March 2022

6 Buckden Roundabout March 2022 From your District Councillor By the time you read this, hopefully many of the thousands of bulbs that were planted in the Valley Restoration Project will be in flower and providing lots of colour and new views and photo opportunities! Feeding the Ducks with bread is very pop- ular, but our contractors, Ebsford, say that barley would be much better, as the thousands of fish in the lake will eat this too! When I first moved to Buckden 5 years ago, I wanted to do something that would help our village community and with so many small businesses and traders in the area, plus clubs, soci- eties, and many young and retired families, I thought that help- ing to upgrade our library would be the easiest way. At the time there was funding available to stream in Business Support Materials, and a proposal to stream the entire BBC cultural archive for the last 50 years, so we could be able to watch Sir David Attenborough, endlessly and forever! The costs of cabling and bandwidth for WiFi, were a bit too much, and the Village Hall cabling and flooring a bit too old to support this idea. Instead of Buckden, the project was installed in Huntingdon. Since then, our Village Hall Flooring has been replaced, and streaming technology improved, so maybe we can revisit this? Given the Lucks Lane Bloor Housing and the Silver Street Plan, it was also obvious that our recreational facilities needed an urgent upgrade. I spent a lot of time and effort in publicising this issue within Huntingdon District Council and my wife Cyn- thia Alers, the then Chair of the Village Hall Trust, put in even more time and effort to produce a really first - class funding bid submission to HDC to upgrade the Valley. So today, we have thousands of bulbs planted, but that ’ s a two - edged sword, as we now have to maintain a vast, vast cleared area, and many, many new ducks! So maybe we need new grants, crowd funding, new pitch mowing machines, above all volunteers. Sadly, I am no longer able to continue as your Conservative Councillor at the next Election in May. This is because while HDC have some very good policies and a good record of putting them into effect, Planning is not one of them. So many of our residents have suffered serious problems and huge costs, as the result of planning delays, failures to communicate, etc. This has been a huge source of frustration, not just to me but also to residents and our Parish Council who worked so hard to produce to produce an excellent Neighbourhood Plan. Flooding is also a huge issue, but the efforts of myself and Buckden PC to get this sorted finally appears to be working. Taylors Lane has been dredged, the issue of undersize piping from the drain at the top of High Street to St Hughs Road, is being excavated and repaired as I write this. Most of the road drains appear to have had suction clearing and all the road drains in High Street and Mayfield were suction - pumped be- fore Christmas. I met with Highways England in the spring, and they appear to have accepted their responsibility to maintain both A1 Underpasses, even though the Northern Underpass is originally a CCC matter. I think very valuable progress has been made over the past four years and I am pleased and honoured to have served as your District Councillor. I will remain involved in the village as a Trustee of the Village Hall. Thank you to all those who voted for me at the last Election, and good luck to you all for the future. - Hamish Masson District Councillor Opinion Piece PLANS FOR AN INDUSTRIAL SOLAR PLANT IN BUCKDEN The Biodiversity and Flooding Update from Buckden Parish Council in Febru- ary ’ s Roundabout mentioned plans for two solar farms within the Parish boundary. Naturally, there should be support for the drive to increase energy generation from renewable sources. That said, it is essential that solar farms – which are large industrial plants - are situated on plots of land that are envi- ronmentally suitable for the purpose. One of the proposed areas mentioned is two large fields, both functional floodplains, near Buckden Marina. A functional floodplain is vital to making space for flood waters. The fields are also very close to Mill Road and Station Lane, the only highway link between Buckden and the Offords. The fields are in the highest category of flood risk according to government sources and they do flood fre- quently. Buckden and the Offords lived through this in 2020 when homes flooded, and roads were closed in the area. Build- ing a large industrial plant on them will take the risk of flooding (Continued on page 7) From your District Councillor Field on Mill Road opposite Buckden Marina entrance - on the Ouse Valley Way