Melbourn issues
- Melbourn village website: www.melbourncambridge.co.uk
- Village groups
- If you run a village group and would like help advertising an event or recruiting volunteer helpers, please let Susan know and she would be glad to include a few lines in her monthly community e-newsletter.
- Liaison Group for Back Lane area
- Alongside the successful application for an ambulance station in Whiting Way came a suggestion from a member of the South Cambs District Council Planning Committee that a liaison group be formed for residents and ambulance station personnel to ensure that pedestrian safety in Back Lane is monitored and protected. Susan has contacted South Cambs Planning on numerous occasions for follow-up, but promises to get this group underway have been hollow. More news to be posted as soon as it is available.
- Problem Solving Group becomes the Practical Solutions Group
- The Problem Solving Group met in its reconstitued form on September 4th, 2009, with representation from Melbourn residents, parish council, Police, Youth service, District and County Council. The first part of the meeting was devoted to establishing terms of reference, including setting out a work programme for the year. It was a positive meeting in which a constructive approach was established, and awareness of a broad general problem with a number of serious local manifestations recognized.
- The group has evolved significantly over the year into one looking for proactive ways of bring different parts of our broad community together and has rebranded its work under the heading of Practical Solutions Group. Please get in touch if you have concerns about your own neighbourhood.
- We continue to meet monthly, and minutes are posted on the village website.
- A505 Flint Cross remedial works
- After a wait of many years, Highways is due to implement remedial works to this stretch of road. With a budget of only £100K, traffic lights and roundabouts cannot be considered; the scheme will introduce ‘discipline’ by eliminating ambiguous slip roads, installing clear indications for the flow of traffic, and hopefully introducing a 50MPH speed limit. If you’d like to see a copy of the plan, this is available from the parish council.
- We had initially been told that work could start in the autumn of 2009, but there have been extend delays. And more delays!
- Police issues: make your views known
- If you have concerns about any police-related matter in the village, please try to come along to the next meeting of the Neighbourhood Police Panel, where our local police team listens to residents and councillors from each village to form a to-do list. Hearing directly from residents offers the best chance of a clear picture of what needs doing. The meeting will be held July 20th, 7:30, at Bassingbourn Village College.
- E-cops
- If you would like to be kept abreast of police activity and initiatives for our area, or get in touch with your own concerns, you can sign up to E-cops - an email service which is proving very successful. To sign up, please visit www.cambs.police.uk/signup/ecops.
- Luncheon Club: Friendship
- Friendships in our village communities are often made outside of one’s usual circle. The Luncheon Club - also known as the Melbourn and Meldreth Self-Help Group - brings together the very elderly members of Melbourn and Meldreth every Thursday for lunch and a chat, at the Vicarage Close sheltered housing community room, Melbourn. If you could spare the time to collect and drop off a resident for an 11:15 start, and bring home again at 1:15, this would be greatly appreciated. Please contact Susan (susanvandeven@yahoo.co.uk) and she will put you in touch with the coordinator for drivers. And if you know someone who would like to attend the Luncheon Club, please let Susan know.
- Cambridge Housing Society contact details
- Cambridge Housing Society officer Lisa Harris covers properties in our area. Please get in touch with CHS if you have any concerns. The number is 01223-713555.
- Royston and District Community Transport scheme
- If you are elderly or mobility impaired, and need lifts to the doctor’s or to get shopping done, you could benefit from the Royston and District Community Transport scheme. A fleet of volunteer drivers donate their time free of charge. Passengers contribute 45 pence per mile; the minimum charge is £4 per journey of up to nine miles. The scheme also operates a wheelchair-accessible 12/16 seat minibus and a four-six seat Multi-Purpose Vehicle.The service can be used for health care appointments, day centres, special needs clubs, social purposes and shopping. If you require a lift - or would like to volunteer as a driver - please text or phone 01763-245228 between 9AM and 3PM Monday to Friday; an answer phone will take a message if the phone is unmanned. (Please don’t be put off by the answer phone - it does get checked!) You can also email the service at rct1@totalise.co.uk.
- Why I am unable to support the proposal for a 20 mph speed limit trial
- The decision-making Traffic Management Committee met on January 18th, 2010m and as local member I presented the following:
- When parish councillors and I were asked by County Highways for our views on a 20 mph speed limit trial in Melbourn, as an experimental 12-month scheme to be paid for out of pre-allocated County funds for five such schemes across Cambridgeshire, there was an enthusiasm and eagerness to take the next step of public consultation. 20 mph schemes pioneered in other parts of the country had signalled significant success in creating safer road conditions.I’m sure that other councillors representing other villages will concur that speeding traffic is among the main issues raised by residents and parish councils, but rarely are solutions available. Traffic calming measures cost money which the County Council has less and less of. Police enforcement of speed limits is extremely difficult at best, due to a thinly spread and understaffed police force throughout the county. Parish councils make regular requests for speed limit reductions, which Highways say it cannot grant, for a variety of reasons involving legal, policy and financial contraints.So when a blanket speed reduction experiment was offered to Melbourn, albeit with a number of issues to be ironed out, the only justifiable next step seemed to be to take the matter to residents for consideration.Information about the consultation was disseminated to every house in the village via the Melbourn Magazine; it was also published in the Cambridge News, the Royston Crow and on the village website. I disseminated consultation contact details once in a paper leaflet distributed to every household, twice through my email newsletter, and on this website. Two anonymously authored flyers strongly objecting to the scheme and containing some inaccurate information were also distributred in many areas of the village. All in all, I think it’s fair to say that the topic made it into the public domain, however the level of background information and context has been limited.
A heated debate took place on the newly established village website. While it is difficult to know the actual number of individuals taking part in that discussion, due to the usage of alias identities, clearly the subject of the 20 mph trial scheme was generating some difficult relations between people. The parish council’s integrity was called into question on the website forum, on account of the fact that it is predominantly co-opted rather than elected. Most parish councillor in Cambridgeshire are not subject to election, because insufficient volunteers come forward to trigger the election process. Nevertheless, accusations still cause damage and for the parish council to be unfairly undermined in its ability to carry out its reponsibilities would be very unfortunate.
In some ways the reaction in Melbourn has been difficult to gauge, partly because of hidden identities on the website, but mainly because only a small percentage of the electorate - 2.8% - responded to the consultation. Of that response, the view has been about five to one against the scheme. The second anonymous flyer generated an obvious surge in negative responses.
Out of the opposition to the scheme, two points of particular importance stand out:
The first is that the speed limit will not be enforced, due to lack of police resources. Some drivers would comply with the speed limit, and some would not, but the freedom to ignore the speed limit makes a mockery of the rule of law. Arbitrary enforcement would cause justified resentment. Bringing the law into disrepute is damaging. Many people have pointed out with some anger that the current 30 mph speed limit is not enforced.
The second is that the main speeding problems in the village appear to exist in exactly the areas left out by the proposed blanket limit - especially between Melbourn Science Park and Cherry Park Industrial Estate. The parish council has strenuously argued with Highways that this area should be included in the proposed scheme, but Highways has responded that for legal and policy reasons, it cannot be. Many councillors regard this as a major flaw in the design of the scheme, and this is an undermining factor all round. Indeed, the parish council has written to me, saying that if this point cannot be resolved, then its support for the scheme will be weakened.
Regretfully, while my own view is that on balance a 20 mph speed limit would probably result in some lowering of the speed of traffic through the village, the following concerns now make it impossible for me to support going ahead with the trial:
1. Lack of police enforcement to bring about a significantly consistent reduction in speed limit, causing confusion for drivers and pedestrians and also damage to the integrity of the law.
2. The omission of an important section of the village, between Melbourn Science Park and Cherry Park Industrial Estate, from the trial area.
3. It is worrying that the consultation has caused so much difficulty in terms of relations within the village, and while this has nothing to do with traffic issues, in my view it is nevertheless an important consideration. The success of any trial would depend on the willingness of the community to make it work, and a community that is in disagreement is the wrong foundation on which to begin.
To end on a positive note, I would like to express a huge thanks to the parish council and to residents for their willingness to consider and discuss this matter. Adopting a pioneering role is not easy and I hope that the steps we have taken collectively will contribute useful knowledge to the introduction of future speed limit reduction schemes elsewhere.
