News Roundup - January 2015

Hello everyone, I hope we find you well in this cold weather! This time I have mostly news links for you, so grab yourself a cup of tea or coffee, find a comfy seat, and get reading!

First of all welcome to our five new blog subscribers from December - that was a very pleasant surprise! Please don't hesitate to forward our posts/website links to anybody who might be interested to be kept up-to-date about local issues!

Lynne has had an update from Fiona Mather on the Worthy Road crossing. There’s bad and good news: the bad part is that the County Council did another footfall count in November and it was too low again. However, (the Good news!) it has been agreed that a crossing should be done anyway with part of the Barton farm funds and it should happen 'at an early stage' of the Barton Farm development! This decision is based on the County Council’s strategy for promoting the use of non-car modes from Barton Farm which envisages the developers providing a cycle route from Barton Farm to Courtenay Road and a crossing on Worthy Road to allow cyclists from Barton Farm to safely and conveniently reach the existing cycle route towards the City centre which travels past the Leisure Centre. The crossing type to be implemented would be a Toucan crossing.

Have you heard about the change in government guidelines in regards to how much developers have to pay to a council to help with affordable housing? For Winchester this change will lead to a shortfall of up to £920,000 in the budget. Due to that Cabinet is thinking about adding extra houses to the Barton Farm project, and "fringe countryside and urban plots previously deemed unnecessary may also be developed". Read more on the Save The Parks in Abbotts Barton website: Councillors agreed to revisit the potential of unused sites.

Are the cuts in bus services upsetting you? Evening buses have been reduced for the Spring service which is badly affecting King's Worthy residents (see Hampshire Chronicle article) - but how does this work out for people in Abbotts Barton? Feedback (via our Contact tab or as a comment) would be appreciated. There is also a campaign about the bus cuts on the Liberal Democrats' website that you could sign.

It looks like the Winchester March prompted the Council members to think about how they can improve communications with residents: Winchester City Council to revamp communications after protests against lack of consultation (Hampshire Chronicle).

The judicial review for the Silver Hill project is due next week. The parties involved are not agreeing what an outcome in favour of Councillor Gottlieb would mean: Henderson development director Martin Perry thinks this could delay the scheme by a decade, but Councillor Gottlieb says "The whole scheme could be revisited and put out to the open market within the year." (Hampshire Chronicle: Silver Hill: Development chief says £165m scheme 'could be delayed for decade' by looming legal battle.) Campaign group SAVE Britain's Heritage has sent out an email with details about how to send a represenation to the Secretary of State, Eric Pickles (if you are so inclined).

With the elections this year, of course there are lots of news items from various parties about their candidates and policies. As a community group we don't want to be drawn into this too much - but I found this bit of information interesting: according to the website Vote for Policies many Winchester residents seem to hold beliefs that go along with what the Green Party is promising (see Winchester results). Of course this outcome is only a snapshot, as only 957 surveys had been completed at the time of writing - but this is just so different to our usual election results! Maybe it simply means that people who hold these beliefs are more inclined to fill out this kind of surveys, who knows. Why don't you go ahead and take the survey yourself to make the result more accurate?

Also on the topic of elections, is everybody in your house registered with the electoral roll? The Daily Echo ran this story: Thousands could miss out on General Election vote due to new rules - apparently "Winchester has seen its electoral roll numbers plummet by 2,869."

Aspirations to be number 1 street sign in Abbotts Barton!

All the best,
Sylke
Secretary of Abbotts Barton Community Group

Councillor's Surgery - January 2015

This time Jane and Sylke went to the Councillor's Surgery and spoke with Jim Maynard (one of our local ward City Councillors) and Paul Williams (local campaigner).

We revisited the Noticeboard topic, having been told since the last surgery with Jim in September that there are funds available for two. We described where we would like these two to go (one at the corner of Oglander Road/Hillier Way where the Hillier Road sign is, and another one on the wall somewhere nearer to the bus stop on Worthy Road just before Hyde Street) and now steps need to be taken to get them there. (We had a rather lengthy discussion on where the money for these is coming from, the Housing Department, as we were wondering why it's not from the Town funds.)

Jane reported recent experiences with the bus service on Worthy Road (buses not turning up) and was advised that this should be reported to Hampshire County Council (who subsidise the service) via Fiona Mathers (email: fmather@winchester.gov.uk) and also Stagecoach (who is running the service). We were wondering if anybody else in Abbotts Barton had any problems with this recently; if so, please report this too.

Finally we were told some great news: at some point soon Councillor's Surgeries will be more accessible to all Abbotts Barton residents, as our local Councillors are in the process of setting up more local ones, which means we will have one right here in Abbotts Barton! We will let you know more about this once the location has been agreed.

The next Councillor's Surgery will be Thursday 5 February!