October 2020

6 Buckden Roundabout October 2020 From your District Councillor The last few weeks has seen a constant flood of new initiatives, changes to Brexit Negotiations and changed Covid 19 regula- tions and guidance. As it is all in the middle of a very much needed summer break, I expect you would all prefer not to hear about them anymore, but sadly these effect you and if you can get involved, it really would be useful. Planning for the Future The most important, and where your response could really make a difference to life as we know it, is Planning for the Fu- ture. This is a public consultation on Planning and the Environ- ment and the kind of places we want to live in, but more im- portantly what kind of Planning system should be used to de- liver it. It is available as a PDF from the Ministry of Housing, Communi- ties and Local Government and the consultation started on the 6 August. Yes, it is primarily designed for responses from Local Government, but the more individuals who respond, the more they can influence the outcome, and a quick response system is set out below. This is a good survey asking some good questions and if you can cope with jargon like ‘ digital civic engagement ’, its actually fun to read. The basic idea is that you speed up the local plan- ning process for small developers, by automating larger devel- opments and hopefully allowing local development officers to have more time and digital resources for local issues. As with most things this hope can go either way, massive digitised cen- tralisation of planning or real improvement at local level. Part of this is how residents respond to the questions. Do they want Roads and Infrastructure, or do they want Pretty Buildings with Solar Panels? I do not want to trivialise these choices because how many people vote actually determines the outcome. So as above do have a look and do get involved. Planning for the Future: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Duration: This consultation will last for 12 weeks from 6 August 2020. Enquiries: For any enquiries about the consultation please contact planningforthefu- ture@communities.gov.uk. How to respond: You may respond by going to our website https://www.gov.uk/government/ consultations/planning - for - the - future Unitary Authorities It is too early to really be able to comment, but scrapping Dis- trict Councils and the County Council in favour of a Unitary Authority under an elected Mayor risks losing a lot of valuable local expertise and secondly making Parish Councils more re- sponsible does not really work if the Councillors are remaining as part time volunteers. It also makes a nonsense of local democracy and accountabil- ity, but maybe this is where digital civic engagement becomes the way of the future? As above, it is a little early to call this. Buckden A1 Highways England North and South Underpasses . I met with a team from the Structures Division to discuss the current state of decoration, recent flooding, and the wall cracks on the southern underpass. Highways England undertake an annual review of both under- passes, the Northern was inspected in May and the formal in- spection of the Southern takes place later this year. The North- ern had no issues found, except for the access to the pump control valving and power supply where the security padlock had been removed. This could have been taken by contractors or possibly cut off. In HE ’ s opinion the state of decoration was seen as adequate, but decoration is not the responsibility of HE, as this is always delegated to a local Council which can be the County Council, District or Parish Council or all three acting in co - ordination. As these arrangements date back to the original road construc- tion, now in the 1960’ s, it would require legal research to es- tablish possible responsibilities. That said, 1960 agreements have been overtaken by current practice, and these matters now are usually undertaken by local volunteers. This principle is widely used in various loca- tions in the UK. However, issues like Lighting are different be- cause heavy duty lamp units with double bulbs are used and is seen as robust and capable of lasting between the annual in- spections. On the Southern underpass the cracks in the two walls were photographed by HE in 2018 and new photos taken on this visit did not appear to show any movement. It was not possible to take photos from the adjacent residential properties to check movement, because HE staff are not allowed onto privately owned land without the express written permission of the owners, so was out of scope for the two HE engineers. In conclusion, the structures are considered secure and current UK practice is for re - decoration or cleaning to be undertaken by local volunteer groups. In future any further issues should be addressed to the Structures Division, via the HE National Traffic Operations Centre, 3 Ridgeway, Quinton Business Park, Birmingham B321AF, 0300 123 5000. I hope you have all had a great holiday, despite the flash flood- ing and both I and the Parish Council have referred this to the CCC Flood Officer. Have a good autumn! Hamish Masson, District Councillor Buckden Ward District Councillor Thank You I would like to say a very belated thank you to the kind person who found my mobile phone in Greenway a couple of months ago and posted it through my letter box. It was much appreciated. J Gale We need more images for our cover! We are looking for more paintings of any kind that we could use as a front cover. We can photograph them if you only have original artwork. We are also keen to get images (photos or paintings) of the village and surrounding areas in preparation for future issues. Please note that images should ideally be in portrait format and should be a minimum of 2400 x 1700 pixels. More is better! Send them to editor@buckdenroundabout.info