Bramhope & Carlton Parish Council
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BRAMHOPE & CARLTON VILLAGE NEWSLETTER SPRING 2018 The Puritan Chapel with the new information board provided by Bramhope in Bloom. See Page 3 for Open Days. Welcome to the Spring edition of the Bramhope & Carlton Parish Council Newsletter. Spring seems very late this year. Thankfully the grey days have been offset by the avenues of daffodils along the approaches to the Bramhope and the many other touches of colour carefully planted around the village by Bramhope in Bloom. In reading this newsletter you will be struck by the common themes that demonstrate the importance of community. There is an initiative to introduce a "Good Neighbour" scheme in Bramhope and another to take the first steps towards making Bramhope a Dementia Friendly Village. The sterling work done by Tariq Qadeer in staging fund raising events for charities such as Candlelighters continues, and gains a further boost through Andrew Taylor's White Rose Way Challenge. Marie Curie has completed their year as the first official council charity and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust has been selected for 2018/19. Organisations such as Headingley Bramhope Cricket Club, West Park Leeds Rugby Club and the Bramhope Campsite appear in these pages wishing to be more closely involved with village organisations and residents. The Summer Festival brings together under one collective brand a wide range of activities from churches, schools and societies with something for everyone. There is good news that the Village Hall, the heart of so many village activities, has now received the funding that enables the first phase of the ambitious refurbishment project to begin. More good news that Bramhope has a Post Office again at Christalya's newsagent and general store at Tredgold Avenue. The Parish Council deals with a very wide range of issues. Top of our list are Road Safety, and the continuing discussions with Leeds City Council Planning and Highways to manage the impact of the Breary Lane development positively. Further details inside. If you wish to know more about the work of the Parish Council, please take time to attend the Annual Village Meeting at the Village Hall on Wednesday 2nd May. Simon Cooper Chairman, Bramhope & Carlton Parish Council BRAMHOPE & CARLTON VILLAGE NEWSLETTER – SPRING 2018 PLANNING MATTERS Breary Lane East/Leeds Road Site As described in the Winter 2017 Newsletter, the Parish Council has put forward a long list of proposals to ensure that as far as possible the environmental and cosmetic impact of the new development is managed positively. On 12 February a site meeting was held with LCC Highways and Metro to discuss the re-location of the Parish Council’s stone bus shelters currently located at The Poplars and near the wine shop. An additional stone shelter is proposed for the new bus layby on the Leeds bound side of the A660 near High Ridge Way. Pavements are also proposed across the grassed area near the junction of The Poplars with the A660. LCC Highways have been monitoring traffic on The Poplars in order to measure flows before the construction of the roundabout. July is now the earliest start date for the construction of the roundabout. Site Allocation Plan Amendments The two Green Belt sites in Bramhope were allocated for housing in the original LCC Site Allocation Plan: 42 Green Acres on Moor Road, 42 dwellings; land to the rear of 45 Creskeld Lane, 23 dwellings. These sites are now proposed as Broad Locations. (Broad Locations first appeared in the National Planning Policy Framework in 2014 and enable a local authority to identify Green Belt land that can be used for development in "exceptional circumstances".) Broad Location sites would remain in the Green Belt and only be allocated for housing should it eventually be required to help supply the 66,000 homes target for the Leeds area. The Parish Council has responded formally to these proposals, stating that the two Bramhope sites should remain permanently in the Green Belt and that a review of the Leeds housing targets should take place first, via the Core Strategy Selective Review, before any allocation of Broad Location sites. Core Strategy Selective Review Based on more recent demographic projections the City Council proposes reducing the number of dwellings in the strategy for the Leeds area from 66,000 (net) to 51,952 (net). Consequentially land in the Leeds Green Belt should not be needed for housing in the period up to 2033. The Parish Council believes that this lower housing figure is a more realistic target, and this review should take place before the SAP amendments. (As previously explained, revision of the housing target comes too late to prevent development on the several sites in Leeds - including the Breary Lane East site - where the developers won planning appeals on the basis that LCC had not provided a 5 year supply of land to meet the target of 66,000 dwellings.) PARISH COUNCIL BRIEFING • The Council Precept (the money collected through your council tax bill as the major source of funding for the Parish Council) is unchanged for yet another year. Though an increased grant to the Village Hall for Project Phoenix and maintenance work on the children's playground has meant a call on the reserves, council finances are in a healthy state. If you wish to learn more, you should attend the Annual Village Meeting on Wednesday 2nd May. • Have you thought of being a councillor? Applications are invited to fill the vacancy on the Parish Council following the resignation of Richard Ellis. Applications are invited. Please contact the Parish Clerk for further details. • New Councillor: Alan Anslow has filled the vacancy on the council left by the resignation of Peter Lawson. A Bramhope resident for over 20 years, Alan is a recently retired Chartered Surveyor with experience in the charity and commercial sectors bringing valuable expertise to the council. • GDPR – New data protection laws come into effect at the end of May that give you increased rights over data about you held by organisations. The Parish Council is updating policies and procedures to be compliant. The most visible effect is that the Council now needs to ask for your explicit consent to hold information about you. For example, we must ask you to opt-in to receive email or post. • The Council has formally adopted a Complaints Procedure as part of its communication processes. The new rules make it plain that anonymous complaints or under a fake name will not be dealt with. www.bramhopecarlton.org.uk facebook.com/bramhopecarlton Follow us @BramhopeCarlton 2 Clerk to the Council – Nicola Woodward – 07530 900934 or email [email protected] BRAMHOPE & CARLTON VILLAGE NEWSLETTER – SPRING 2018 WATCH YOUR SPEED! Road safety is the issue most frequently raised by residents and is a key focus for the Parish Council, working with the police and LCC Highways. In the last 12 months new speed limits have been introduced in Bramhope, reinforced by speed bumps. Yellow lines are addressing blind spots. The bend on Leeds Road opposite Church Hill has been resurfaced, and seems to have prevented further accidents. A SID (Speed Indicator Device ) has been purchased and installed on Kings Road. A second SID is to be placed on Moor Road. As you will read in the Carlton Village report, progress is being made there towards speed limits. Over two days in early February Councillors Diane Fox, Rob Haswell and Billy Flynn carried out speed checks using a mobile SID at well known black spots within the 20 mph and 30 mph zones: Old Lane, Moor Road, Church Hill, Breary Lane and Tredgold Avenue. (The mobile SID is a "portable" version of the familiar speed device on lampposts.) Many drivers cut their speed on seeing the device. Even so more than 1 in 5 exceeded the limit by more than 5 mph, with 34 mph clocked in the 20 mph zone on Church Hill. The SID on Kings Road was initially installed in December, and improvements were made in early February, so that the display shows a smiling/frowning face and full data capture is enabled. The device logs the speed of every vehicle. Data analysis suggests that the display does reduce speeding, with the mean speed at 32 mph. There are, however, many instances of very excessive speeds, with 60 and even 70 mph clocked, not just at night, when few pedestrians are around, but at 8 am and 3 pm! The V85 value is 38 mph. (V85 is the speed at or below which 85% of vehicles were travelling. It is the key statistic that indicates the "speed" of the road). An increase in this level would suggest that rigorous enforcement is required. So the message is clear. WATCH YOUR SPEED A POST OFFICE FOR BRAMHOPE Bramhope lost its Post Office as part of the major programme of closures in 2008, and ever since residents have had to go to Otley, Pool or Adel. Now thanks to the enterprise of Talya Sharon, the Post Office have opened a new branch at Christalya on Tredgold Avenue, adding this much needed service to the many functions the shop already provides. The Post Office will offer a very wide range of services, including: Letters and Parcels; Money withdrawals, deposits and payments; Bill payments; Travel Money. The new service will offer long opening hours, 7 days a week, with the Post Office opening hours in line with those of the shop. The last post on most days will be later than any post box in the village at 16.03 on a Monday, 17.03 Tuesday through Friday, and 11.58 on Saturdays. THE PURITAN CHAPEL - OPENING TIMES The Puritan Chapel will be open on the following Sundays from 2 to 4 pm.