Thriplow Solar Farm planning application - latest

Thriplow Parish Council met this evening to consider the latest version of the planning application put in for a large solar farm to the east of the village. A much smaller meeting than the public meeting before Xmas where there were over 100 people attending. The application now has fewer solar panels near the footpath. 

But if it wasn't as lively a meeting there was still a good level of discussion focussing on the concerns raised by residents about the scale of the proposed solar farm, the loss of green belt and the loss of an important amenity in that the footpath that links the two settlements of Thriplow and Heathfield runs through the proposed development.

Other points raised were concerns over water supply impact, potential noise and a stong feeling that the section 106 community money that had gone to create the footpath two or three years back would now be used to access the solar farm. 

I have been at the three public meetings, and the site visit by the members of the planning committee in December. I will touch base with planning officers at South Cambs tomorrow morning to see if any developments, and then write up what I want to say the district council planning committee next Wednesday as the local member. 

I've been impressed by the way the Thriplow parish council has handled this major planning application - local people who put in many hours of unpaid committee work to represent the interests of their community. This is localism at its best. 

Solar Farm at Thriplow

This amended planning application comes up for decision at the planning committee of South Cambs District Council next week. the applicants have pushed back the solar panels away from the drift track that runs through the middle of the land to reduce the visibility of the panels but there is still a good deal of local opposition. At the moment the planning officers recommendation is to refuse. The land is green belt though not high class arable land.
I will be setting out my views to the planning committee as the local member for thriplow and Heathfield. The parish council also have an extraordinary meeting to consider the latest plans later this week.

vecchia zimarra

South Cambs is running a trial textile and shoe collection (so listen up, any old coats). The trial covers 5,000 households and, if successful, may be rolled out across the district.
Villages in the north of the district - so not yet Thriplow or Whittlesford - are being given blue recycling bags so they can put out spare clothing, shoes and household linen for collection alongside their blue bin. 
The textiles and shoes collected are sent to a textile processing facility. Reusable items are sold for reuse in both the UK and abroad and non-reusable items such as worn clothing and old towels are sorted with some items being used for cleaning rags and industrial wipers.

Affordable housing in Whittlersford - decision and options

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The parish council meeting at Whittlesford this coming Tuesday 12 Febr at 7.30 has to decide if it wants to ask the District Council to extend the framework of the village to the west of Orchard Terrace, roughly the area marked in red on the screenshot.
This would enable the County Council to sell its farmland to allow a development to be built of some 20 houses, five of which would be affordable.

To give some context, there are two other developments currently under active consideration in Whittlesford: the area in yellow at Newton Road, which would be 16, all of which would be affordable housing, and the area in purple which is the current site of Granta Processors, which the company wants to sell for 16 houses, of which four would be affordable. In the longer term, the County Council Highways depot at Station Road could be sold off for land, even though it is not a very attractive site, and possibly some land around Church Lane.   

Land to west of Orchard Terrace

Clearly there is real demand for affordable houses in the village. The question as always is the scale and timing. Much of the commercially priced housing in Whittlesford is attractive to people commuting to London, because of the improvements to the railway, and one of the reasons why house prices are high in the village. Not forgetting the village shop, amenities including two pubs and the excellent school.

...a thing as lovely as a tree

We're being told that the annual tree inspection on the Lawn in Whittlesford needs to include a documented log of the assessment of the state of each individual tree, for public insurance purposes.
Something else for the parish council to pick up on and something we must do given the tragic accident in Peterborough last year when a tree branch snapped and fell on the people sitting below.

Fred's fruitage

The late lamented and indefatigable Whittlesford horticulturalist, Fred Winter, gardened an impressive sizeage of allotments when he was with us, and built up quite a collection of sheds along the way.

Alas, with his passing, the parish council now needs to decide how to handle that inheritance - some of it fruitful and to be preserved, such as the well-established apple and plum trees. Some, however, needs careful handling, because some of those sheds are in a parlous state.

The parish council is making plans, over the autumn, to rescape the area, beginning by taking down the sheds, freeing up some allotment space, and moving the newly planted "community orchard" trees - now looking healthy - to blend in with Fred's fruitage so that we can have a larger, and more orchard like orchard. 

I've been talking to the district council's ecology officer, and he will advise on moving and preserving the trees, and creating some wildlife opportunities as part of the proposed orchard. I'm hoping the local scouts can lend a hand with the less hazardous work.

What is it all for...

When I have been out and about in Thriplow, Heathfield and Whittlesford people have asked about the proposals for building many more houses around the villages, and why the developers keep coming back with their plans.
The bottom line is that our villages and the countryside within which they sit are hugely attractive to big developers. Why? Well, we are near enough to Cambridge to bask in its reflected cachet and enjoy its booming economy and chic shops, there is the 43 minutes rail journey down to Liverpool St and the M11, the village shops, schools and pubs, the air museum, people riding horses through the villages, children playing football on a crisp November morning on the recreation ground, cricket on summer evening with the long shadows over the the village green..you get the picture.
No wonder then, that as in the opening of HG Wells famous novel, there are "envious eyes across the gulf of space slowly and surely drawing their plans against us."
But we'll see them off...

Station Road - honey bees and holes in the road

Out in Royston Road and Station Road this evening - issues included the commuter cars parking from six in the morning, through the damage left from the lorries building the new developments (I'll see if the planning people can get the builders to come back and make good) to the noise from the scrapyard (where the parish council is arranging for residents to meet the owner to see if some compromises can be reached.
Also learned about the fate of English bees from the apiarist who sells very fine jars of their honey from the front-gate near the top of Station Road, and I was reminded that we still need BT to come and fix their telephone box after it was vandalised over a year ago!

Thriplow in the sun!

 Out and about in Thriplow this morning - still looking good even tho Daffodil Week-end has long gone.
Talking to an elderly gent whose council house has the new District Council funded solar panels on the roof - reckons it is very good indeed - it will save him a lot of money.
He said that they have adapted to make the best use of the power, so rather than being on Economy 7 at night, they run the washing machine in the early afternoon. Simple things like this will make a big difference.

fiat lux

I've got an email from delighted people from Sheralds Croft in Thriplow that their request to me to help get solar panels for their next door neighbour's roof  has been successful. Originally their apple tree blocked out the light but since the tree was removed all is well.

These are some of five hundred South Cambs District Council council houses having solar photo-voltaic (PV) panels installed. The cost of the panels and installation work is being met by Savills Solar, and properties have been chosen following a survey last year which identified those roofs capable of producing the most electricity.   This low-carbon renewable energy is available to tenants free of charge during daylight hours, and it is reckoned this will save about £150 per year in electricity bills. People in Thriplow told me the installation went very well.

Any surplus energy is sold to the national grid which also helps to pay back costs.

recycling = and a strong road safety message

A very clear message on the district's bins in Newton Road in Whittlesford - this is a bit of a rat-run for drivers trying to get to the A505 and they come hell for leather down this narrow road. Fred Winter and others have complained about it.
So the bins serve a dual purpose - South Cambs recycling rates are very high - and they just might make the drivers think a bit too.

solar street lights

looking to see if we can fund and install street lights in a poorly lit area using a wind and solar combo to provide the energy - then no need to connect to mains with huge costs of digging up roads etc. This sort of thing seems to work:
http://www.wirefreedirect.com/green_column.asp

Whittlesford solar panels are go!

The hard-working Whittlesford Memorial Hall committee have managed to get the panels on the roof of the hall and also sort the paperwork with EON (which was always the tricky bit, because if the energy company didn't certify us then the favourable feed-in-tariff would not have applied.)
But they did it!
The South Cambs district planners did their bit by getting the planning permission sorted.
Also had a session with the South Cambs climate change team and they reckon they can help Cambourne Parish Council with their plans for low-carbon energy sources on the major buildings at Cambourne such as the new sports centre. The revenue from these will not be huge, but it will give them enough to fund some sustainable activities.

"a thousand apple trees of some unforbidden variety"

This all started with a training day organised by South Cambs District in conjunction with the Apples and Orchards Project for the East of England last winter.
Despite some set-backs, because at one point we had identified a cracking site that unfortunately fell through, this morning Ann Beeby, Marie Swann and I planted the first nine trees (pears, plums, apples) on behalf of the Parish Council, and which we hope will grow, both physically and metaphorically, into a village orchard. They are just at the entrance to the allotments on Newton Road.
The plot isnt big, tho we reckon we can get another four trees in no problem, without encroaching on neighbouring space. We still need to clear up some redundant compost heaps and some brambles - though there are some well-established currants bushes which should stay.
We hope that we can put in a bench that would be used by both allotment holders and also people coming to have a look.
Tho' it doesnt look much now, we have planted the trees in a curve so that there is some space at the front to make it look welcoming.

swift!

Earlier in the summer when we wading through nettles in a corner of Whittlesford looking for a site for a village orchard, the south cambs ecology officer Rob Mungavin was telling me about swifts.

He had hatched a plan to use recordings of birdsong to attract swifts to new boxes built into a new development at Fulbourn re-placing old buildings where they had nested for years. Now the idea has won him a national award! - here is the detail on the rspb website. Brilliant.

What will Energy Minister Greg Barker say?

Energy Minister Greg Barker will be in Cambridgeshire tomorrow - stopping off in the morning to spend time meeting residents at Rampton Drift, who are part of a pilot scheme run by South Cambs and commercial developer partners. The scheme is retro-fitting insulation onto mainly 1970s houses, and it is incredible the scale of the insulation going on, in, and around these houses, built before the early 70s oil crisis when fuel was dirt-cheap.

Later in the day he will be giving a talk.

Hope it isn't to announce that photovoltaic panels on roofs, if not installed by end of the year, will not qualify for the high feed-in-tariff, which is a rumour going round on green websites and blogs.

More likely he will be making a very strong link between insulation and feed in tariffs. This does make sense, because there isn't any point in having all this alternative energy if your house or your school or the village hall or whatever rattles about and loses heat every time the wind blows.

We'll have to see - if the tariff does go down, it will be a challenge to make the numbers stack up for South Cambs who are putting panels on council-owned properties, and here in Whittlesford, where we want to put the panels on the village hall, Duxford Imperial War Museum, panels to go on one of the hangars, and William Westley school, who are thinking the same.

The village hall and the school are reasonably new buildings, so their energy efficiency rating should be good.

Just off to stuff some paper in the cracks in this house....

Scrapyard at Station Road Whittlesford and a much needed piece of cake

Went to see the planners and other officers at South Cambs - it makes sense to have a bundle of things to go through each time. Caught up on:
- the position re affordable homes and the council's "waiting list"
- the complex planning history to the scrapyard site (see pic left) at Station Road, Whittlesford, which comes under discussion at the Parish Council this evening. The scrapyard owners have also applied to the Traffic Commissioners for an HGV licence;
- the environmental/emissions improvements that go with replacing the old chimney at the pet crem. on the A505 ouside Thriplow;
- a planning/conservation issue which has a long history, and required the long memories and big files of the planning officers, and after which I needed a piece of the banana, date and cherry cake currently on sale at South Cambs and which certainly sticks to your ribs!

Blue bins discussion

At the parish council meeting there was general approval for the newdistrict supplied blue bins, and some discussion about what happens to the green bin, and if a group of people could if they wished club together to keep fewer bins rather than having the full three-bin set. Also discussion about the amount of paper in the new caddies.

It is making a difference though, in terms of what can be recycled, and is such a change from when everyone just put black bin liners out (for the foxes to tear open and snack on the contents!)

A clothing bank at the village hall in Whittlesford?

It's estimated that more than 1 million tonnes of textiles are thrown away each year, or about 3% of household waste. Currently we only recycle 25% of textiles.

South Cambs District have written asking if Whittlesford wants a textile/clothing bank, to go with other recycling banks at the village hall. There is a clothes bank - of sorts - at the big recycling depot on the A505 at the Thriplow turning, and quite a lot of better quality stuff will go to the excellent Oxfam shop in Sawston. so that may be enough. I assume that it becomes uneconomical at some point to have loads of these banks.

Textile Recycling is described as "the process in which unwanted clothes, shoes and textiles are collected and sorted for re-use. Re-useable textiles and shoes are sent abroad where they can provide clothing for those who either do not have access to, or are unable to afford new garments."

A day in the life of...

Every now and then I take a day and really get stuck into district councillor work. Most days I am working and can get to evening meetings only. This is what I did one day recently.

My day started at 0900 with a kerbside meeting with a highways engineer from the county council and parish councillors in Whittlesford. We wanted his views on options to make a junction safer, including the possibility of a traffic mirror at the Guildhall junction. The County Council engineer was not keen, but at least we understand now what we have to do to take this foward.

1100 - I arrive at the District Council's offices at Cambourne for the first of a series of meetings. I'm vice chair of the Climate Change Working Group and we have secured a sizeable grant for a scheme working with parish councils. The scheme will help them reduce carbon emissions and establish some household examples of fuel efficiency. Together with the chair of the group and the climate change officer from the district council, we work on a project plan for the first year of funding.

1230 - I go and have a sandwich lunch with the chair of the standards committee - an independent person, a businesswomen in fact, not a district councillor. We discuss how we can work together, as I chair the corporate governance committee, which looks after audits and risks. That done, I go off and find another councillor to discuss the scrutiny committee and whether it should look into some grants. We decide, after working through a complicated diagram showing the links between the district and the county, that actually this issue is best covered by the county council - we conclude that there is no point in duplicating work!

1500 - I meet with the chief executive of the district council, and we go through the upcoming corporate governance meeting, and any particular issues that we should put on the agenda. I'm keen to make sure we don't miss anything out.

1600 - I call in on the planning section, because a resident has asked for some advice and I need to make sure of what I am saying in reply, so check with one of the experienced officers. I also pick up a copy of a section 106 agreement, which is where a developer agrees to make a payment for local amenities (play facilities is a good example) in return for being allowed to build. I have a meeting one evening next week with residents on this and I need to make sure I have the facts.

1700 - Leave Cambourne and drive through Cambridge, picking up one of my boys from school, and return home. Phew! But I've learnt some new things, resolved some problems, and that is what it is all about.