april 2010 newsletter
Village clean up
Hilperton Parish Council is organising a parish spring clean on Saturday 17th April. All parts of Hilperton Parish will be included so long as local people volunteer.
If you live in the part of Paxcroft Mead which is within the Hilperton Parish Boundary, you can volunteer by contacting Parish Councillor Mrs Janet Waring, tel. 01225 764694. Litter pickers, bags, gloves, etc. will all be provided by Wiltshire Council. Volunteers are needed for both the morning and afternoon sessions.
Please make sure that the lid on your wheelie bin is closed
New safety guidance has been issued by FOCSA, who manage Wiltshire Council's waste collection, stating that wheeled bins with the lid open will not be collected. At a recent meeting between FOCSA representatives and council officers it was agreed that this will be reviewed by 1st May 2010, but the following interim procedures have been put in place:
- The crew will assess if the bin lid can be closed. If the lid will push closed without resistance by the placing of a hand on the lid, the bin will be collected.
- If the bin fails this test but the offending waste is contained in a bag and it can be safely removed, the bag will be removed and left beside the bin with an advice sticker attached. The contents of the bin will be emptied. The sticker on the bags will be notification to the householder that if in the future the bin lid is not closed, it will not be emptied.
- If the waste cannot be safely removed the bin will not be collected, but will have an advice sticker attached.
Update on Public Inquiry
The public Inquiry into whether the legal agreement reserving the land adjacent to Hackett Place for a medical centre should be lifted, allowing Marston's to build a pub, was held on 23rd March in the Council Chamber at Bradley Road.
There were 118 votes cast in our on-line poll on the issue, with just under 70% voting for the legal agreement to be upheld. On this basis, the Forum committee decided to make a representation at the Inquiry.
This was the first time that any of us had been involved in a Public Inquiry and it proved to be an education, being arranged rather like a court case, with the Planning Inspector as the judge or magistrate and a barrister representing Marston's calling his own witnesses and cross-examining those fielded by the opposition. Since the council had decided not to defend the appeal and therefore had no barrister and no witnesses of its own, it was Councillor Ernie Clark and I who were in the hot seats. I presented our evidence of the need for a doctor's surgery at Paxcroft Mead, causing a brief flurry of anxiety with a well placed quotation from the recent Core Strategy Consultation document, which stated that “all four GP surgeries are at capacity”. The argument that the proposed new Poly Clinic at Trowbridge Hospital will include another surgery within its provision seemed to be carrying the day, however.
We had to leave at lunchtime and therefore didn't hear the Inspector's summing up. The report in the Wiltshire Times suggests that the result will take up to seven weeks.
Forum Finances-
Thanks are overdue to Hilperton Parish Council for their generous grant of £125 towards our start up costs, which was matched last month by a similar grant from Trowbridge Town Council. We are now at last able to arrange Public Liability Insurance and pay back the money for the original leafleting last October.