July Chair Letter : Buy in Bubwith, Bridge Meeting & Boom
Dear Parishioners of Bubwith & Breighton
I hope this finds you well and enjoying the sunshine if not the garden watering. I have only 2 very important things to cover this month beginning of course with Bubwith Bridge.
The bridge continues to cause a great disruption to the village with an increasing number of incidents of vehicles stuck on the bridge causing major hold-ups and worse as with the incident where people were stuck behind a van this week with no way forward or back! Sadly, the solution and repair are also not going to be easy. I believe it will impact on everyone in the village and many in the surrounding area, a time for us to pull together as a community.
A meeting was held at the Leisure Centre on the 9th June. It was attended by and unprecedented 8 officers from ERYC, Councillor Victoria Aitken and David Davis MP. Our community of Bubwith and Breighton attended in high numbers and raised some very important questions and concerns. A full account of the meeting is elsewhere in the Bugle to enable people to see the range of concerns, if I’ve missed anything in my note taking please get in touch with Steve Young who will make amendments.
ERYC communications lead, Jenny Walker has advised they will shortly be putting contact details on Facebook and through other social media for people to get in touch to raise individual concerns and seek help. There is a contact email that you can use now to direct questions to individual officers simply mark ‘for the attention of’ and it will get to them.
There is a great thirst for details of what will happen and when. The Parish Council will do our best to ensure this is available to people as quickly as possible, we will also seek to bust myths and rumours wherever we can.
Many people will feel stressed and disempowered during the period of the repair; there is nothing worse than feeling out of control of an inescapable situation. So what can we do? One thought is to establish a ‘Buy in Bubwith’ campaign. When it’s difficult to get out of the village why not patronize our local businesses more than we currently do. This may not be easy for everyone but if we all had a regular monthly meal at the White Swan, a take away or meal from Cinnamon, buy our meat and bakery goods from Mounfields, have a regular trip to the Jug and Bottle for a treat or pick me up (I know chocolate cake always helps a bad situation), not to mention gifts and deli lunches and suppers that would be an excellent start. Similarly, support our new Morrisons and don’t forget the Leisure centre, if your classes are in North Duffield see if you can temporarily shift to Bubwith and vice versa. Any other thoughts on lifts and car sharing are welcome; perhaps we can do a ‘Lifts & Shares’ WhatsApp group? Any other ideas please get in-touch; perhaps we need to establish a Bubwith & Breighton Pull Together (BBPT) group?
The second big-ticket issue is the BOOM Solar Farm consultation. The Parish Council is not a formal consultee and as such won’t be formally responding. Everyone should have received a consultation pack. There are clearly some people who will be more directly impacted than others and people are split in their views, as they are concerned for our energy security or our food security or both. Whatever your view, I urge you to respond to the consultation. The decision will not be taken locally due to the size of the proposal. There is a process where the Planning Inspectorate will receive the consultation report (amongst other things) from BOOM who will then report to the Secretary of State for Energy Security who will make the final decision. Please ensure your view is included.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Best wishes.
Sandra Hills, Chair of Bubwith Parish Council
I’m always glad to hear of concerns and issues. .
https://www.facebook.com/BubwithParishCouncil)