March parish update
There are a few things that I need to bring to everybody’s notice.
Street name changes. Quite soon there should be some notices placed around the parish about proposed changes to road names. These relate, on the whole, to a request that the parish meeting made to the district council a few years ago and although the changes were agreed, they were not made. In the circumstances I have recently spoken a number of times to those responsible for naming our roads and the notices that will be put up are a first step in bringing about the changes we asked for. As the roads concerned are all non-residential and the name changes are to those that enjoy both historic provenance and common usage, nobody will be directly affected in any way. It will however be a great help to the emergency services when responding to a call if both the caller and the official maps are using the same road names for the location of an incident. I have included an explanation of the changes proposed in a document on the parish website www.hoeandworthing.co.uk (with an accompanying map) and there will be a one month window to submit comments from the date that the district council places the notices. Please let me know if you have any query or comment about this.
Billingford Lakes. In the last parish update I referred to the resubmitted planning application at Billingford Lakes and that unless representations were received from parishioners I would go ahead and prepare a response indicating the only new documents in the re-submission tended to support the previous objections our parish meeting had made. In the absence of representations to the contrary the response was forwarded to the local planning authority after being approved by our planning committee. The response is also available on our website.
Offshore windfarm. There are developing plans to install cables from offshore windfarms to Necton, passing through our parish on a direct route between Northall Green and Dillington. In order to gain an accurate picture of the impact of the proposals on the ground I recently arranged to meet with the developers and came away confident that I was fully abreast of the project details proposed to date . The essential points are that all topical disturbance locally will be temporary, the main work will take place over two years commencing in 2021 and the intention is that the section running through our parish will be wholly re-instated by the conclusion of works. Decisions have just been made to adopt the least disruptive of two development options available, which will minimise the width of the cable corridor as it passes this way. There is not room to expand further here but I have established a good liaison for resolving any concerns so please let me know if you have any.
Litter pick. As usual there were a large number of volunteers offering to take part in the parish litter pick for 2018 but I am afraid it has had to be postponed until later in the year. This was unavoidable but I am pleased to say everybody has indicated a wish to be a part of the postponed event and on the plus side it will give anyone disappointed because they could not make the original dates a second chance. The negative point of course is that the parish will have to wait for a clean up but I hope to capitalise on our good name for collecting record amounts in the past to persuade SERCO to help out in our hour of need
Finally. Well done and thank you to the events team for last month’s successful quiz night and in particular to Sally Dearing who arranged the questions and cooked the super food. Sally teamed up with Mike Mullins for the cooking and they will be making this a permanent arrangement when they marry in May. Fortunately the wedding is near the end of the month and so will not stop Sally taking the minutes, which she does so well, at the next parish meeting on 16th (7.30pm in the parish meeting room or 7.00pm for those who want to start with a hot drink).
Trevor Wood (Parish Meeting Chairman. Email. woodumail@btinternet.com or tel. 860326)