FEBRUARY 2002
The next Parish Council Meeting is on Tuesday 12th
February at 7.30pm at Tiverton Village
Hall. The meeting will commence with an
open forum for any public concerns.
The Village Hall committee are aiming to make a Lottery Bid
for finance to renovate and enhance the hall.
It is hoped to create a disabled access and toilet. Anyone wishing to assist in this venture
would be greatly welcomed by the committee.
Plans for the Jubilee Celebrations are now progressing well
thanks to a small sub committee, again, anyone wishing to help should make
themselves known. Let’s make this a special
day!
Janice Farrall
01829 732855
Tiverton Homewatch
The Chester Division of the Police have recently introduced their Project Rural Matters, which some of you may have seen reported in The Chester Chronicle under the headline “Fancy being a village bobby?”. In fact the scheme is a safety initiative aimed at promoting wider community involvement in addressing issues of community safety throughout the rural area of Chester. The scheme seeks to provide greater reassurance and support to communities and enable residents to work with local police officers, responsible agencies and each other to tackle crime and quality of life issues. A high visibility “people carrier” vehicle has been acquired solely for this initiative and is used to offer a high profile presence, and provide a point of contact for community safety advice at local events or functions and to promote Homewatch . The vehicle will regularly be staffed by a police officer, together with a community volunteer. The scheme is very much in its infancy and a number of organisational and legal issues remain to be resolved, but it is a worthwhile attempt to promote a greater involvement by the community in helping not only ourselves but the police in responding to the safety requirements of an increasingly demanding society. It will not mean that the “volunteers” will become some form of police officer, but as and when we are satisfied with the scheme, hopefully we will be able to recruit from the residents volunteers who are able to give just a little of their time to what will essentially be an enhancement of Homewatch, and work alongside the police on this initiative. As and when more information is available details will be issued at Parish Council meetings and on the Village Notice board. One thing is paramount the volunteers will not be “village bobbies” that will still be the function of the regular police officers.
Derek Marshall.
01829 732217
The Gardening Club Open Spring Show will take place on Saturday April
13th. All enquiries to Bill
and Audrey Povall on 01829 733520 or Jean Brown on 01829 781577.
Beeston
Area Transport Needs Assessment All of
you will have seen the questionnaire distributed in October of last year to
every house in the parish and are probably wondering what has
happened? The
first pass of analysis has been completed by local efforts and the results
spreadsheet is now with the Rural Transport Partnership who sponsored the
survey, for further analysis and drawing up a final report. Due to changes in staffing, we know it
will be some time before the final report is published. However,
we can offer a preview of the results for Tiverton, based on the numeric
answers that the 108 responding households provided. Interestingly,
only 5% do not have cars (or did not answer the question) with more than
50% of households in the parish having access to 2 or more cars. In
terms of issues with transport, there are few initial indications that
households in Tiverton face much of a problem. Getting
to work is achieved by car for ¾ of the respondents who answered the
question, with only one respondent using public transport (bus) to get to
work. Of these 27% face round trips of more than 40 miles to work. 12%
responded that they get to work by “Other Means” from which we deduce they
work from home. Only 16% thought it might be possible to travel to work by
an alternative to their present method of travel (the car) Since around 40%
of respondents did not answer the question on getting to work, it is tempting
to assume that they do not work and are probably retired? Although
38% of the households have children at home, the survey unfortunately does
not pick up travel patterns as children attend school. For
shopping, only 7% indicated a problem in getting to shops again with only 1
household relying on public transport (bus). When
it comes to changing established patterns of travel in the longer term,
only 25% foresaw any need to change and of those the majority would prefer
rail to bus even if the bus were a Community MiniBus. On the topical issue
of using the Crewe-Chester rail line if a local stop existed, 36% would use
it for business although the majority of these (2/3) would use it only for
occasional business travel. For
leisure, the interest was much greater with 95% of respondents in favour of
a rail option. Furthermore of these, 50% thought they would make regular
leisure use of such a rail link (at least once per week). As one
might expect, Tiverton villagers have solved their immediate transport
problems with very little reliance on public transport or help from friends
and neighbours. So there is little
at this stage to indicate a new approach to transport is required or would
be meeting the immediate needs of any but a very small proportion of
villagers. However there is clearly
an interest in access to the rail network via a local station for leisure
use. We now
await the full analysis from the Rural Transport Partnership to see whether
these findings for Tiverton are replicated across the larger area surveyed
(Taporley, Alpraham, Beeston, Spurstow, Peckforton, Burwardsley and Bulkeley). We will, of course, keep you informed as
the analysis unfolds. Steve
Armitage