Howard Woollaston: Parish Matters – July/August 2023

Howard Woollaston
West Berkshire Councillor: Lambourn Ward

July/August 2023

Thankfully, July has for me been an uncharacteristically quiet month. This has allowed me to focus on sorting out my new house a few miles downstream in Boxford. Those of you who have moved in recent years will appreciate this brings a multitude of challenges. Not the least is the coordination of work being done and, in my case, coping with the nightmare of dealing with BT.

This experience made me sympathise even more with those in Upper Lambourn who for far too long suffered from appalling broadband. In Eastbury I had Gigaclear fibre to my house but here they only connected half of the village: it seems I am in the wrong half. The existing broadband that I am using is painfully slow.

Sewage and flood risks

We are about to see road closures both in Eastbury and on the valley road at East Garston. (Click here to see the interactive map, being sure to apply the appropriate time period in the pop-up on the top left.) This will hopefully draw to a close the work on the new sewer, leaving Thames Water to clear up after themselves. The road closures needed to be delayed until the school summer holidays so that school buses could get through.

I remain Chairman of the Lambourn Valley Flood Forum and we had a useful presentation from Project Groundwater, funded by the Department of Environment Food & Rural Affairs. The key points to take away were that last winter’s rainfall was 157% above average and we obviously had a pretty wet July. Despite this, Thames Water hopes that tankering will no longer be required.

About a year ago, we expanded the scale of the Flood Forum to include the lower reaches of the Lambourn down to the confluence with the Kennet. However, the different issues between rural and urban areas are such that we are now setting up a separate group to be responsible from Speen and down-river to focus on the problems more closely there.

Lambourn Sports Club

I was invited to attend their monthly meeting this week and I have agreed to attend quarterly in the future. The good news is that they are in pretty good financial shape. I have agreed to investigate how West Berkshire Council may be able to provide additional support and in particular to investigate grant funding availability through my good contacts at Sports England.

Lambourn Parish Council

I attended the Parish Council meeting this week and whilst a number of Councillors were away on holiday, I sense a genuine enthusiasm and “can do attitude” from both longstanding and new Councillors to improve things. I would urge you to give them your support. They do this purely for the benefit of the community with no financial reward and we should congratulate them on their generosity of time.

For more information on Lambourn Parish Council, including details of meetings, please click here.

Casework

This continues unabated. This is one of the most rewarding parts of being a District Councillor, where you can make a genuine difference in freeing up bureaucratic blockages. Most of them are personal which I am, for obvious reasons, not at liberty to discuss.

However, one related to a local resident who took his children and some of their friends to the pool at Hungerford Leisure Centre. As many will know, there is a new leisure centre contractor appointed by West Berkshire Council which obviously does not yet appreciate the West Berkshire way of working and tried to insist on taking names of the children. This request our resident quite rightly refused in my view, as some were not his own children. They then insisted that cash payments were not available. He then got in touch with me. I’m pleased to say that the contractor now understands…

Writing for posterity

Thanks to Penny Post’s ability to keep all of my monthly reports in one article, it’s possible to look back and remind myself what the main recurring issues over the last three and a bit years have been. Using the search function, I see that (not counting this month’s quieter report), “traffic” has been mentioned 40 times, “B4000” 43, “Membury” 61, “speed” 72, “water” 73 and “planning” 114.

This provides a fair summary of the issues that have dominated my in-box. Whoever takes my place when the time comes should find this a valuable reference document…

Get in touch

Since starting this newsletter over three years ago I have generally skipped August and December. I propose to follow the same approach unless anything urgent crops up. However, I have already taken my summer holiday so will be here for all eventualities.

Whether or not the matter you’re concerned about features in the above list of search results, if you feel I can help please get in touch on 07836 718100 or howard.woollaston1@westberks.gov.uk.

My thanks as ever to Brian Quinn of Penny Post for bringing his journalistic expertise to my ramblings.