Neil secures £8,000 for Wellow

A new community bus service is now up and running in Wellow, with help and support from local Councillor Neil Butters.

Neil managed to secure £8,000 from Bath and North East Somerset Council which has contributed towards a bus service for local residents that runs all day.

Neil said:

"Sadly, over time small villages have become more isolated due to the closure of pubs, post offices and other amenities. Thanks now though to the dedication of a hard working team in Wellow, a new community bus service has bucked the trend and been launched for local residents."

Wonderful Wellow!

Looking forward to Wonderful Wellow Week which starts on Friday 18th June. First up at 2.00pm is the flower festival in St Julian's Church which continues for an amazing ten days. There will be a host of events including open gardens, history tours, a concert, a treasure hunt and even a visit from one of Bath's Lions. This is a brilliant example of the community spirit that exists in Wellow and all our villages. Well done to Churchwarden Pauline Preddy whose idea it was to bring together a group of people and get this WWW under way.

www.wellowparish.info

Park and Ride lights to be turned off

Wellow Futures, a community group in Wellow, and local Lib Dems hosted an evening showing the film the Age of Stupid last week both in Wellow and at Bathampton Village Hall. It was followed by a far ranging discussion about energy efficiency and moving away from the oil economy.

Gail Coleshill, Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate for North East Somerset, said:

“The film outlines what could happen in the future if people of this generation do not make much more effort to save oil and reduce global warming.

We had an animated discussion about what we could achieve locally and ended with how much more could be done with a bit more Government and Council leadership.”

The group has already chalked up one success. Local resident Jane Rees complained that the lights at the Park and Ride at Odd Down did not need to be on all the time and Cllr Neil Butters (Lib Dem, Bathavon South) promised to find out if they could be altered.

This week he received a reply for the Sustainability Officer at B&NES that the lights would be turned off half an hour after the Park and Ride closed.

Cllr Butters said:

“This is a real achievement for the Council working with local residents to effect energy efficiencies. I am really pleased that we were able to make a real energy saving thanks to the observation of a local resident.”

Wellow traffic calming

After five years of effort by the Parish Council, and with the help of Cllr Neil Butters, Wellow is at last getting its promised traffic calming scheme - at a cost of £47,000 provided by the developers of the Business Park at Peasedown. This will be implemented by end-June.
Thanks to Wellow Parish Councillor Mark Watson, here is an indicative sketch of the proposed new scheme:

Community Bus for Wellow area

Neil has been pressing B&NES Council to provide a modest grant to support some form of local bus service for the Wellow area. Despite the very difficult financial climate, £8,000 pa has been freed up. This will now go towards the excellent local Community Bus proposal.

Mobile Library petition handed to deputy Chairman of Council

Gail Coleshill and Louise Bray, representing Mobile Library users across the district, handed in some of the petitions they have collected requesting that the Council retains the rural routes.

Seen here presenting the petition to acting Chair of Council Sarah Bevan, Gail and Louise are concerned many residents who use the mobile library are elderly, not car users, have young children or mobility problems.

In her statement Gail said these are the people about whom the Council should be most concerned in maintaining services in rural areas.

Gail presented the petition to the acting Chairman of Council at a Full Council meeting last night saying that she had received signatures from villagers in Wellow, Bathford, Priston, Hunstrete, Compton Martin, and Hinton Charterhouse and had had messages from people including teachers in Shoscombe, Wellow, Combe Hay and Midford.

Gail said in reply to a question from a Councillor about numbers of users:

“The numbers of users at present may be below in some villages but that is no reason to exclude those villages from the service. More use could be made of the Mobile Library to provide other Council services and to make residents more aware of the visits by the mobile library.”

Louise Bray, who relied on the mobile library service during a recent serious illness, was pleased that the Cabinet member was now proposing to consult other options.

She said:

“I am sure that many residents are relieved to know that the consultation on the Mobile Library route review will now include more options than just scrapping the village routes. I hope the Council will make efforts to consult residents and parish councils in all the villages presently visited by the library.”

Lib Dems plea to Council “Leave the mobile library service alone”

News that the mobile library service is proposed for cuts in the very rural areas has caused consternation to villagers who rely on the library van’s regular visits.

Gail Coleshill, Parliamentary spokesperson, representing views from villages like Combe Hay, Priston and Wellow, said:

“I cannot believe that the Council is proposing to take away the mobile library from villages where it is already difficult to explain what they get for their council tax.

Surely rather than a consultation on cuts to the service we should be consulting on how to get more residents interested in using the mobile service and what they want and need from such a service.”

Local Lib Dem Louise Bray is very concerned that it will be young mums and the elderly who will suffer. She said:

“However short, the visit from the library in villages like Combe Hay and Priston is very important for people with young children and the elderly who cannot easily get to places like Timsbury or the main libraries.”

Cllr Neil Butters, Bathavon South ward, is annoyed that this is a cut too far.
He said:

“I am trying hard to get better transport for villages in my ward to save trips by car and then the Council Cabinet seems to do nothing but make it more and more necessary to make car journeys. Villagers in places like Wellow are fed up with being sidelined by the Council.

Creating sustainable communities will increasingly mean getting services to people and communities and not asking them to make lots of individual journeys to centralised locations.”

Gail and Louise will be attending the Overview and Scrutiny Panel (Stronger Communities), at the Guildhall on Thursday 23at 10am to represent the views of people who want to keep the mobile library service. Cllr Neil Butters would be pleased to hear views from any residents.

Community Compost Club celebrates sieve

The Community Composting Club in Wellow has taken delivery of a giant sieve for removing sticks, large lumps and aerating the compost (thereby removing the need to shred before the material goes in), which has been paid for using the new “Ward Councillor Initiative Fund” from B&NES Council.

The Composting Club built three giant compost bins in the centre of Wellow for residents’ use. The volunteers running the Club hope to allow recycling to happen locally – avoiding bonfires and unnecessary car journeys – and to create a communal resource in the form of homemade compost out of a ‘waste product’.

Local Councillor Neil Butters was one of the first recipients of the “Ward Councillor Initiative Fund” from B&NES Council. This fund allocates £4,000 for each Councillor to be spent on projects in his or her ward.

The rest of the money was spent on replacing children’s play area fencing at Hinton Charterhouse, and helping create a Pre-School in Freshford. Joanne MacInnes from the Community Composting Club commented:

“The grant from our councillor has thrown us a life line and ensured that we have a safety net with which to confidently carry on. We have insurance costs and planning fees next year and equipment costs, such as our new and wonderful sieve, tool sheds etc and all of this is made possible by the money we were given by the Council. Unlike other sites in other Counties we do not get waste credits back from waste we divert from landfill, so we must rely on grants instead”

Councillor Neil Butters (Lib Dem, Bathavon South), added:

“I was delighted to help such an imaginative project – the first such in the whole of Bath & North East Somerset. It is a show-piece, which has won over many locally who were at first sceptical.”