consultation with the local community before submitting
a planning application.”
PROMISES
PROMISES
Later
this year our new hospital will open. For the last five years
groups of people from the town and villages around have been
fighting to try and ensure that the services available in the new
hospital will be up to the standard we are used to. Worries have
centred around the fact that in order to save costs the Local PCT
and the County Council have got together and invented a new kind
of healthcare centre. Hospital services like Maternity,
Intermediate Care beds (where you stay for a week or so on your
way back home after an operation in the JR). Minor Injuries,
Consultant clinics and GP surgeries are being located right next
to a Care Home so that some facilities and personnel can be
shared.
Fine in theory - except the Care Home is run
by a private company (the Orders of St John Care Trust) with a different ethos from
the NHS and has little experience of running
hospitals. The Hospital Action Group believed from the start that
it was essential that the management of the Care Home should be
kept quite separate from the Hospital in order to maintain
standards. Quite simply we have been worried that the Hospital
would become controlled by the much bigger non-NHS Care Home.
We
knew we were on a slippery slope when we were first told that
services like cleaning and catering for the whole site would be
run by the OSJ (the Orders of St John Care Trust). But next we were told that if the OSJ
provided meals and cleaning to the NHS then VAT would become
payable - not only on the services provided but on the building
costs of the whole place. This would cost millions so sorry folks
but the Order of St John would have to "manage" the non-medical
aspects of the Intermediate Care Beds after all.
Next we
were told that it was bad practice for the management of the
Intermediate Care beds to be split between the NHS and the
OSJ so sorry again but now the nurses would have to be transferred
to the employment of the OSJ.
At this point a major row broke out.
Campaigners in the town dug their heels in and decided to
fight for the principle of keeping nurses within the NHS. An
unbelievable amount of energy was expended! Chunky Townley lobbied
the District Council. Hilary went up to London to meet members of
the Re-configuration panel. The Vicar made a marvellous
address to the assembled County Council. The committee of the
Hospital Action Group descended in force on the Annual General
Meeting of the PTC. David Cameron convened a round table get
together of all the parties. The dispute eventually reached a
really important committee called the Oxfordshire Joint Health
Overview and Scrutiny Committee - the key watchdog for patients in
the county. Changes to local Health Services have to be referred
to them and if they aren't happy they have the power to send cases
to the Minister of Health for review.
The PCT Chief
Executive at the time was a bully and in a memorable outburst told
the committee that he had had enough of being reviewed and enough
of being scrutinised. He proposed a compromise - that
nurses in the Hospital should continue to be employed by the NHS
and would be "seconded" to work for the OSJ - retaining all their
NHS benefits, career opportunities, pension rights etc.
In their wisdom and to their eternal shame the Overview and
Scrutiny Committee were cowed by the PCT into accepting this
compromise. (But not let it be said the representative on the
committee for West Oxfordshire -the redoubtable Simon Hoare - who
continued to fight the case for NHS nurses and voted against the
compromise). Nobody in Chippy was happy but the deal was
done. It was solemnly recorded in the minutes. No way could the
agreement be broken without the wrath of the Scrutiny Committee
being brought down on the heads of the PCT Board. Basically the
Hospital Action Group were told to shut up and lump it. It is this
agreement - proposed by the PCT themselves - about which they are
now saying sorry new government guidelines don't allow us to
"second" the nurses. We can't honour our promises to you after
all. The nurses must now transfer over to full employment with the
Orders of St John.
This is finally the bottom of the slippery
slope. Some of us believe that this is where the PCT have been
leading us by the nose all along. The consultation has been a
complete and total sham. The feeling is one of real betrayal.
The staff at the hospital don't want to
leave the NHS. If the PCT persist with their policy they will lose
some of their best people. Last month a senior nursing appointment
was advertised. Twelve nurses applied but when they heard that an
almost immediate TUPE transfer over to the Orders of St John was
involved only one turned up for the interview. This is only the
beginning. The hospital will fail to recruit the right staff and
services will suffer.
David Cameron has appealed personally
to the Health Minister asking him to allow the "secondment" route
- but has met a stone wall. The Action Group have been actively
lobbying local politicians. The Vicar is having another go in a
letter to Andy Burnham. Now its down to us all - Joe Public
- to join the protest. The poll on this site attracted the largest
number of participants ever. Over 500 people took part and 83% of
them wanted the hospital to be staffed by NHS nurses. An
absolutely clear-cut result. Ask the candidates in the coming
elections - both general and local - where they stand on this
issue. Every party bangs on about local communities making
their own local decisions - but when it comes down to it
consultations prove to be worthless. Central government does what
it likes.
We are organising a protest
march in the Market Square on the April 10th at 11am. Please be
there if you can. Put up one of the posters for us. We need all
the publicity we can get. We are also printing thousands of
postcards which we want people to post to the Minister of Health.
One may drop through your door soon - if not pick one up on the
10th. A leaflet is being distributed over the coming days around
the town. This is what it says.....
ONLY NHS NURSES WILL GUARANTEE THE
HOSPITAL STANDARDS WE ARE USED TO!
The
Hospital Action Group strongly believes that nurses at Chippy
hospital should be employed by the NHS. This is the only way of
guaranteeing that the highest quality staff are recruited and
standards are maintained. It’s the only way of keeping the
motivation of nurses high by providing continuous training in
latest techniques and ensuring that a fulfilling career structure
is guaranteed (including pay and pensions). This is particularly
important where the private partner in this enterprise has
virtually no experience of running hospital services. ITS WHAT WE HAVE BEEN PROMISED
During a long consultation which began in 2004 the public have
always made it clear that they wanted hospital services retained
within the NHS. Two petitions demanding this have been signed by
over 10,000 local residents. We have been reassured on numerous
occasions that nurses would remain within the employment of the
NHS. There have been several attempts to undermine this agreement
which were strongly resisted by the Hospital Action Group.
WE MUST MAINTAIN A SEPARATE IDENTITY FOR THE HOSPITAL
These commitments have all been made to us publicly and in
writing. It is only because they have been made so clearly that we
– as an Action Group - have felt able to continue to support the
development of a very complex healthcare project which seeks to
co-locate a Hospital and a Care Home. All along we have been
fearful that our much-loved Hospital would end up by being simply
absorbed in a Private Care Home facility. THE PCT ARE FORCED TO BACKTRACK ON FIVE
YEARS OF PROMISES So now we are really devastated to be told at this late
stage by the Oxfordshire PCT that recent guidelines issued by the
government mean that the PCT are forced to backtrack on all the
undertakings they have made to us. They say the nurses must accept
a transfer after all to the Orders of St John. There is no
alternative. Appeals by our group and by our MP to the Health
Secretary have fallen on deaf ears. LET’S SAY WHAT WE THINK OF THE
GOVERNMENT’S LATEST POLICY
Changes to solemn agreements at this late stage make a mockery of
six years of consultation. Join the Hospital Action Group fight
to keep our hospital nurses within the NHS. Contact Andy Burnham
using one of our pre-printed postcards. And please come to a
demonstration…..
Chipping
Norton Market Square
Saturday April 10th at 11.00 am
Chippy Scoops
Four Awards
It was a packed night on Friday at
the WODC Sports and Arts awards. Michele and Nikki Sole from over
Norton were awarded 'high achievers' awards - they were not
present as they are in training They are 5th and 6th in the
British downhill ski team. Chris Hill of Salford and a pupil at
Chipping Norton School, was awarded an achievement award. He also
entertained us with a fabulous ' Mr Bo Jangles' during the break
and received rapturous applause!! Seymour Mincer, Chipping
Norton Swifts, was awarded the Chairmans Prize - an unsung hero!
Hilary Biles presenting
awards to Chris Hill (left) and Seymour Mincer (right)
War over Sainsburys
Expansion
Plans breaks out
Sainsburys plans to open a much bigger new store
on the Parker Knoll site (see full story below) seem to have set the
cat among the pigeons. Battle lines are being drawn already. Sainsburys themselves have started lobbying and wrote to all local
councillors this week. A lively e-mail debate between town
councillors immediately ensued.
Keith Greenwell - a well-known
free marketeer said : "A large supermarket on the site will be
environmentally friendly - no more driving to Banbury or Witney.
Yes it will have an impact: cheaper childrens clothes? More
choice? Probably 200+ jobs and surely better than more housing.
Competition is good for business so lets have more of it not
less".
Meanwhile Labour & Co-Operative councillor Gina
Burrows wrote: "It has never been our policy to encourage out-of
town/edge-of-town development if it would compromise the nature of
our town centre. I just wanted to share my anxiety and consider
what we should do. I don't think I could let this go
without a fight. There may actually be time for a public meeting".
Looks as if Gina might have got herself on the wrong side of this
argument. It is already perfectly clear that the vast majority of
people in the town welcome this development (see poll below).
Gina's own objectivity is bound to be questioned - after all she
was elected with financial backing from the Co-Op movement whose
opposition to the new proposals is understandable. Gina is
apparently standing as the Labour & Co-Operative candidate in the
May Election for District Councillor (Chunky's old
seat)....opposing a new Sainsburys doesn't seem like a very
sensible start to the campaign. The
Conservative candidate - Annie Roy Barker - Makes this
comment.......
"Many residents currently travel out of town to shop and top-up in
Chippy. A local superstore, therefore, could encourage shoppers
back into town; enhance existing facilities rather than compromise
them; and enable the small traders in Chippy to retain business by
continuing to offer personal, friendly service. However, before discussions proceed
with regard to the provision of a superstore alongside London
Road, I believe that it is vitally important to action a
satisfactory solution that alleviates the chaos that often abounds
on this route."
Councillor Alcock says: "Not on this site.
When Parker Knoll closed, the planners made a copper-bottomed
promise that this land would be zoned for industrial units. They
have already passed planning applications. They must stick with
their promises. There is another allocated site just up the road
(the big field next to the new care home) which has already been
allocated for mixed use in the Local Plan. Its owned by the
County Council. Build the Superstore there. Or even better
the field next to that is now owned by the Field Reeves. Sell that
land to Sainsbury's and the town (by far and away the biggest
stintholder in the Reeves) will make a fortune and solve all its
financial problems. Why make a private developer rich at our
expense. Come on WODC - get smart for once!"
Meanwhile cast your own vote in the Poll.
This is
part of a Press release issued today by Sainsburys:
Sainsburys have been very pleased with the
popularity of its town centre store in Chipping Norton and is keen
to provide an even better offer to residents of the town.
Any new offer would have no impact on the
existing store, which provides an excellent top-up shopping
service to its existing customers. However, we understand that at
the present time the majority of Chipping Norton residents do
their main food shopping out of the town at places such as
Banbury. As such the main food shopping choice in the town does
not meet the needs of local residents forcing them to travel
elsewhere to shop, with a resultant increase in car journeys.
Sainsburys does not believe it is possible
to develop a suitable store in the town centre and has therefore
been considering the vacant Parker Knoll site on London Road.
Discussions are are at a very early stage
and we need to undertake a number of technical, studies to
understand the key issues. Once these have been concluded we will
undertake widespread consultation with the local community before
submitting a planning application.
Sainsbury's plan
development on the Parker Knoll Site - Now its official!
Important news leaked out at last week's Town
Council meeting in a most unusual way. Eve Coles was reporting
back to the Council on a recent meeting of the Traffic Advisory
Committee - a joint group with members from the County, the
District, the Police and the Town. Somebody had asked about
introducing speed limits along London Road past the new Care Home.
The County Council Highways representative apparently said (and
his comments are minuted) that consideration of this matter had
been delayed because an application by Sainsbury's for a
development on the Parker Knoll employment site (the waste land
area where the buses park) was under active discussion with the
District Planners.
I suppose it
could be a Sainsbury's office block or warehouse but that seems
highly improbable in this location. Much more likely to be a
supermarket. This is the first time the Town have officially heard
anything about any plan - although rumours have been rife in
recent weeks. It is surprising since solemn undertakings were made
by the Planners when Planning Permission was granted to Parker
Knoll for their housing development that this land would be
reserved for the construction of small scale industrial units.
Many people thought the promise was hollow and that it was only a
matter of time before a developer would be back to apply for
change of use. Now this seems to have happened. Plans are being
pushed ahead to build more and more houses in the town - but there
is still no sign of providing for more long-promised light
industrial jobs.
I wonder what the Co-Op will think when
they hear about the possibility of a major new retail outlet. Will
they still go ahead with their plans for a big extension in the
town centre? What does the town prefer..........To keep
large-scale grocery retail in the town centre or move it to the
edge (like Stow has done - leaving the centre to sweet shops and
estate agents?) The local Planners hold exhibitions,
circulate leaflets and carry out public consultations on plans for
housing in 2020...but they keep completely quiet about something
which will seriously impact on all our lives in the immediate
future. What a sham it all is. Time for Witney to come clean. What
exactly is being discussed for the Parker Knoll site?
Three local schools
are "outstanding"
NINE
county schools have been praised after receiving an ‘outstanding’
rating from school inspector Ofsted. Pupils and staff were invited
to a special reception at Yarnton Manor, where they received an
Excellence in Oxfordshire award. Three local schools were among
the Oxfordshire schools which received Ofsted’s top rating in
2009. They were: Enstone Primary School, Hook Norton Primary
School and The Ace Centre Nursery School, Chipping Norton
Keith Mitchell, leader of
Oxfordshire County Council, told
them: “We know Ofsted has raised the bar, but you have leapt over
the bar".
Enstone Primary
School headteacher Lindsay Daulton said she felt privileged to
work there. She said: “The staff are a dedicated team who work
extremely hard to make Enstone the excellent learning environment
that it is. We were all delighted with the recent outstanding
judgement from Ofsted.”
Hook Norton Primary School, near Banbury,
was rated outstanding in every area assessed. Headteacher Stella
Belgrove said: “We want the very best all-round education and care
for our children, and it was good to see that Ofsted agreed we’re
providing that.” Year Six pupil Oliver Gardner added: “We get
involved in all sorts of other things that the inspector was very
interested in – we have a good ecological background and now we
have got together with Low Carbon Hook Norton, which has given us
£200,000 to make the school more
energy-efficient.”
Michael Waine, the county
council’s cabinet member for schools improvement, said: “We have
got to use our outstanding schools to spread their special
messages and create other outstanding schools across the county.”
Happy Days Vanessa
Picture by Graham Beacham
Last night (23rd
February) at the Town Council meeting Mayor Mike Dixon thanked
our popular Town Clerk for all her hard work, wished her a happy
maternity leave, reminded her to come back to work in a year's
time and then presented her with a small token of the Council's
appreciation. Vanessa leaves with warmest good wishes from us
all and we anxiously await developments!! We just hope we will
be able to manage in her absence.
Controversial
Plans for the New Youth centre
Last night at the Town
Council a row broke out about the plans for the new £1m Youth
Centre - which - amazingly - still seems to be on the cards
despite all the cuts which the County Council are making to
their budgets. Readers may remember that the County were
very fast on their feet last year in applying for a grant from
Central Government. This was a sort of "special offer". to
councils....put together two or more of your social services on
a single site (preferably a school) and there's big money
available. In record short time the County produced a very smart
proposal for Chippy linking Youth Services with Adult Learning.
They used as evidence of local support the offer which the
Town Council had already made to contribute the proceeds of
selling Greystones (estimated at £200,000) towards a new Youth
Centre. The County Council succeeded in getting a £800,000
grant. Wow! Thats the best thing that's happened to the town for
quite a while. An absolutely brilliant bit of fast thinking by
the County - superbly executed. They haven't been thanked enough
yet. Mind you there is an incredibly demanding timetable. The
building has to be commissioned by July 2011 - which means you
have to start building by May 2010 at the latest. Detailed
architectural plans were briefed urgently last Autumn and the
Town have been pressing to see them. The Town set about the
complicated job of preparing Greystones for sale and have been
under pressure from the County to guarantee when the money would
be available. Meanwhile the County announced a swingeing Cost
saving programme and for a time it looked doubtful whether the
Youth Budget would find the money to actually operate the
Chippy Youth Centre - once it had been built. Hilary Biles and
Louise Chapman fought like tigers to keep the Youth centre in
the plans and for the moment it looks as if they have succeeded.
But there is plenty of sniping going on from some of the senior
officers at County Hall and one in particular seems to have
decided that there is no way Chipping Norton will be able to
raise £200,000 and that the County will be left to pick up the
tab so they better drop the whole scheme. In the middle of all
these dirty politics the Youth Service have been struggling on
to try and complete the planning for the Centre itself. The last
thing they need is more unhelpful criticisms. A couple of weeks
ago three councillors were shown the plans for the first time
and were mightily impressed. They left excited that the prospect
of a bright new state of the art Centre was so close. However
they made it clear that as a condition of the town's
contribution they needed to be sure that proper consultation
would take place with the Youth themselves and the organisations
using the Centre. The County officers promised that such a
consultation would begin soon. The whole situation is still a
bit delicate - what is essential is that the Town maintains an
enthusiastic support for building the new centre. It could still
so easily be lost.
Its never been clear in Chippy who actually
does talk for the Youth of the town. There are usually a number
of competing factions on any issue - never agreeing. One body
that has always considered itself authoritative is the
Management Committee of the present Youth centre. It contains a
heavy representation of middle-aged teachers and ex-teachers
like ex-Mayor Don Davidson, ex-Mayor Jo Graves and ex-Mayor Rob
Evans. What they know about what the youth of today are thinking
is anybody's guess. Unfortunately the present Youth centre
is not much of an advertisement for their committee. Starting
completely afresh is one of the main attractions of the new
project. Perhaps the committee knows it is about to become one
of the casualties of a major re-organisation and is feeling
slightly defensive. Anyway the Committee reckons it should have
been consulted about the design and planning of the new centre
and is angry that it hasn't happened before now. They clearly
intend to go down fighting.
Last week they saw
the plans for the new building for the first time. They were
very put out that nobody from the Youth Service came to the
meeting to explain things. This prompted a number of postings in
the Forum by Tym Soper the Committee Chairman. "Seen
the revised plans tonight, I really hope someone who knows what
they are talking about gets to have a say. The plans are full of
design faults. There’s an awful lot of design over substance.
Showed some young people who were
really not impressed. Why is the youth centre committee and the
young people of chippy being ignored on this project"
" the people who have been part of the process so far don't
seem to know what they are doing" "a
badly designed building". At the Town Council meeting last night Rob
Evans and Jo Graves expressed similar dissatisfactions. Rob
reported that the Committee had written to the Youth Service
demanding a proper meeting at which its views should be
considered. A little bird tells me that they were actually
delegated to ask the Town Council why the Management
Committee had not been invited to attend the meeting between the
Town Council and the County and to make their protest strongly
felt. Councillor Alcock suggested that this kind of
dismissive strong negative criticism was a pretty sure way of
finally burying this project. After all - he suggested - the
people that had briefed and drawn up the plans for the Centre
were not exactly amateurs at their job. Councillor Graves heaped
scorn on the idea that the people who had designed half a dozen
Oxfordshire Youth centres (including the new £2.5m one in
Banbury) deserved any attention. "Experts" she said " are
usually wrong. We know that from experience". "So what
exactly is it that you are not happy with?" Councillor Alcock
recklessly pressed on into the jaws of the snarling Management
Committee members. "I saw the plans and they looked to me like a
very agreeable layout of a coffee bar and chill-out area, some
offices and a huge activities room - with direct access out on
to a barbecue area and the school playing fields.
Completely separate entrance. Most of what we had asked for as
far as I could see". Contemptuous snorts from Committee Members
Graves and Evans. "Well come on "- Councillor Alcock ploughed on
- "tell me what is the terrible design fault that has led
the Management Committee to get so hot and bothered and threaten
to march on County Hall? What is it that is leading you to
jeopardise this whole undertaking because of your conviction
that County officers have screwed it all up" He might have
added - "What is it that the key power brokers on youth issues
in the town have decided to take up as a major concern and fight
about to the death"
Now dear reader if
you have followed me this far you may have already developed a
theory of your own about what could possibly have led Rob Evans
to be mounting a kamikaze attack against the plans for our new
Youth Centre. It surely couldn't be party political spite. This
isn't a left wingers revenge against the wicked Tory-led OCC?
Is it perhaps some act of loyalty to old friends at County Hall
who Rob worked with when he was the county councillor. None of
these. Councillor Evans assures us there is a solid basis for
the Management Committee's strong objections to the plans. Hear
this. Hold on to your hats. I could scarcely credit what I was
hearing last night.
The new building has
a pitched roof. The Management Committee is of the view that
given the new craze among "yoof" for extreme sports of all kinds
that there is a serious risk that the town teenagers will
clamber up on the roof of the proposed Youth Centre and indulge
in some very hazardous skateboarding. They are shocked
that this has not been considered by the County Council
architects and feel that it is only their own closeness to the
habits of wayward Chippy youth which has enabled them to
highlight this potentially disastrous design flaw in the £1m
building. They demand to be heard. I think they are going batty.
Oh and there is one more crucial thing - according to the
Management Committee. Youth Club members must have loos of their
own. It is quite unacceptable for them to share loos with
adults. What on earth is that all about then? I would have
pleaded with the Committee to keep their objections quiet but
its too late - they have already written to the Youth Service.
Lets hope they think its all a bad joke.
Distinguished Local Son Dies in California
Geoffrey Burbidge, an English physicist who
became a towering figure in astronomy by helping to explain how
people and everything else are made of stardust, died in
San Diego. He was 84A large man
with an even larger voice, Dr. Burbidge was one of the last
surviving giants of the postwar era of astronomy, when big
telescopes were sprouting on mountain peaks in the Southwest and
peeling back the sky, revealing a universe more diverse and
violent than anybody had dreamed: radio galaxies and quasars
erupting with gargantuan amounts of energy, pulsars and black
holes pinpricking the cosmos, and lacy chains of galaxies
rushing endlessly away into eternity. As the director of Kitt
Peak National Observatory in Arizona, Dr. Burbidge pushed to
open big telescopes to a larger community of astronomers. As a
senior astronomer at the university in San Diego, he was, to the
consternation of most of his colleagues, a witty and acerbic
critic of the Big Bang theory.
Geoffrey Ronald Burbidge was born in 1925
in Chipping Norton in England, in the Cotswolds hills halfway
between Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon. His father, Leslie, was a
builder. His mother, Evelyn, was a milliner. He was an only
child and the first of his family to progress beyond grammar
school. He attended the University of Bristol intending to
study history, but on discovering he could stay in college
longer if he enrolled in physics, he did, and found he liked it.
He furthered his studies at University College, London, from
which he received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1951.from The New York Times
Read the full obituary.
'We need new
jobs as well as homes in Chippy'
12
February 2010 PLANS
to build 400 new homes in Chipping Norton are promising but
there needs to be more jobs to stop it becoming a "dormitory
town", according to councillors.West
Oxfordshire District Council is proposing the new homes for the
north of Chipping Norton with half located in the London Road
area.There are also plans for a third
primary school in the town as well as space for new businesses.
Sites for 400 homes have been identified or either built
in the town since April 2006 while another 400 have been
proposed for the next 15 years.
According to West Oxfordshire District Council, 200 people are
on a waiting list for affordable housing in Chipping Norton.
Town councillor Gerry Alcock said: "We do need affordable
housing and have to accept the need to grow.My concerns are more to do with work – there's no point
having the houses if you do not have the employment as well.To go with houses we must have more jobs.We have got to get good businesses to come to Chipping
Norton to set up organisations and help that happen."
Mr Alcock also expressed concerns about whether extra residents
in the town would mean the need for further shopping facilities.
"More houses on the northern
side of town will mean more people coming into the centre of
town.I would think with that we would need some satellite
shopping set up to cater for the new houses.The town itself cannot contain this geographical spread."West Oxfordshire District Council said it had sought
space for business development in the plans and added there were
new employment opportunities on the remainder of land at the
former Parker Knoll site.
Chipping Norton ex-mayor Gina Burrows
said she thought further housing was inevitable and that
shopping facilities would be adequate to cover the new homes,
with Co-op already deciding to expand its High Street store by
50 per cent.No further shopping developments would need to take
place, she added.I want the town
centre to stay alive and people to come in to shop," Mrs Burrows
said."In terms of new housing we have
not got many empty homes so further houses are needed. We need
to accept the town does need further growth."
Mrs Burrows added the development of the town was a hot topic
locally.The new homes for Chipping Norton are part of the
Government's aims for growth of 7,300 houses in west Oxfordshire
from 2006 to 2026.It says 40 per cent of these should be
affordable housing. Of this, 2,500 dwellings have already been
built while planning consent has been granted for a further
1,600 homes.This leaves the locations of at least 3,200 new
homes to be identified throughout the rest of west Oxfordshire.
The plans for the further development in Chipping Norton will be
available for viewing at the Guildhall in the town. Planning
officers will be on hand at Chipping Norton Town Hall on
Wednesday, February 24, from 11am to 6pm to answer questions.People have until March 22 to comment on West Oxfordshire
District Council's planning strategy and make their opinions on
new houses known.
Sixth formers
Join the Town Hall Project Team
Tom Lodge
and Ruth Jones
inspect the Town Hall Steps with Cllr Keith Greenwell
Councillor Keith Greenwell is the Leader of
the special Town Council Project Group just beginning the long
process of restoring the Town
Hall to its former glory. Apart from
other councillors the group includes outside surveyors, the
Listed Buildings Officer from WODC and English Heritage.
The first phase of the refurbishment involves removing the steps
and making the foundations of the building watertight. This work
should begin in June and will be
completed by Christmas requiring road closures on Topside and
part of the car park being fenced off to form a site compound.
All in all this is pretty complex project for
a town our size.
Keith thought this might be a great
opportunity for a couple of CNS sixth formers with an interest
in architecture and civil engineering to join the project group
and get some first hand experience. He
approached Simon Duffy,Headmaster of
CN school and asked if the school would like to participate in
the restoration project. There was a lot of
interest and Mr Duffy eventually nominated
Ruth Jones, from Stanford St Martin and Tom Lodge of Burford
Road.Both are year 12 students
and aspire to have careers in architecture and town planning.
Ruth was attracted to take part because she believes her
involvement in a major project on a historic building will help
with her application for University. Tom was excited by the
complexity of the management of the work involving so many
different organisations with differing requirements and
priorities.
Tom and Ruth
will attend council meetings concerning the project and will be
an integral part of the organisation supervising the work and
making the decisions. Tom and Ruth have agreed to record the
process and keep a diary that will form part of the record of
the progress of the work and most importantly their thoughts and
involvement, which will become part of the history of this fine
listed building.This diarywill be presented to the Chipping Norton Museum .
Simon Duffy, Headmaster CN School was delighted
to have two of his outstanding
sixth formers working on the project.Let'shope
this will be the start of the school
and Town Council working together on other
town-improvement projects.
Thanks to Glyn Watkins for the
pics. Any media representatives interested in more
background
to this story are welcome to ring Keith Greenwell
07899 703555
keithgreenwell@btinternet.com
ACTING TOWN CLERK APPOINTED
As
everyone must know by now our esteemed Town Clerk Vanessa is
taking a year off to have a baby. Whether she comes back or not
probably depends on how much she enjoys being a Mum again!! So
the hunt has been on to find somebody to stand in. Not an easy
task. Ideally somebody who knows the town and has some knowledge
of Town Council work!! Step forward the ideal candidate -
ex-Mayor Graham Beacham.
Graham was an Independent Chippy Town
Councillor for many years and he is also the Chairman of Spelsbury
Parish Council. He is in his late forties and has five children. He was born in the town and spent many years
working at Parker Knoll as a Tapestry Storeman. He is an
active sportsman and is a leading member of the Chippy Cricket
Club where he has performed many roles - including President.
He
has also served as Chairman of Wychwood District Scout
Council. Until he left
the Chipping Norton Town Council three years ago Graham was
Chairman of the Recreation Committee - so that knowledge is
going to be specially useful as we negotiate the many issue
around the sale of Greystones and the new Youth centre over the
coming year. In 2008 he started and organised the Town Council
Sports Awards which have been a big success. We are absolutely
sure he will do a great job for us and we wish him all the best.
Graham will be starting his position this coming Monday morning
(8th Feb).
BIG EXPANSION PLANS AT THE CO-OP
EXCLUSIVE!
An executive from the Co-Op
and their architects arranged the first showing of future plans
for their store to a group of councillors on Wednesday morning.
The Co-Op have now bought options on the Burgage Plots land at the
back of all the shops down as far as the Mews development -
including Burtons, Smiths, and Cheltenham and Gloucester. This is
the land which Chase Homes were planning to develop as flats last
year before they went bust. In broad terms the Co-op will
submit an application in February/March to extend their store back
into the existing Car Park. Loading access will be dramatically
improved. The store size will increase from 1000 sq ms to
1620 sq ms. There will be a much wider range of products and
there will be an on-site bakery. A much-extended car park (145
spaces compared with the existing 85) will be built behind the
other shops - all of which will have their own access and private
parking spaces. (34 - in addition to the 145 above) This car park
will have a new access from Albion Street which will be completely
separate from the entrance for delivery vehicles which will be in
Cattle Market. The Co-Op are going to organise an opportunity for
everybody to see the plans in about a fortnight. They have
discussed things with WODC who seem to be supportive and with the
County who apparently like the new access arrangements but want
some money to rebuild the road. English Heritage are having a lot
to say about the design of the new store (after all this is a
conservation area). Its good to know that the Co-Op intend - as
far as they can - to maintain the line of the old burgage plots
throughout the site. Exciting times folks!!
A statement from Chunky Townley
Chairman of the Hospital Action Group
‘The Hospital Action Group has always believed that if the
highest care standards are to be maintained in the town hospital
it is essential that the hospital facilities (including
Intermediate Care Beds) should be staffed by NHS nurses. We
believe that this is the only way of ensuring that the highest
quality staff are employed, that continuous training in the
latest techniques is maintained and that a fulfilling career
structure is guaranteed (including long term pay and pensions)
so that motivation of nurses will remain high. This seems to us
to be particularly important where the private partner in this
enterprise (Orders of St John) has little experience of running
hospital services.
The Chipping Norton and District Hospital Action Group has grave
concerns that the nurses employed to staff the 14 Intermediate
Care beds in the new hospital may not now be employed by the NHS.
This concern follows a PCT briefing given to the nurses during
November in which they were told they would have to TUPE
transfer and be employed by the Orders of St John.
There was a public consultation which started in 2004 following
which the Oxfordshire Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny
Committee, in 2007, stipulated that Intermediate Care Bed Nurses
must be employed by the NHS for a period of at least three years
after the new hospital opens following which there would be an
open review. The Hospital Action Group and WODC are to be
involved in setting the terms of the end of three year review.
In addition the Hospital Action Group was given repeated
assurances that nurses staffing the Intermediate Care Beds would
not be asked to work in the Care Home and Care Home nurses would
not be employed on the Intermediate Care Beds.
The people in this community made it very clear, during the
consultation, that they wished to see NHS staff retained on the
hospital beds and a clear distinction between those Intermediate
Care Beds and the Nursing Home maintained.
The Hospital Action Group will campaign strongly to see that the
2007 commitment is honoured and that the division between
Intermediate Care Bed staff and Care Home staff is clear and not
compromised in any way.
The Hospital Action Group is already in contact with David
Cameron and the PCT in an effort to get the 2007 agreement
reconfirmed.
Unless the PCT is able to give a written undertaking that this
will be the case the Hospital Action Group will be organising a
campaign which will include a public meeting so that people in
the community can express their views.
Hospital Action Group members feel that for the PCT to attempt
these changes at this late stage in the project makes a mockery
of the whole consultation process.
The Hospital Action Group is determined to do all it can to
ensure the continuation of the NHS staffing of the Intermediate
Care Beds in the New Chipping Norton and District War Memorial
Hospital. This is what the people were promised during and after
the public consultation.’
New Parking Wardens arrive - only six months
late!!
On
25th January 2010 West Oxfordshire District Council
takes over the management of on-street parking from the Police.A new team of civil enforcement officers, called
Community Wardens, will control parking both on the street and
in council-managed car parks across the district. Wearing
distinctive green uniforms and high-visibility jackets, the new
Community Wardens will carry out regular patrols on foot
throughout the District. They will: - help improve parking problems caused
by illegal and inconsiderate parking, which will help
- -- keep roads safe and traffic
moving freely - provide advice to motorists and
residents, linking the public with council services
penalise those that flout the law by issuing Penalty Charge
Notices.
All car parks in West Oxfordshire will remain free and there are
currently no plans to introduce any on-street pay and display or
residents parking areas (Controlled Parking Zones).
In addition to managing parking the new community wardens will
act as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the Council, reporting
environmental issues such as littering, dog-fouling and
graffiti. They will also work closely with neighbourhood Police
teams.
.....that was the
year that was..... A few
highlights picked out of a hectic Chippy
2009
JAN The new MUGA quickly proves its value,
Football in the frost! Dreary miserable start to the year -
lightened only by a superb Nortonians production of Old King
Cole....and the opening of Wild Thyme. - a great addition to the
town's restaurant scene
FEB
Snow blankets the town
and brings everything to a standstill for several days. Widescale
criticism of the Council's gritting efforts and calls for more
grit bins. Still the town looks super and there are lots of lovely
photos.
MARCH The Mayor resigns complaining about
various goings-on, The Deputy Mayor is scandalously passed over
and the leftie New Street gang vote for Mike Dixon - not
apparently realising he's a lifelong Tory!! They vote for another
Tory as Deputy. Chippy First - the biggest group is ignored.
Crazy and completely undemocratic..
APRIL
At last work begins on the London Road site. Only
the Care Home so far. The Hospital is promised soon. Successful
Charity Curry Night at the Town Hall. Work begins on the Town Hall
steps. Geoff Gafford walks from Lands End to John o' Groats
MAY
Sue Bartholomew is congratulated by Chunky
Townley after the Town Council election. Floogie and Honor are
also elected. Hilary is re-elected to the County Council in a
landslide. Fun Run at the Lido. Dave justifies
charging wisteria cutting to expenses at Public meeting
JUNE The "Chain Gang" - The new Mayor and the
new Deputy Leader of Oxfordshire County Council Hilary Biles - at
the first celebration of Armed Forces Day on 27th June
....Brilliantly successful Beer Festival at the Rugby Club
JULY Sainsburys opens successfully with much
fanfare. Summer brings a spate of broken shop windows and minor
break-ins. Hugely successful Lido Auction. Jeremy raises £14,000.
A massive crane in the Market Square rescues heavy
equipment stuck in the tarmac!
AUG Eve Coles is on crutches but still
campaigns for the re-instatement of a Parking Warden. Since
Christine's departure Topside has become Parking Chaos. WODC qsk
the town what they want to see on the castle view site. That's
consultation for you. Half a day in the middle of August! Any
Questions comes to town
SEPT An imaginative protest
at Mr Clarksons house highlighting his eco-unfriendly attitudes!
New book "Chipping Norton through Time" goes on sale. Emma's Day
returns to the Lido. Another brilliant Jazz day.
OCT
The Post office is rescued by
the Co-Op who move a new manager and staff in to continue an
indispensable service. That was a close one. For goodness sake
show your appreciation while you can. "les Miserables" at the
school is voted a hit by Ken Norman.
NOV Memorable Remembrance Day
superbly organised by the British legion with a presentation
Ceremony to the ATC in the Town Hall Town Council holds an Open
day and achieves lowest attendance ever for a Town Hall event.
Sean Green, Alice Powell, Jack Taylor and Harry Mincer win the
Sports Awards
DEC
The hunt tradition brightens
up the Town Centre. The Xmas trees are in place. Late Night
Shopping went off well with live music. There is a covering of
snow. The town looks beautiful.
Happy New Year everyone
Playbus
celebrates surprise Lottery windfall
AN
UNEXPECTED windfall means hundreds of disabled children and
adults will soon benefit from a new £140,000 sensory bus – just
a month after their dreams were dashed. Four weeks ago bosses of
the Oxfordshire Playbus thought hopes of a new vehicle had
crashed when they lost a public vote for £50,000 after being
featured on ITV’s People’s Millions show.
'It came completely out of
the blue when they phoned us to say it was their 15th birthday
and we were one of 15 projects to get money'Playbus manager Tym Soper
But
their plans are back on track after the Big Lottery Fund stepped
in to give them the final £50,000 they needed, as part of the
National Lottery’s 15th anniversary celebrations. The Playbus
project’s 30-year-old single-decker sensory bus broke down more
than a year ago and is beyond repair, leaving dozens of severely
disabled children unable to benefit. The project can now buy a
new lorry and convert it into a sensory space with fibre-optic
and UV lights. It should be on the road by April. Playbus
manager Tym Soper of Chipping Norton (seen
celebrating on the left) said: “We were devastated
after the vote, and full of doom and gloom about the possibility
of getting a new bus. It came completely out of the blue when
they phoned us to say it was their 15th birthday and we were one
of 15 projects to get money. Four hundred disabled children and
adults in Oxfordshire every year enjoyed using our old sensory
bus. This award has enabled us to give birth to a new era of
sensory support in the county.”
Playbus bosses decided to buy a
lorry instead of a coach so that if the vehicle suffers
expensive mechanical failures in future, the sensory equipment
can just be hooked up to another cab. Mr
Soper said they would now investigate the latest technology in
sensory vehicles to ensure the lorry was equipped with the best
gadgets their money could buy. It will continue to feature old
favourites such as a dark room, bubble tube and a room where
lights change in response to movement from heads, fingers or
eyelids. Among the groups set to benefit from the new vehicle
are young children with disabilites, teenagers with behavioural
problems and adults with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Alison Rowe, the Big Lottery
Fund’s head for the South East, said: “I am delighted
Oxfordshire Playbus has been selected to receive one of our
awards marking 15 years of Lottery support for good causes. The
project has worked really hard to ensure wide-ranging support
and involvement of the whole community and is a perfect example
of how lottery money has been making a huge difference to
communities since 1994.”
Now a definite go-ahead is in
place for the new Hospital building there is one piece of
crucial business that must be sorted out about the staffing
arrangements. Two years ago there was an absolutely solemn and
binding commitment made by the NHS that if the nurses at the
hospital did not want to transfer to the employment of the
Orders of St John (the new private operators of the Care Home
and the Intermediate Care Beds in the hospital) they could
retain their employment in the NHS and be seconded over to OSJ. This was
agreed in writing at several meetings and not least minuted by
the Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee which acts as
the health watchdog for Oxfordshire. After three years there
would be a comprehensive review. All evidence would be made
public and local organisations would be invited to participate.
The local Hospital Action Group felt specially strongly that in
order to maintain standards and continue to be able to recruit
top quality nurses the NHS connection was vital. It was only
after the undertaking about secondment that the Hospital Action
Group finally felt able to endorse the PCT’s plans. So we have
all been gobsmacked to hear that representatives of the PCT have
visited the hospital and told the nurses that it is now decision
time. They must either switch their employment to the OSJ or
leave. The nurses understandably are distraught. This is the
most incredible bit of dishonest backtracking it is possible to
imagine. It is inconceivable that the PCT could have
deliberately hoodwinked the Hospital Action Group and the
Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Unless the previous commitment
is clearly restated we are set to lose a lot of nurses from the
present hospital payroll which will be a disastrous start for the
new hospital when it opens next year. Watch out for a Public
meeting on this issue. Chunky Townley, Clive Hill and the Vicar
are marshalling the troops. We will need everyone’s support………….The
Phone Co-Op are wanting to renew their option to lease the
derelict bit of ground down next to Travis Perkins from the
Field Reeves as a site for a new Head Office. In their proposal
they say that WODC would like them to vacate their existing
offices on the Elmsfield Estate for use as Starter Units. This
is strange because Starter Units is one of the things that are
supposed to be built on the Parker Knoll Employment site. WODC
have been telling us work is due to begin as soon as market
demand picks up. It sounds as if WODC may have given up hope of
this ever happening – otherwise why try and commandeer the Phone
Co-Op’s offices? Which is added support for a strong new rumour
around town that Sainsbury’s are now trying to buy the London
Road site………Here's what I wrote here three years ago......I
remember vividly Will Barton of WODC telling Councillor Grantham
and me that we should stop raising objections about the layout
of the Parker Knoll site because he had several companies
actually knocking on his door waiting for the Industrial units
that were to be built and our behaviour was jeopardising that.
That was a year ago and there is still no sign of these
companies. Ever been had? The boss of the Phone Co-Op said he
had been asked by the Planners to consider the Parker Knoll
Employment site for his new office. But the site has now been
sold on by Wimpey and WODC could (or would) not tell him who the
new owner was. The boss of CETA Insurance (another company
considering a move) apparently went into shock when he heard the
asking price for land at Parker Knoll. Here's my bet. The 5
acres of "employment" land at Parker Knoll will stay
undeveloped. In a few years time the owners (whoever they are)
will say they have been unable to find any interest for
industrial units and apply for permission for retail use (ie
Tesco or Asda)..............WODC also seem to have given up on the idea of
Starter Units at Greystones. Their Planning Application this
week talks about change of use to Storage with Provision for
waste bins and employment of thirty people. Sounds just like a
replacement for Dean Pit to some of us. That’s all we need. It
will make selling Greystones House a virtual impossibility. We
need urgent clarification. Jobs for Chipping Norton is
absolutely nowhere on WODC’s priority list ………..Apparently the
block booking for Moslem prayers in the Town Hall every Friday
includes this week so the Town Hall Keeper will be having to
interrupt his Christmas Day to open up the place for them. I
hope he’s getting “time and a half!”……It seems the Rugby Club
will not be happy until they have completely colonised the
Greystones site. The Town Council – out of the goodness of their
hearts – said the Rugby Club could use a field for practice
(without paying any rent) if they cut the grass. Not satisfied
with this the Club have now started clearing and levelling
another large piece of adjacent ground – without so much as a by
your leave. Even this wouldn’t be so bad if one of the big
cheeses at the club was not going around town and saying to
whoever will listen that he doesn’t understand why the Town
Council charge the Rugby Club such low rents and they would be
perfectly willing to pay more. Be careful what you wish for is
all I can say to the gentleman in question…………My Daily Telegraph
tells me this Christmas Eve that David Cameron has returned to
Witney for the holiday, where he is thinking deep strategic
thoughts and preparing for government. There is even a picture
of him in a sombre reflective mood walking alongside some gloomy
canal (is that really in Witney?) – presumably to emphasise his
familiarity with the gritty side of modern life. Except
yesterday he wasn’t mooching along a seedy canal in Witney. He
was spotted in the posh Daylesford Farm Shop buying overpriced
provisions and quite clearly not worrying about anything of
concern to the ordinary bloke. And just to provide a bit of
glitzy celebrity atmosphere Kate Winslet was in the restaurant
tucking in to some seasonal nosh. The “Man of the people” image
needs some more work Dave! Try popping in to the Chippy Co-Op
when you are next in town………... I hope everyone has started
thinking about the way our lives will change from next May. From
then on when the Prime Minister wants to show a visiting
President what real life in impoverished Britain is all about he
will probably be bringing them to Chipping Norton High Street.
(More shop closures by then !) We will presumably all receive
orders from local HQ about the times we will be required to
shuffle around the streets chewing a straw and visiting the
Charity Shops and looking appropriately yokel-like. There will
probably be a short course in forelock-tugging at the Adult
Learning Centre. Word has it that Sarah is getting her mayoral
chain specially burnished in anticipation of pulling a pint for Barack Obama at the Blue some time next year ………….But of course
our own local politics in 2010 will be more about the appalling
news that Chunky Townley has decided that one four-year term as
a District Councillor is enough for him. He is not planning to
stand again next year Not surprising I suppose since it must get
tiresome being treated like a poor relation country cousin by
the nobs in Witney. Indeed one Cabinet member was recently heard
to express the view that Chipping Norton was just too much
trouble and West Oxfordshire would be much better off if Chippy
was handed over to Cherwell District. If any of you get to talk
to Chunky over the next few weeks try and persuade him to stay
on. However, the local Tories have already started to make
their arrangements for a new candidate and word on the street is
that they have asked local builder Pete Woodward to be their new
candidate and he has accepted ……….. It was very noticeable that
every town councillor turned up for the Council meeting this
week – even people not seen for ages like new Tory councillors
Ms Honor Stobart and Ms Hilary Williams . Seems all that is
required to get a full house is the bribe of a glass of wine and
a sausage roll. Perhaps the Mayor should make this offer a
permanent arrangement. At least everyone was there to hear the
Tory Deputy Mayor Chris Butterworth deny that he had ever asked
for the Town Precept to be raised by 25%. This was just a
vicious rumour. More likely the party hierarchy had fingered his
collar and told him to shut up. Tory party policy this year is
that local government should be cut, cut, cut ...……. Soon Castle
View Care Home and the old Hospital will be demolished. Slap in
the centre of town will be a fabulous new building site – a
developers dream. The owners – the NHS and the County Council –
will be out to make as much money as they can. It is absolutely
essential that the local Planners (WODC) represent the town’s
interests and get really tough about this land and lay down some
clear planning guidelines and demand big Section 106 commitments
from the developer. We absolutely must NOT end up with several
huge blocks of one-bedroomed flats – which is probably the most
profitable option. First indications are not encouraging. WODC
held an exhibition about the site several months ago and asked
for residents comments. One of the Planners came to town this
month to report on the results. They got 80 completed
questionnaires and seem to be regarding this as some kind of
legitimate consultation exercise. It is no such thing. A sample
of 80 responses with no kind of quotas is absolutely
meaningless. They seem to have concluded that legitimate
development could consist of shops or houses or flats or
community facilities but the mix will be left to the developer.
Crazy. The glorious sightlines from London Road as you drive
down into the town don’t have to be preserved. Indeed it will
perfectly OK for the developers to build three storey houses all
the way along the road frontage from The Oxford House pub down
to the Freemasons Hall on Over Norton Road. Disaster.
Provision of a multi-story car park to relieve some of the
congestion along Spring Street is not on the cards. The
“survey” suggests people in the town think there are enough
shops and restaurants already in Chipping Norton so the Planners
aren’t looking for any more of those – but that’s really up to
the developers. It is completely unclear exactly what the local
planners are bringing to the party in terms of imagination or
ideas. The town really must start taking a serous interest in
this site or we will find ourselves being lumbered with a
profit-driven monstrosity (rather like the plan that was
submitted last year for the Burgage Plots and mercifully was not
progressed when the developer went bust). Its time for a
politically-interested and community-minded architect like our
very own Alex Corfield to start leading a protest movement with
some development ideas of our own……….A Very Happy Christmas to all readers
of chippingnorton.net. Any day now the new town website –
masterminded by Gina Burrows and Hilary Williams will be up and
running so you won’t have to put up with all this biased rubbish
much longer. But be careful what you wish for.
MEET THE 2009 SPORTS AWARDS WINNERS
Front row left to right:Alice PowellMayors
Award - Motor Racing ,
Sean Green 18 & over Award - Football
,Harry Mincer
Under 11 Award - Football,Chris Dyer Junior Team Award -Golf
Captain
and Jack Taylor 11-17 Award -
Cricket.Back row
: rest of Chippy Junior Golf Squad
left to right:Imogen Vessey,Jordan Tew,Richard Whiston,Mikey Roberts,Charles Rose& George Kay.Absent
Claire Reynolds
HIGHLY COMMENDED
DANNY PHILLIPS
– GOLF NICOLE HOWLETT – GOLF
HARRY LEWIS FOOTBALL/HOCKEY/CROSS COUNTRY/CRICKET KITTY
WRIGHT - TRAMPOLINING
COREY NEWTON – GYMNASTICS BEN CHAPMAN – SWIMMING
STUART FERGUSON – ATHLETICS
MEGAN WOOD – KAYAKING
TOM BUTLER – KITESURFING NEIL HANCOCK
– BOWLS
GRAHAM BOX – BOWLS DANIEL
BOX – BOWLS
BRIAN KAY- MANAGER CHIPPY GOLF JUNIOR TEAM
BRITISH LEGION ORGANISE A
MOVING REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY
Mike Howes
of the British Legion writes: On the 8th November
St Marys Church was
filled to bursting as ever, with British Legion
representatives, the ATC The Army Cadets, Scouts, Guides,
Brownies and local councillors and other organisation
representatives along with pleasing support from the general
public.What was also very
evident was the increased numbers of people who watched the
"march past" and the parade, lining Horsefair and Top side.
Ian
Barnett of the British Legion Club making a presentation in the
Town Hall to the ATC and the Army Cadets. Looking on are:
Colour Sgt. Clare Watts; Commanding
Officer Chipping Norton Army Cadet Force and Major Pete
Broome, Area Commander in the Oxfordshire Army Cadet Force
Flight Lt. Richard Hogan, Officer Commanding 136 Squadron Air
Training Corps
On the 11th
November at 11am a small crowd gathered at the war memorial in
London Road for a short Armistice Day service and the
laying of wreaths by the Mayor and representatives of the
British Legion. Below the Hon. Sec.
of the Womens Branch Betty Hicks
is laying her wreath. Legionnaire Flagbearer Holland (right)
looks on (he complained to me only today that his picture had
never appeared on chippingnorton.net....so there you go Mr
Holland. Fame at last!!)
Many thanks to Ian Barrett and Mike
Howes for the excellent pictures
When chippingnorton.net started six years ago we summarised the main
worries people had about the town in 13 questions. We promised we would go
on nagging until we got answers. We have answers to only six so
far!!!!!
The following questions have been answered
Q What is happening to our
hospital? When does building start?
A
Building
began in July 2009. Opening in 2010
Three cheers and thanks to the Hospital Action Group
Q When do we get an Action Plan for the Horsefair Air Quality Management
Area ? A We have one involving HGV speed limits and lorry routes. However
not much seems to be actually happening about it. Q
When do we get some pedestrian crossings at the East End of the town?
A There are two now. We still need one across Albion Street Take another bow
Councillor Biles
Q
When will the flower and shrub borders in our town start getting a bit
of TLC?
A
A local company Toparius kindly
offered to look after the beds in the town centre this year They are
doing a fantastic job. Thanks to them from us all. Q What is the Partnership for?
A The
Partnership turned out to be for nothing. It spent a packet and folded
having achieved nothing What a waste of everyone's time
This question was answered but is back in the melting pot!
Q
Why is the Youth Club only open two nights a week? A A deal was done in 2009 with OCC whereby the Town Council contribute £200,000
towards a new £1m Youth Centre which will be open five nights a week -
including the weekend Well done to everyone - particularly
Councillor Biles Spring 2010 This deal has now been changed by OCC.
They don't want the town's money any more. Not sure now whether things are
going ahead or not.
The following
questions have still not been answered after six years .... Unbelievable
really
Q When do we
start getting the promised help in creating new local jobs to replace the 4OO
lost at Parker Knoll?
Q
When do we get a regular foot patrol by Police on Fridays and Saturdays
around midnight in the Town Centre? Q
When will a proper ambulance be positioned in Chippy as promised?
Q
When will the proposals for a
Minor Injuries Unit be published? Q
Why isn't there a disco for teenagers in the Town Hall every month?
Q
When is 15 minute parking along Topside going to be officially
sanctioned? Q
Why can't we have a Visitor Information Centre ?
New Era for Chippy Post Office
THE
future of Chipping Norton’s post office has been secured.
Customers feared for the future of the service when the
sub-postmistress announced she was retiring – and no-one could
be found to take over. But the Midcounties Co-op — which has a
supermarket just doors away — has stepped in to safeguard the
High Street branch. It has kept on the two members of staff, and
plans to recruit two more.
New manager Linda Allinson said: “We are still trading from
the same office and the staff have stayed with us, so it has all
stayed the same. “All the services, such as foreign currency,
are still here. It has been very positive. People have been very
friendly and I think they have looked forward to it. We are up
and running with no big bangs.”
Sue Berry, district manager of the Co-op’s post office group,
said: “This will ensure an important service is retained in the
same location which people are used to. We have long experience
of running post offices and operate 85 across our trading area.
We believe in supporting our local communities and meeting the
needs of our members and customers.”
Post Office spokesman Sue Dakin said they were delighted the
Co-op had stepped in.
The takeover at Chipping Norton comes 16 months after the
Post Office shut 22 of its 188 county branches as part of a
nationwide cost-cutting measure.
Snippets from the
Council Meeting
Last night
(19th October) there was a Town Council meeting. The Vicar
attended the meeting and outlined some of the new building and
restoration work going on in the church. New rooms and
facilities are being created in the bell tower and the chancel.
In the space created by the removal of the old organ the superb
alabaster tomb which has been fully exposed for the first time
in a century will be restored and form the centrepiece of a
wonderful collection of old monuments from the church which have
been obscured - or even left outside. The programme goes on for
several years and will eventually involve a new floor for the
body of the church. Wow! that will take some fundraising. The
County Councillor Hilary Biles told us that she had met with the
local Police Inspector Rory Freeman. He emphasised that
Chipping Norton still had two PCSOs and two Neighbourhood
officers on duty 24 hours a day. He had given instructions to
the local police that it was their job to sort out parking
problems in the town until the new Community Wardens are
appointed next February. Hilary also reported that she had been
successful in persuading the WODC Cabinet to agree to lift the
covenant which they hold on Greystones House. This should allow
the building to be sold for substantially more money - proceeds
from the Sale are going towards the new Youth Centre. Everything
now looks set to start marketing the building. Many thanks to
Hilary for her efforts on this and to the WODC Cabinet for their agreement.
But probably most of all to Andrew Tucker - the Director of
Planning - who has steered our request through so skilfully and
has been really keen to help. District Councillor Coles reported that she had attended a
meeting of the WODC Environment Committee and had been told that
the signposting of HGVs away from Chipping Norton was now
complete. About time too! They had also discussed Dean Pit.
Councillor Graves interjected with the latest news from the waste
disposal front. She had been
rung up by Lord Chadlington (no less) that very afternoon and
told that the application by OCC to its own Planning Committee
earlier in the day to extend the licence of Dean Pit for a
further five years had been rejected and the extension reduced
to two years and that the OCC must show that it has considered
viable alternatives before any further extension will be
granted. It was reassuring to hear that WODC had stated clearly
that Dean Pit would not be allowed to close until an alternative
was open. (Watch out Enstone!) The Town Council heard that
three of its recommendations from the last meeting on local
planning applications had been simply ignored by the WODC
Planning Committee. (situation normal) Gina Burrows
announced that there is to be a Town Hall Open Day at which
members of the Council will be in attendance to answer
residents' questions and users of the Town Hall will be
displaying the work of their organisations. To be held on a
Wednesday because the Town Hall is fully booked on Saturdays
through to the end of the year. NOVEMBER 25th is the day. Then
out of the blue we were informed that the Town Clerk was going
to have a baby, next May. Well blow me. We all fell off our
chairs and broke into applause. Good for you Vanessa.
Congratulations. We will think about how we will cope later! We
were told that Chippy Jazz Day has raised £5,500 - an
unbelievable effort by the Rotary. Half the proceeds going to
the Air Ambulance. Grants to Local Voluntary Bodies were
announced - ranging from £3,000 to the Lido down to £60 to
Vitalise. (Some of us had to ask what Vitalise is. A
Witney-based charity apparently which arranges respite trips for
carers.) It was good to see £500 going to the new Skater Hockey
Club which was only formed this year - based at the new MUGA.
Money worries took up the rest of the meeting. We have
been granted £100,000 by WODC towards Town Hall repairs and
refurbishment but it all depends on £80,000 matched funding. We
are £30,000 short and we have to come up with the goods by the
end of the year or the whole deal is back in the melting pot.
Who is to decide? Can we raise the £30K? Who will conjure up the
readies? Is this the responsibility of the Mayor? The Finance
Committee? or the Town Hall Committee? or the new Friends of the
Town Hall? A bureaucratic muddle. Hilary (who is the Cabinet
Member in charge of this grant funding) made it clear that she
wanted one person to talk to at the Town Council. Would the
Council please decide who this was to be - and quickly?
Grants were being cut back at this very moment and unless the
Town Council got its skates on they would lose out. Your
correspondent slunk into the corner and adjusted his dunce's cap
- as he always does after a wigging from Hilary. There is to be
a meeting later this week to sort it all out.
A restaurant that celebrates local
produce.
Wild
Thyme is the brainchild of Nick Pullen and his partner Sally
Daniel (pictured below) who finally
turned a dream into reality when
they moved to Chipping Norton and opened their restaurant last
December. Nick, a professional chef for more than 20 years,
explained why the premises they found in Chipping Norton are so
special: “We don’t come from Oxfordshire. Sally is from Essex
and I come from Portsmouth, but we knew that the place we were
looking for had to be somewhere really rural, like Chipping
Norton. It’s such a beautiful little market town, and as it’s
surrounded by farmers, cheese makers and other food producers,
it offers everything we wanted.
“We had this image of running a
restaurant where local farmers knocked on the back door holding
a brace of freshly shot pheasants and where freshly harvested
vegetables were readily available.”
Although
no one has turned up with a couple of pheasants yet, the couple
are confident that they really have found the right place to
open their first business. The restaurant occupies a Grade
II-listed building with enough space for a well-appointed
kitchen, three small inter-connecting dining areas and three
letting rooms upstairs.
Sally admitted that there were
moments when they wondered if they would be able to meet their
opening day deadline. She was still holding a wet paintbrush the
evening they were due to open – but by working together as a
team they got the work done.
Teamwork is probably the secret
of their success. This is a couple prepared to do most of the
jobs themselves, only calling on staff when they really have to.
The atmosphere they have
created by working together is relaxed and friendly. Regular
customers soon become friends and are called by their first
names rather than ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’.
“We are not into instant food,
we aim to offer the meal experience and provide customers with a
chance to enjoy a leisurely meal,” Sally said. “Nick cooks
everything to order and customers seem to appreciate this.”
Another thing they like is the
fact that Sally and Nick really do go out of their way to fill
their plates with local produce. They spent some considerable
time before opening getting to know what was available locally.
Until last week, when he had to
start concentrating on his
GCSEs,
their eggs were supplied by 15-year-old Jack Wilkinson, who
rears his own laying-hens on his parents’ smallholding. Although
Jack lives several miles from Chipping Norton, he would arrive
every Saturday with trays of fresh eggs, which he had carried on
the local bus. Apparently, there were times when he would admit
that two eggs had broken when the bus took a sharp turn to the
left, but that made his delivery even more special.
They get their venison from
Wychwood Forest and their lamb from nearby Glyn Farm because it
is pasture fed. Their cheese comes from Windrush Valley, Rodger
Crudge and Blur bassist Alex James, who lives in Kingham.
Nick makes his own bread rolls,
and offers them flavoured with sunblush tomatoes, walnut and
prune and onion, which I can assure you are quite delicious.
The vegetables proved a real
problem at first. Then everything changed when the couple made
it known that they were looking for local produce. Nick said:
“Suddenly people began turning up with baskets of vegetables
from their gardens. One woman arrived the other day carrying a
basket of ripe plums. I was able to say thank you by giving her
a couple of plum tarts in exchange the next day.”
He went on to say that what he
and Sally love about Chippy is that it really was proving to be
everything they dreamed of.
‘It’s allowing us to live our
dream. The other day I went to the local butchers and asked if
they had any wood pigeons. The butcher shook his head and said
he didn’t have any at the moment, but that if I really wanted
some he supposed he could go out and shoot a few – and he did.
You can’t get more local than that,” said Nick. Although he
can’t get local fish, he does use a Cotswold company that
delivers fresh fish regularly.
For my lunch at Wild Thyme I
ordered Upton-smoked duck breast salad dressed with home-made
blackberry vinaigrette. It was delicious.
Ambulance Trust is “failing dismally”
Of
the 392 health trusts assessed in the Care Quality Commission’s
annual health check for 2008/09South
Central Ambulance Service NHS Trust ended up
in the bottom five per cent. Its
rating dropped from good to weak
In the past year, paramedics got
to 72.6 per cent of urgent calls within eight minutes, compared
to a Government target of 75 per cent.
The figure was more than a 10
percentage point drop on the last figures for Oxfordshire
Ambulance Trust – which preceded SCAS – in 2005/06, when 84 per
cent of the most series category A calls were reached. It also
failed in terms of management of heart attack and stroke
patients. A spokesman for the trust said since April 1, 74.8 per
cent of category A callers in Oxfordshire were reached in eight
minutes, an increase on the previous year.
SCAS chief executive Will
Hancock said: “The results have confirmed that we still have
work to do to improve services for local people in some areas.
“We have a robust action plan
in place and delivering this will be our primary focus over the
coming months, to ensure that our patients receive the high
standards of service they expect and deserve.”
But Dr Peter Skolar, a county
councillor and chairman of the joint health overview and
scrutiny committee, said the trust was “failing dismally”. We
knew when it went out of Oxfordshire it would get too big and
out of control. I would classify it as poor.”
How can we help the school improve its GCSE
results?
asks Councillor Greenwell
I
have been very concerned about the performance results from
Chippy School for the last year. Let me explain why. There is
one measure which is generally accepted as the most important
indicator of the all-round achievement of a school in preparing
its kids for working life... That measure is the percentage of
pupils taking GCSE who get five passes (including Maths and
English) with a grade between A and C . This standard
represents a minimum qualification to demonstrate to potential
employees or colleges that a secondary school pupil has mastered
the three “R”s. and also worked on a range of different
subjects. The County Council has set a target on this measure
for all its schools of 58%
Chippy School made excellent and sustained progress over a
period of several years and in 2007 achieved a score of 64% on
this important measure – which was significantly better than
other state secondary schools in the area. It is probably not
co-incidental that this success came at the same time as
decisions were taken to make substantial extra investment in the
school’s facilities. Expectations were that the school’s
progress would continue.
But suddenly and surprisingly in 2008 the school’s score on this
performance measure fell to 54% A huge drop - completely
unacceptable by any standard.