Cranfield Express

My column in the January issue of Cranfield Express due out this weekend.

The Parish Matters

Parishioners may have been shocked at the events in central London last week when the police kettle boiled over and there was no alternative but to occupy the impressionist wing of the National Gallery.

But we should not be complacent here in Dullsville, Beds. One of our public representatives was assaulted by a student (year 4, I think) in Court Road when the village was going through its phase of looking like Flemish painter Breughel’s Hunters in the Snow. He was not felled by the snowball chucked at him and we are grateful for that. However it did give him the chance to report to fellow parish councillors that the lower school was open for business – despite an urgent email from Central Beds saying that it was closed and a meeting to discuss the new children’s centre was therefore cancelled. Clearly rumours of the new ice age have been exaggerated.

Meanwhile normal business continues and the Parish Council received a phone call from the Home Farm architects asking if the Council would send an e-mail stating that the it does not envisage using the proposed Home Farm community building "for large gatherings such as wedding receptions etc".

Councillors who were consulted agreed to do no such thing and the request was due to be considered formally at the meeting on 15 December, after Cranfield Express was printed. My own opinion is that a community building is, in effect a building for the community and that must include large gatherings including weddings, barmitzvahs and new housing protests etc. Ultimately, however, it is for the whole parish council to decide and I will listen to the arguments.

The bottleneck over Section 106 (‘planning gain’ in old money) money for village traffic calming from the University Business Park development continues. An Amey member of staff wrote to us saying there was no money on the table and no budget to do any more work adding, “This may of course be the situation until well into the new financial year”.

“Well into the new Financial year?” Now we’re back into June, July, August and who knows when? As I previously blogged, Central Beds were moving towards debt recovery operations over this money which has all been agreed in principle. So we look forward to that and then we can move on with our long delayed traffic calming.

We can’t however, move on without noting the latest message from Central Beds about further cuts in the pipeline. The letter from the council leader, Mrs Turner, stated: ” The effect of the further detail relating to CSR (comprehensive spending review by national government), together with additional pressures emerging through the budget build process, mean that the Executive will be invited to consider publishing for consultation further savings proposals to the £14.5m already in the public arena at their meeting next week. These additional proposals would then go into our scrutiny process for examination.

“We are required to forge ahead with savings proposals at a pace which precludes any possibility of meaningful engagement with others who might be prepared to take over the responsibility for services which we are no longer able to provide.”

Now there are people working very hard in this village to meet needs not covered by government, local or national but they can’t do everything and not immediately. And in those circumstances Ms Turner needs to write to Mr Cameron along the lines of “Dear Dave, re your Big Society idea...” etc.

I personally can’t see how it can work without meaningful engagement.