Welcome


This website has been created for the residents of Abbotts Barton and surrounding areas so that you can keep up to-date with what's going on.

Apart from news you can find information about events, campaigns, and how to contact councillors.

Abbotts Barton Community Group is a community association which serves the people of Abbotts Barton and aims to act as a community anchor organisation. The main areas of work for the Group are:
  • ☐ To enable residents to find out how we can make where we live even better and do something about it.
  • ☐ To run events and activities for the benefit of inhabitants of Abbotts Barton.
  • ☐ To strengthen community participation.

Big Lunch 2014
We always welcome people to join us, it's easy and free and there is no obligation to do anything! Please see our Membership page for more info!

If you should be interested in helping out at events, as a street champion, or as a Councillor's Surgery visitor, please don't hesitate to get in touch! Also let us know if you have some ideas for events or skills that could be useful (e.g. face painting at the picnics)! Read more about how you can help on our Get Involved page!

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If you want to receive news (approximately monthly) from the Community Group about Abbotts Barton, please enter your name and email address below:

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Thursday 13 March 2014

News Roundup

Another two weeks and things have turned around! The flood waters are still receding, all St Bede's children are back in their school, and the dirty playground near the Leisure Centre has been cleaned and re-opened. Just in time for the sunshine!



Council activities and consultations


As money needs to be saved HCC is doing a consultation (until 31 March) on how BUS SERVICES are used and some of them might be cut down or replaced by other means. On the list of subsidised services is also our local 6A bus and the Spring service. Please make sure to have your say using the online consultation form to be found on their information page.
Important: as many of our neighbours don't have any internet, please let them know what is going on - and if you can either print out the PDF version of the form for them or let them contact our local ward councillors to get a copy of the form from them. The completed form can be sent back to HCC by post (all information needed is in the PDF file).

On the Local Plan 2 consultation there is some food for thought on the WinACC website. WinACC and City of Winchester Trust are campaigning together as Winchester 2020 and are calling for a debate on Winchester's future. The Local Plan 2 consultation is still open until 4 April, information and a comment form are available on the WCC website.

We are in the final week to state our preference for City Council elections; election by thirds or whole council (all out) system. It takes 30 seconds to vote! Please have a think about this if you haven't done so yet!

If you haven't seen it yet and have a smartphone, there is a great little app for reporting things like missed bins, fly tipping, road problems, finding your local councillors, and other useful information: a link to this app can be found on the WCC Report webpage. I've recently used it to report some rubbish that somebody tipped near the Rugby Club and it was cleared away within two days!

Public Health


About the new hospital to be built: MP Brine has 'anxiety' about hospital downgrade plans

General News


The Open Spaces Society is urging councils to save open spaces! There are steps that can be taken if the councils WANT to save them!

A hundred people at climate change meeting in Winchester. The article only focusses on how we should change our eating habits, but from a previous one announcing the meeting I got the impression that more should have been discussed. Has anybody been there and could enlighten us?

HCC is facing huge costs for repairs to the roads damaged by the flooding!

Southampton Airport could get a longer runway - this would affect us too!

Not new but reaffirmed: Winchester and Southampton among countries most expensive cities

Have you been exasperated by the boy/girl divide in toys and books that seems to have got more and more fashionable over the last decade? After the Let Toys Be Toys campaign there is now also a Let Books Be Books one. I'm so glad that some toy shops and book publishers have already been seeing some sense and are making changes. I am supporting this because I once saw my little boy looking at craft items in a toy shop that were decorated the 'wrong' way (to make them look appealing for girls) and he felt it wasn't for him because of that - already having soaked up the stereotypes of pink is for girls and blue for boys. I myself played with cars and Lego as a child and never thought they were for boys only. Toys are for children and they should be able to choose what interests them!

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