Dear villagers,
As I promised last time, this is a sort of “interim” newsletter to compensate for the long gap in the previous one!
Police matters
We had a great morning on Saturday 8th introducing new PC Kirsty Langridge to everyone who came along. What was really great was that we had well over a hundred villagers there to say “hello” in just over two hours. It was a really wonderful and typically Grayshott welcome. Kirsty was very impressed and tremendously motivated. PCSO Jim Leggat was also present with a mobile Police office, so the Grayshott beat team were fully represented. This is me with Kirsty and Grayshott resident Geoffrey Lee.
There is a short article about this on the EHDC website that you can read here;
http://www.easthampshire.org/newsdetail/meet_and_greet_on_the_beat_with_grayshott%27s_new_pc/547
Planning matters
Just recently there has been some correspondence with me about the EHDC “Local Plan”. If you recall one of my first “planning primers”, the Local Plan is a document that sets out the basic rules by which we judge planning applications. It’s very detailed, road by road and even house by house. The Local Plan has to be approved by the Government in an Inquiry run by the Planning Inspectorate and the current Local Plan has been statutory guidance for several years now.
We are moving closer towards the new version, now renamed the “Local Development Framework”, (LDF). It does, in my view, much the same thing. The consultation process is coming up soon. A non specific strategy document will be put out for consultation first, known as the “Core Strategy”, probably this autumn and more detailed proposals at the house/street level will follow about spring of next year. The consultations will be publicised and will be local. Apart from the council’s normal publicity, I will mention it here, of course.
This LDF document is extremely important. In some respects it can actually lay out statutory guidance such that a subsequent planning application, even a couple of years later, will, in effect, go through with few or no grounds for refusal. It’s worth looking out for it and taking part.
.TheVillageLibrary
We all had a bit of a panic recently. The library service is operated by Hampshire County Council and their library in the village is housed in a hall that is leased to the County Council by the Grayshott Village Hall Management Committee. Negotiations for the terms of the new lease have been ongoing for a long time, I think since the end of last year. Within the past few weeks it looked as though the County Council were going to refuse to pay the higher rent. Unbelievably, the gap had come down to £500 a year and that was the sticking point.
Apart from losing the library, the other big problem was that the money is needed to keep the Village Hall going. These institutions are really community facilities and struggle to break even, so this could have been a double whammy.
I wrote a letter to the Leader of Hampshire County Council, Cllr. Ken Thornber and he replied very quickly with an instruction to his officer to pay the £500. This looks like a good result all round. I have thanked Ken of course, but we should also thank the members of the Village Hall Management Committee and the Parish Council who have worked so hard to keep our library. There might still be a couple of hiccups along the way but the immediate danger is past.
.GrayshottPrimary School
Being a District Councillor has its ups and downs of course but one of the best of the “ups” for me is when I visit GrayshottPrimary School. On 20th July, JonHillsasked me to give some of the prizes at the end of year Presentations Assembly. Great! What a fabulous morning. When you see and hear about what these kids have been doing you can’t help but be inspired.
Shopping in Grayshott
Just recently I commissioned an appraisal of shopping behaviour in Grayshott and worked with Buy in Grayshott to develop the questions. The work was carried out by an experienced consultancy from this part of Hampshire and the results will be passed to BIG although the report is a public document and will be in the public domain... Whilst it dealt with some specific issues there is a clear generic message which is that the retail economy of the village really does need our full support to keep it thriving and prosperous. We all need to keep on buying in Grayshott, especially during the recession.
District Council Matters
I’m afraid I have been rather over exposed in the media lately!! Of course the big news story for EHDC was our incredible success at securing EcoTownstatus for Bordon and Whitehill which was announced by the Government on Thursday 16th July. Between the Wednesday before and the Monday afterwards, I was told, I was on TV more often than Gordon Brown!
That day was amazing, like nothing I have ever experienced. With one single exception, (see below), I was on constant media duty from 07.00 in the morning until 19.10 in the evening. TV took a lot of the day but so did countless radio interviews including being truly live on Radio Five Live and several press interviews.
The exception was that at the same time, (!), I was also selecting a new Chief Executive for EHDC. This was a bit challenging on the time management front but it was all achieved successfully. As you may have seen, subject to final democratic approvals from the two councils, we have chosen Sandy Hopkins, the current Chief Executive of Havant Borough Council. Sandywill be the CEO of both councils.
As I said in my long article in the previous newsletter, the objective is not simply to halve the cost of a highly paid employee, although that alone is quite a valuable benefit, (about 1% of Council Tax!). The real benefit is from sharing services where it makes sense to do. Obvious candidates would be traditional back office functions like Finance, Personnel and I.T. but also we can make very large savings from other overhead costs associated with customer facing services and from contract negotiation with third parties where we offer a much larger business proposition to them.
…..and finally
The house project moves on, hopefully towards an October completion. However, I can still find a bit of time for gigging and I played at the Star Inn, Guildfordrecently and earned my first ever pay check as a musician!!!
I raced at Rockingham recently and managed first in class. In a later race when I was well out of class, the heavens opened but I’ve always raced well in the rain and moved up from 12th to 3rd overall. However, clearly I don’t quite race well enough because I then made a small error and slid off very, very slowly and couldn’t rejoin the race! I’m racing at Thruxton for the first time ever on 16th. August in a Sport 2000 race and that will complete my racing at every MSA licensed British competition circuit.
Me in my Global GT with the R1 engine. My race number is the year I was born! The guy in the back car is going to overtake me by the way!
As usual, if you have any comments, please write to me at fcowper@aol.com or call me on 01428-609858.
Best wishes,
Ferris Cowper
EHDC Councillor for the ward of Grayshott and
Leader of the Council
