Community Newsletter
Liberal Democrat Councillor for Bassingbourn, Litlington, Melbourn, Meldreth and Whaddon Learn more
by Susan van de Ven on 18 August, 2022
Bassingbourn School Crossing Patrol Officer: Vacancy
This is a vital post supporting safe walking to school and college. Please get in touch via contact details on the job advert, if you might be interested or would like further information: https://susanvandeven.mycouncillor.org.uk/2022/08/15/bassingbourn-school-crossing-patrol-officer-vacancy/#page-content
MCCS, the Meldreth Coronavirus Community Support Group, is reconvening in order to meet the cost of living crisis. To begin with, it will be opening a new Meldreth Winter Emergency Food Bank for the Meldreth community, run on a voucher system and with support from South Cambs District Council. This will be convened in the Elin Way Sheltered Housing Room, once per week, with an aim to start the scheme in November. Do please feel free to get in touch if you are interested in helping out or contributing in some way. More information to come.
South Cambs District Council has now created a ‘Cost of Living’ webpage which will be kept updated and seeks to include all known support information in one place. This will be replicated in the September issue of the South Cambs Magazine. This includes general advice and personal support; financial help and household grants; childcare; health, food and travel cost support; energy advice and support; home improvements. Please visit and have a read through: https://www.scambs.gov.uk/cost-of-living-support/
The South Cambs District Council CEO Liz Watts has been coming out to meet district councillors for ward walks, to get to grips with local issues. SCDC deals with planning, housing and homelessness, licensing, environmental health, benefits and has developed a lot of work around climate and environment and local business support. SCDC is also a partner member on the Greater Cambridge Partnership and the Combined Authority.
The very poor state of Meldreth High Street and the junction of Station Road and Whitecroft Road have been a blight for some time. County Highways will be treating the worst of this stretch with large patching in October, the idea being to bring the road up to the required standard for surface treatment, as is also scheduled for Fenny Lane. Standard procedure means that after patching, the High Street and the Station Rd/Whitecroft Rd junction will need to be assessed for surface treatment, but together with the Head of Maintenance, we are pushing for this for next year’s surface treatment programme. All of these works only take place in the drier, warmer months of the year.
Easy local recycling of small electricals at the Melbourn car park saves a trip to the recycling centre – and can be transported on foot or by bike! The new pink recycling container can take the following:
Anything up to 29cm in its largest dimension, which has a plug, battery or cable. If batteries are removeable, take these out and recycle them separately. Some examples of suitable items include:
Please note that smoke detectors, light bulbs, e-cigarettes, batteries, paints, chemicals or aerosols are not accepted in these banks.
As previously reported, Bassingbourn has been successful with two grant applications relating to lowering speed limits and creating a more favourable environment for walking in the village, and especially to school and college. One is the parish council’s Local Highways Initiative (LHI) and the other is the Active Travel Grant, which is government funding coming down through the Combined Authority. It’s great to have both lots of funding because the end result will, hopefully, be a stronger one. From an admin point of view it might look confusing, because the money comes from different places and, for various reasons, different aspects will be delivered at different times.
What is being proposed? Principles have been developed over a long period of time, involving the parish council, school and college headteachers, and School Crossing Patrol Officers. The core element of the overall proposed scheme is a 20MPH speed limit from the cemetery in The Causeway to the Primary School in Brook Road, together with side roads. It was felt that the blind bends in Brook Road, leading to the school crossing point at the junction of South End/High Street, need physical interventions to slow traffic down – and so the LHI application included speed cushions along Brook Road. The Active Travel funds offer ‘build-outs’ near the cemetery entrance and near the Village College in South End.
All of the map documents outlining the detail will be posted on the parish council website and made available in the Old School Community Centre. Please keep an eye out for these in September and do share your views, so that issues of concern can be flagged up. The speed cushions will be subjected to a road safety audit by traffic engineers in the autumn, and then a consultation on any tweaks arising, with construction aimed at next summer. The buildouts in The Causeway and South End would be this November; again, please feedback your views.
Pavement ‘slurry’ resurfacing in Bassingbourn on the first Monday and Tuesday in August, followed by digging up the same pavement on the Wednesday in order to install County Broadband fibre cable, made for a painful illustration of lack of coordination. What happened, what are the lessons learned, and will there be a cost to the public purse in putting things right?
A huge programme of slurry treatment has been underway across the county during the dry summer months, at the same time as a rapid roll-out of ‘County Broadband’ fibre cable (which is a private company independent of the County Council). Works by County contractors and utility companies are planned ahead of time and fed to a central County Council Highways coordination point. In this case, the County Council Highways contractor was notified of the impending County Broadband work and should have waited until that was completed. However, the contractor forgot to pass the information on to its subcontractor. The contractor will return to make good and will foot the bill – this will not come from the public purse.
‘Yes and No! County Highways is able to protect certain types of new surfacing from being dug up within the first year of being put down if we register them via the New Roads and Streetworks Act Legislation (section 58). However this does not cover protection from utilities putting in new supplies and connections. This includes protection from fibre connection works.
‘We can protect our new surfaces and are working to make sure we are protecting all we can under the legislation. When protected, a utility company can only dig it up either with our permission or if they have an emergency or if it is a new connection or supply.
‘The best way to protect a surface is by the coordination of our works programmes which is carried out at regular meetings where we share our programmes with the utilities. However, if we don’t notify each other of what is being planned where early enough then the utility can push ahead on the basis that we didn’t give them enough warning.
‘The key is the early coordination of programmes so if there is a need for us to delay our works we allow enough time for us to replace a deferred scheme with another, say a scheme we planned to do in the next year’s programme (effectively swapping schemes) This avoids non-productive time for the contractors that they may charge us for.’
Due to low ridership, GTR have announced that from September, services at Meldreth, Shepreth and Foxton stations will need to be scaled back during off peak times.
Services will remain half-hourly during peak times, and run hourly between 10AM-3PM and after 8PM.
The 50% 16-18-year-old student discount which is unique to our area is protected, supporting the rail commute to sixth form college and training in Cambridge. This only runs from stations within Cambridgeshire, so not Royston. To access the ‘Cambridgeshire Student Connect’ card follow this link:
The challenge of regaining and retaining the all-day half-hourly service, at this unprecedented time, remains very significant. Please do use the train when you have the choice and opportunity and help ridership to grow.
The Greater Cambridge Partnership is now getting into detailed planning of the Melbourn Greenway, which is the planned ‘multi-use active travel’ (walking, mobility scooters, bikes etc) link between Royston and Cambridge. The route takes in Melbourn and Foxton village centres, with proposed 20MPH speed limits, and includes the upgrade path from Melbourn to Meldreth Station. This is one of 12 Greenway schemes running on corridors from Cambridge and was approved in principle in June 2020. There’s still a great deal of detail to be worked out and funding for the Melbourn-Royston segment depends on specific grant bids.
In conjunction with the Greenway team’s quest to update on local concerns and ideas, the A10 Corridor Cycling Campaign will hold its annual Awareness Ride on Sunday 25 September, setting off from Trumpington Park and Ride at 10AM, bound for Phillimore Garden Centre for refreshments. A walking and scooter contingent will set off from the Melbourn Hub at 10AM. Please bring your own drinks and do get in touch if you would like to help as a ride marshal or contribute any cakes – many thanks in anticipation!
We’ll be collecting local views on the day and should be joined by a Greenway team officer. Meanwhile, Foxton and Melbourn Parish Councils will each be invited to talk through the evolving scheme with officers.
As previously reported, Hertfordshire County Council, which owns the Ivy Farm Bridge, currently an agricultural bridge over the A505 just west of the A1198/A10 roundabout, is preparing a formal consultation on the creation of new rights of way on either side of the bridge, as part of a footpath diversion order which would enable a legal right of way across the bridge and provide a safe pedestrian connection between Royston and Bassingbourn (and on to Litlington).
As soon as the consultation document is ready in mid-September, links and a PDF will be made available for parish council websites. Please keep an eye out. The consultation will then run for six weeks. There will be no box ticking form, rather a Herts County Council address will be provided to which people can write and express their views.
Please note that the proposal is for legal rights of way enabling a pedestrian crossing only – a first step in creating public access over the bridge. Achieving this would be ground-breaking, so if you support the principle please do say so. Susan will be updating Litlington and Bassingbourn Parish Councils in September.
Network Rail’s consultation last year on upgrading the Meldreth Road Shepreth level crossing, currently a half-barrier and proposed as a full barrier with a significantly longer waiting time, drew strenuous objections from local residents and groups, including the Meldreth Shepreth and Foxton Community Rail Partnership. These were supported by the County Council in its response to the consultation.
The proposal is part of what’s called the 3CR Cambridge Resignalling project. More about it, and the objections, here:
No meaningful response was received to those objections, and it appears that Network Rail is proposing to go forward with the upgrade, though a current ‘formal objection period’ running until September 22 is currently underway. We are working with the County Council to understand the options and how to register concern at the lack of response to previously lodged objections. At the time of writing this has yet to be clarified. Please contact us if you’d like to join the CRP mailing list and receive further information.
The July drop-in event was cancelled due to the heatwave, and has now been rescheduled for Sept 9, 2-8PM, at Haslingfield Village Hall.
Enjoy this story about breastfeeding and public transport, which has been reported by multiple news outlets – our Community Rail Partnership’s ‘Try the Train’ scheme being the catalyst.
If you’d like to meet with your councillors by Zoom, to bring any concerns or ask any questions, please come along to our weekly Zoom Cuppa Surgery, now on Mondays from 5-6 PM. Please contact Sally Ann for a link: Sallyannhart@riskingonpurpose.com.
We would be delighted to address any concerns you may have or help raise awareness of issues affecting our community via this newsletter. Any questions or concerns, please contact us any time – details below.
The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. Learn more about or join the Liberal Democrats at http://www.libdems.org.uk.
Sincerely yours,
Susan van de Ven, County Councillor for Bassingbourn, Melbourn, Meldreth and Whaddon, and District Councillor for Bassingbourn and Litlington,
susanvandeven5@gmail.com, www.susanvandeven.com, Tel 07905 325574
Sally Ann Hart, District Councillor for Melbourn, Meldreth, Shepreth and Whaddon
sallyannhart@riskingonpurpose.com, Tel 07791 233303
Jose Hales, District Councillor for Melbourn, Meldreth, Shepreth and Whaddon
jose@josehales.me.uk, Tel 01763 221058
Peter McDonald, County Councillor for Shepreth, Foxton, Heydon, the Chishills and the Duxford Division villages, Peter.mcdonald@cambridgeshire.gov.uk, Tel 07912 669092
James Hobro, District Councillor for Foxton and Fowlmere, james@hobro.net, Tel 07768 706670
South Cambridgeshire – Liberal Democrats
http://www.sclibdems.org.uk/
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