Hartbeat Autumn 2015
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Hartbeat Autumn 2015 Hartbeat is published twice each year by Hartwell Parish Council. Whilst every effort is made to ensure that the information in it is accurate, the Publishers accept no responsibility for any errors or omissions. All content must be attributable to an author: non- attributable material will not be published. Tony Barker is guest editor for this edition. He can be contacted by email at [email protected]. The next edition will be produced towards the end of March 2016. Advertising in Hartbeat helps keep your business in people’s minds. Current rates are: Back cover (in colour), £40.00; Full page inside, £30.00; Half page, £17.50; Quarter page, £12.50. There’s a 10% discount for repeat advertisers. Send your copy electronically to: [email protected] or provide hard copy to the Parish Clerk at 1 Hazel Close, Hartwell. Payment is required when you submit your advert either by BACS transfer directly to the Hartwell Parish Council bank account (details will be provided when you submit your advert) or by cheque to the Parish Clerk. On the cover: Nigel Huckle (on the left) receives the Bisdee Challenge Cup from Terry Boss at the Hartwell Homes and Gardens Produce Show held at the Community Centre on Sunday 13 September. Full report on pages 31 to 33. 1 In this issue: Page Hartwell Parish Council: who and when 4 Editorial 5 Arrangements for Remembrance Sunday 6 Men of Hartwell, Angela Malin writes 7 Our District Councillor, John Budden writes 8 Our County Councillor, Michael Clarke writes 9-10 Our MP, Andrea Leadsom writes 11-13 St John the Baptist Church 14-15 Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives 16 PCSO Tara Cooksammy writes 17-19 Village Watch 19-22 Appeal for exhibition of Wedding Dresses 22 Parks Medical Practice 23-24 Library Services 25-28 Towcester Area Door-to-Door (TADD) appeal 29-30 Hartwell Homes and Gardens Show 31-33 Barbershop singers needed 33 Hartwell Primary Church of England School 34-35 Centre fold contacts list 36-37 Community Centre news 38-42 2 Pre-school group 43-45 Beavers, Cubs and Scouts 46-47 Youth Club 48 Women’s Institute 49 Tuesday Circle 50 Pocket Park 51-53 Allotments 54 The Hartwell Club 55-56 Health Walks 57 Church to church walk 58-60 Sulos 61 Roade Local History Society news 62-63 Advertisers’ section 64 onwards This is your magazine and we welcome feedback about the presentation, balance and coverage of topics in it. In particular, if there are issues that you feel have been missed out, we’d like to know about them so they can be included in the future. You might even be invited to write a piece! Any comments can be addressed to the Guest Editor at [email protected] or to the Chairman of the Parish Council, Simon Smith at [email protected]. 3 Hartwell Parish Council Parish Clerk: Sarah Fuller 1 Hazel Close, Hartwell, NN7 2LA Email: [email protected] Tel: 07947 723200 Website: www.hartwellvillage.org.uk The Council is: all are area code 01604 Simon Smith (Chairman) 864968 Deborah Barker (Vice-Chairman) 861295 John Budden 862015 Stephen Dawson 863802 Graham Harris 863439 David Heron 863622 George Jones 864100 Scott Turner 864771 Emma Webster 864538 The Council meets on the second Thursday of each month except for August. Meetings are held in the Lounge at Hartwell Community Centre, School Lane and start at 7.30 pm. All meetings are open to the public and include a public participation session at 7.35 pm. The agenda and minutes for each meeting are posted on the village noticeboards. 4 Hartwell Parish Council Welcome to another edition of Hartbeat, a great source of information about all the wonderful things going on in the village of Hartwell! First of all, I must thank our staff for their continuing hard work keeping the village clean and tidy: Mr Jaquest (Cemetery), Mr Wain (Litter picking) and Sarah our Clerk. Also a big thank you our guest editor Tony Barker. The Parish council is responsible for a number of services, including lighting, verge grass cutting, youth club, dog bins, bus shelters, cemetery and keeping the village free from litter. This year replaced the old noticeboards and next year we have a number of the 140 street lamps that need replacing! We continue to support local groups with grants, supporting them to thrive, and it’s great to see so many things going on in the village. Have good read of Hartbeat and find out more! You are all welcome to come along to any meeting and see what’s going on and have your say at the start of the meeting during the Public section. We’re a friendly bunch of volunteers, elected by you to represent you, so please come along and help us keep our village a great place to live! Simon - Chairman 5 Remembrance Sunday Sunday 8 November at 10.55 am at the War Memorial followed by a service at St John the Baptist church Please note that Forest Road will be closed to traffic between School Lane and Church Close from 10.55 am until 11.10 am whilst the service takes place 6 Men of Hartwell - have you bought your copy? This book commemorates the men whose names appear on the Hartwell War Memorials and includes the other men known to have served. Over 60 pages of information including photographs of many of the men. The book costs £6 and can be obtained from: Angela Malin, 17 Swyncombe Green, Hartwell (862017) or Richard Wain, 3 Hillside, Hartwell. All profits will go to St John the Baptist Church Fabric Fund. 7 John Budden, District Councillor for Salcey Ward writes: When Martin Wilson (my predecessor) asked me if I would consider taking over as District Councillor, I thought long and hard about it. Ashton and Hartwell (Salcey Ward) are both good places to live, work and bring up children, so the question asked was can I maintain the standard or even improve it? Ashton and Hartwell have effective Parish Councils and the more I learn about Parishes throughout the United Kingdom your Parish Councils are shown to be very effective. We do not owe money to suppliers or traders and our meetings are well attended. South Northants Council (SNC) likewise has an excellent reputation. Some facts you may not be aware of – it has the lowest rate of unemployment in the UK, it collects 99.1% of all Council Tax when it is due, SNC is in the top10 Councils for recycling. Your Council Tax has remained static since 2010 (except for Government methods of operation). South Northants was voted among the top five best places in the UK. As everyone is aware, all government bodies must reduce costs over the next four years. SNC has a budget of approximately £10 million. They are reducing costs by working jointly with other Councils; saving money by sharing costs and personnel. The new Council Offices in Towcester called The Forum is a cost effective building which is intended to be paper free, ie. everything is completed on a computer. The Councillors don’t even have written minutes or agenda; it is all on a tablet – I am of an age when you swallowed tablets but not any more! If anyone has any matters they would like to discuss please contact me either by email at: [email protected] or phone on: 01604 862015. 8 Michael Clarke, our County Councillor, writes: Speed of communication plays an increasingly important part in our lives. Northamptonshire County Council has teamed up with BT to deliver Superfast Broadband to over 95% of the County’s Broadband users by 2017. This ambitious project is progressing well and one of my priorities as Hartwell’s County Councillor is to ensure that our parishes are offered the Superfast Broadband service as early as possible. This, I am pleased to report, has been delivered to Hartwell residents and I think those users who have taken advantage of it will have noticed an appreciable improvement in the speed of doing things online. Highways maintenance is also very important to us. Due to underinvestment over several decades and some record cold and wet winters over the past few years, the challenge is formidable. But the highways budget is one which I am determined to protect even in difficult budgetary times. We should not lose sight of the fact that we all need to use the roads, whether we travel by car, bus or bicycle. Highways works are ongoing in resurfacing and patching the road network. However, the work is like painting the Forth Bridge – for every three potholes that are dealt with, another two appear in other places. We have improved the quality of the work done in line with the Highways Maintenance Initiative of getting things right first time and delivering an improved standard of work, which is more durable. However, due to the significant backlog of work, we have to ask for people’s patience. Problems that are reported on the County Council’s “Street Doctor” web site get inspected and logged. It takes time to get everything done. 9 The role of the County’s libraries is changing. The libraries have evolved into local hubs to deliver a raft of services. Internet services and advice on things like business start-ups now complement the more traditional services of lending books, music and films. So despite the financial pressures and constraints placed upon us, we are working harder than ever to maintain and improve front line services.