Having gone through my diary to jog my memory about what the highlights have been for this last year, I was struck by how quiet a year it was – until the bombshell of the A514 proposed closure hit us out of the blue. In order to improve the planning time for something like this and to reduce the intensity of the resulting work can I make a plea?
Clearly some residents had been engaged with Severn Trent over the proposal to alleviate their flooding problem from as early as August or September. And yet the Parish Council was not made aware until the 3rd week in November. The plea I therefore make is that you alert your parish council as soon as you get wind of something like this in the future. We would much rather have false alarms that can be investigated at our (relative) leisure than be plunged into the sort of situation in which we found ourselves in November, and which then required a huge amount of work in a very short timescale to be happy that there was a reasonably viable plan. These large organisations are renowned for not engaging the local community until they are forced to. And by then it is often too late to make the necessary changes. The eventual outcome whilst not perfect is testament to the old adage ‘if you fail to plan, you plan to fail’. And unfortunately we cannot rely on these outside organisations to do the planning for us. Had we not acted in the way we did, I am sure that there would have been a lot more failure and heartache.
Other notable changes have been the re-modelling of the High St/Main St junction; again we were in the embarrassing position of never having been informed let alone consulted. Presumably even Mather Jamie assumed that we would have been. We finally were sent the plans the week after the work started.
There have also been at least 2 potential Main St flooding incidents. As a result of tracing the water back along Main St, High St & Ashby Road we have got a better understanding of what is happening. SDDC now have a private property flood contact who has been very helpful in identifying & clearing an unknown manhole in a field adjacent to Ashby Road. We have also got a copy of the 1925-27 Harpur Crewe correspondence, the outcome of which was to ‘let things be’! So it was clearly an irresolvable vexing problem a long time ago. I am determined that, each time there is heavy rainfall, we must monitor the situation, and we are also negotiating with SDDC for the road drain gullies to be cleaned out 4 times per year instead of twice; if we have to pay then so be it. It is surely better to spend £400-500 p.a. doing this than to risk the Main St properties from getting water up to or beyond their front doors.
Clearly there are also problems at the Melbourne Lane end of the village on which we have got some engagement from SDDC.
The impact of the revised planning rules has not yet hit us, but the Newsletter articles are important; if you have any doubts you must take professional advice. The overall objective of the new rules about permeable surfaces in front gardens is to limit or reduce the amount of water the surface drainage gullies and culverts have to cope with. Clearly, as discussed above, parts of Ticknall could benefit from such a reduction (not that this is the cause of our problems). Unfortunately advice from SDDC can take a few weeks as they will not give advice over the phone – so you need to allow for this in your timescales, or pay an independent professional planner.
Finally, having decided that 4 years as chairman is long enough, can I take this opportunity to urge more of you to consider putting yourselves forward as councillors at the next election. In particular, if you are likely to be retiring in the next 4 years or so then please give this suggestion really serious consideration. It is a rewarding job to serve our community and be a leader in the face of large external change pressures.
Finally I would like to thank Celia Bunston for her patience and support in working with someone like me, to my fellow councillors for their unswerving support and whom I shall now join on the ‘back benches’, to District Councillors Michael Stanton and Pat Murray and County Councillor Alan Jones, for their support help, advice , and guidance especially during the trickier times, and to Brian Wood, the Derbyshire Local Council training ‘guru’ and his team who have been invaluable beacons in what to me was a very new environment. And finally, thank you everyone for all your support.
