Serving the villages of Crowmarsh Gifford, Mongewell and North Stoke
Crowmarsh Little Pick will be on Saturday 16th March at 10am, meeting at the bus stop outside Thames Mead. Please bring old gloves if you have some. Bags and little pickers will be provided. All help is much appreciated.
Notice from Waste Strategy Officer, Oxfordshire County Council:
Raising the bar in recycling: Your chance to talk rubbish and recycling with Oxfordshire’s councils
Do you know that each household in Oxfordshire produces one tonne of waste each year? We are amongst the best in the country at recycling and composting for a few years now at about 60% but recycling rates have started to drop in Oxfordshire.
Residents are being given the chance to talk rubbish and recycling and tell Oxfordshire’s county, city and district councils how they can help them recycle more and create less waste.
This consultation will inform the review of the joint countywide waste strategy. This sets out shared priorities across Oxfordshire for waste and recycling until 2030, that will be approved by the Oxfordshire Environment Partnership over the summer. Then, each council partner will adopt changes later in the year.
We want to do better at recycling and the new joint countywide waste strategy is critical to this. We know that on average over half of the items put in the general waste bin could have been recycled by placing them in the other bins available.
Through this consultation residents are being asked what would help them to reduce their overall waste consumption and recycle more. This includes expanding the range of materials that can be recycled at the kerbside and tips and advice on left-over food, upcycling clothing or donating or buying second hand goods. The councils are also seeking views on more radical schemes that have been implemented elsewhere in the country, such as changing bin sizes and collection frequency.
Councillor Yvonne Constance, Cabinet Member for Environment at Oxfordshire County Council said: “We want to help residents to increase the amount they recycle and have looked around at what other councils are doing. This is a long-term strategy and we will not be making any immediate changes however we are interested in which of these the residents of Oxfordshire think may work for them as we seek to minimise the overall amount of residual waste produced in the county.”
Do you want to help us recycle and reduce waste? Take part in the online survey at www.recycleforoxfordshire.org.uk. The survey runs for six weeks until 18 February.
We want to ensure that as many residents as possible know about the changes. If your parish council uses social media we would also be grateful if you could like and share our social media posts, and post the following information and graphic attached:
Get ready for autumn with extra garden waste collections
Residents across southern Oxfordshire who are signed up for brown bin collections can put out twice as much garden waste during one week this month.
South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils are giving those who are part of the paid-for service the opportunity to put out the equivalent of one extra bin’s worth of garden waste (around three large bin bags) during:
Residents should leave their extra garden waste out in bin liners or sacks beside their brown bins on their usual collection day during these weeks. Trade waste bags cannot be accepted.
Cllr Tony Harbour, cabinet member for waste at South Oxfordshire District Council, said: “The garden waste service is very popular and this is a little thank you to our residents for all their efforts with recycling. We’d like to encourage everyone to make use of the larger collection.”
Cllr Charlotte Dickson, cabinet member for waste at Vale of White Horse District Council, said: “With the autumn leaves falling, it’s a good time to give residents this extra service and we hope they find it helpful. It’s a perfect opportunity to get their gardens ready for winter.”
Communications
South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils
01235 422400
www.southoxon.gov.uk | @southoxon
www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk | @whitehorsedc
AGETUR UK INTEND TO START WORKS TO READING ROAD AT THE JUNCTION WITH ORCHARD CLOSE ON MONDAY 23RD OCTOBER AT 09:00. THE WORKS WILL LAST 5 DAYS, FINISHING FRIDAY 27TH OCTOBER AT 18:00. DURING THIS TIME READING ROAD WIL BE CLOSED 24HRS/DAY.
ACCESS TO WALLINGFORD MEDICAL PRACTICE WILL BE FROM WALLINGFORD TOWN/HITHERCROFT/ST JOHNS ROAD APPROACH ONLY.
CONTACT:
Agetur UK Civil Engineering
www.agetur.co.uk
http://www.
Tel: 01280 702121
Please consider coming along to the Crowmarsh Gifford litter-picking event on Saturday 8th July.
We will meet under the horse-chestnut tree at the end of Thames Mead (more or less opposite the church), at 10.30am, to collect reflective jackets, gloves, litter-picks and bags.
If you can, please ring Edwina Johnson on 83226 in advance, to register your interest. Otherwise, feel free to come along on the day. Everyone is welcome!
Village meeting on 19th April (7pm) at Crowmarsh School to discuss the local community plan for Crowmarsh Parish.
Our Community is delighted that planning permission to construct houses on the ‘Field east of Benson Lane’ was recently refused unanimously by the elected Councillors that comprise the District Council Planning Committee. We now need to plan for the next Bloor attack on the village. We understand that Bloor Hallam are hard at work preparing a case to Appeal to have the Planning Committee decision reversed (and you thought you lived in a democracy!). They will be looking at the comprehensive list of objections to their proposal in order to try and undermine those objections; they may come back quickly they may wait until the six month appeal deadline is almost up. Either way we need to be prepared for them.
There are two immediate tasks we need to deal with:
The first is to get ‘Land east of Benson Lane’ currently listed as land allocated for housing in the draft Local Plan Preferred Options 2 document removed. This draft document was published the same day as the Planning Committee meeting.
The second is that we need to progress our own Local Community Plan to an extent that it will make our wishes as a community clear to the Planners and to any Appeal Inspector.
Removal of the ‘Land East of Benson Lane’ from the draft Local Plan requires each and every one of us to raise an objection to it having been included as suitable for housing development. It has now been demonstrated that the site is not able to provide sustainable housing at this site at the edge of the village (see the Refusal Letter from SODC to Bloor Homes on the Save Crowmarsh Facebook page if you want to include details). It is vitally important that you do this for the village. The Local Plan is available with the comments form for you to complete at www.southoxon.gov.uk/newlocalplan . If you have not already registered with SODC you will need to fill in a few details about yourself. Not difficult, it will take you ten minutes at the very most to tell them why ‘Land East of Benson Lane’ should not be allocated for housing development. An objection could be just that the scale of the development is too big, or:
Grade II agricultural land should not be developed while lower grade land is available,
our school cannot cope,
our Medical Centre cannot cope,
our roads cannot cope,
150 houses is too many,
etc.
The second issue is that Crowmarsh Parish Council voted in favour of proceeding with a Local Community Plan at their meeting at the beginning of this month. The necessary agreements between them and the District Council are now being put into place and work has already commenced on aspects of the Plan. The Plan is ultimately put to a community referendum, so it is your plan. It will be a Parish plan so it will include North Stoke and Mongewell.
So what is a Local Community Plan? It is the vision of the respective communities to see how we want to develop up until the early 2030s. It includes, most importantly, allocation of land for housing, which is why it is so timely for us to embark on this project, and it will also include other themed areas such as
Sustainable Community,
Environment,
Industry and Jobs,
Resources, including schools and medical care, and
Transport, including air quality in Wallingford.
A lot of the underpinning evidence base is already available while additional information will need to be sought from yourselves and others by questionnaires and surveys. We will need help with this project and this is where you come in.
We plan an inaugural meeting to introduce the Local Community Plan Project to you the community of Crowmarsh. A separate meeting is planned in North Stoke. The Crowmarsh meeting will be held at… on… and we look forward to telling you why we need and how we can together produce a Local Community Plan, a Plan that will ensure growth , but growth of a kind that will ensure a sustainable community.
We can also talk about raising objections to ‘Land East of Benson Lane’ being allocated for housing in the District Local Plan. CRAG will also brief you on its various recent activities and development of collaboration with other stakeholders in our future development.
If you feel you can help us develop our Local Community Plan, please contact the core Local Plan Team which includes Nick Robins (CRAG) [email protected] and Nigel Hannigan (Parish Council) either by messaging Save Crowmarsh on Facebook or the Parish Council also on Facebook. We look forward to working with you in order that we can Save Crowmarsh!
Please note: This meeting is open strictly to residents of Crowmarsh Parish ONLY.
Do you need a little extra help or assistance should the parish suffer a power outage in the forthcoming winter months? If so, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks would like to get you registered with them so they can come out and ensure you are looked after during a sustained outage. It is a free service, and any information provided is strictly confidential. See leaflet below for more information.