New Year resolution

Thanks to a monstrous attack of manflu in its extreme form (unable to tackle cryptic crossword) I missed the first Parish Council meeting of the year. But I have raised the following points in writing:




We need a  major debrief on why the village has lost the proposed children's centre at the lower school. Seems extraordinary given the strength  and qualities of the head teacher, the commitment of the chair of governors and a senior councillor on their governing body. No planning application  was turned down but it seems they were out of time. However I understand the funding for this centre then went elsewhere. It would be good to know where the funding was allocated  - and why the situation could not be retrieved. This is a major disaster.


Denison land (part of home farm)  - being developed separately  (report at Persimmon stakeholder meeting) we need to establish if this has any implications for the community building. [The chair of planning has since told me that Persimmon are still committed to buying this land and she would supply more information at the meeting]


Health Centre - see Dr Marcus Thomas's  letter in the last Cranfeld Express   (below). We are in danger of seeing a major tranche of Home Farm S106 money (health facilities) unused and returned to the developer unless we start to challenge the status quo and ask some searching questions. It will need our CB councillors as well as ourselves saying this is not acceptable. A solution must be found.

An old favourite: Any progress on the traffic calming?

So what happened to the health centre? It's a desperately-needed response to the growth in housing in Cranfield. 12 months ago it was all systems go and now it's supposedly on ice. There is money in the Home Farm 106 (planning gain agreement - I mustn't write jargon) and as the early planning for this goes ahead we need to be looking at health facilities again and finding out what the PCT's progress is on this.

New health centre

Latest feedback from Bedfordshire NHS on their health centre 'consultation'. They are still talking about implementing the parish plan to justify libraries and cafes in the health centre. They also cite the majorities in favour of these extraneous features without acknowledging that they didn't ask - would you prefer a library or more health facilities? Report from the last board meeting suggested that one official said the business plan had to 'stack up' - are there economic criteria which the Beds NHS are not acknowledging?

Summer catch-up

Wow - 22 July since the last post. Where has the summer gone? We have been to Orkney and to an Irish wedding and England my well have blown the Ashes. Scattered them I suppose. The footie season has started.

The headlines since then, in no particular order are:

• The church clock is working again.

• We are writing to Persimmon asking them to come and see us. I had a conversation with a representative which seemed to contradict a conversation the chair and I had a little earlier with another representative. Obviously we are very keen to sort out the misunderstanding.

• We have agreed BUT ONLY IN PRINCIPLE to adopt the green spaces, merrily described as NEAPS and LEAPS (neighbourhood play areas and local play areas) on the Home Farm development. But we are in discussion with Woods Hardwick (representatives of Persimmon) about moving the proposed pavilion nearer the community building and clarifying control of this.

• We have responded to the public consultation as a parish council on the proposed health centre. Basically they should be increasing the range of health services and not packing it full of business development centres and libraries and cafes. See next post.

•The lettering is almost all faded from the war memorial - just a year since we had it done to some acclaim. Currently chasing the contractor but I will be blogging obsessively about this.

• The public consultation on traffic calming proposals will not go ahead in September but October according to Amey.

• We held a special meeting in August to deal with the Home Farm adoption proposals, other planning matters and the health centre consultation. 18 members of the public attended and it was a good evening.

• There is on-going consultation about the BEAR and Covanta energy to waste (incinerator) proposals for the Vale.