Category: Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor, I would like, if I may, respond to recent articles and letters concerning the proposal to fly the St George?s Flag on the Town Hall.

As one of the councillors (and last year?s mayor) accused of being unpatriotic and being ?small minded? I would like to point out the following, over the last few years the town councillors have had a direct role in: The new Meadowview football complex, installing a new play area at Southern Road Recreation Ground and soon, Queen Elizabeth circle, initiating and taking forward a new town plan for the next 20+ years, supporting and working alongside Chinnor Rugby Club, giving out grants to local organisations, supplying 30 extra allotments, improving the Christmas lights switch on event, the first Music in the Park event, The first Tidy Thame Day, annual Civic Pride Awards and recently agreeing to investigate future funding of Youth Work in Thame.

We/I have also given active support to:

Thame Food Festival, the new Arts and literary Festival, The new Thame Library, the new Street Pastors, new Saturday Farmers Markets and French and Italian Markets.

If this is what we can all achieve with a SMALL MIND imagine what we can do with a LARGE one.

Also on a more personal level, my business, which has been in Thame for 17 years (which when we arrived proclaimed: ?Happiness is a State of MIND? If you?re not happy change your MIND!) has over recent years initiated the project ?Brothers Community Spirit? where my staff (at my expense) tidy up areas of Thame that are a bit down at heal and raise money for local good causes such as the Thame Youth Memorial (which is another first for our town, initiated by councillor Dyer and Bretherton). Also, once a year all my employees give their time on a Saturday to help and take part in the carnival that, if you watch TV, was said to be the best in recent memory!

I feel all these achievements have given the residents a huge sense of pride in their town, much, much, much more than raising a flag on a Town Hall.

I personally have a lot more positive aspirations on my list for Thame than what coloured material is draped from our Town Hall, as long as there is still the community sprit in Thame which residents and visitors talk about so widely

So please don?t lecture me about putting pride back into our Town.

I?m getting a bit bored of a few people constantly snipping from the sidelines and slagging off the council especially when they don?t seem to be in position of all the facts.

In your first article a lot of councillors where named but funnily enough not the name of Nick Carter (our conservative county councillor) who went huffing and puffing to your paper after the vote on the flags didn?t go his way (he wasn?t even part of the vote).

You won?t find me slagging off the county council about their withdrawal of our youth service and appalling potholes in our roads in a local paper (Oops)!

I would politely suggest that Nick and other councillors (who seem to have a slight obsession with the St George?s flag) and their supporters have a look at their own government?s website that states:

?On St George?s Day, the Cross of St George?s may be flown from UK Government buildings in England with two or more flagpoles?

Not my rules. Theirs! Debate over?

I would suggest that those residents, councillors and county councillors who would like to fly the St George?s flag lobby their MP and government rather than slagging off councillors who are only upholding this government?s rules (which for us labour councillors does seem more than ironic).

Lastly I would like to assure some of your readers that I will be standing down at the end of this term of the council as after what would have been 12 years of trying to do my best for this great town of ours and to the detriment of my family and business life, I think, I know, it?s time for more OPEN MINDED people like E.R King to step up to the plate and show us what they can do!

I wish You good luck.

Councillor Adam Buckland

Dear Editor, A very big thank you to Andy Ford from Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue and Thame Fire Station for visiting us in Fanshawe Road today and installing a new smoke alarm with a 10 year battery. Some time ago I wrote to you describing the hazards faced by creaky senior citizens (like me) as we mount step ladders to replace spent batteries.

That letter was seen by one of your readers who mentioned it to the Fire Service, and today’s visit was the result of that. Unfortunately I haven’t the phone number of that lady, so I’m unable to obtain her permission to name her. However I hope she sees my thanks to her here. I should add that Mr Ford’s visit and the battery he supplied came entirely free of charge.

Norman Brand

Dear Editor, The meetings about the Thame Town Plan held over the past weekend were informative and thorough and I think the Town Council is to be congratulated on providing them. I found it especially useful ? and worrying – to discover that South Oxfordshire District Council?s Core Strategy is NOT dead. There have been reports in the past on the SODC preference for the pig farm off the A418 as the site for some 800 new houses, and on the Town Council?s preference for Site C in the South of the town, close to the Chinnor Road roundabout.

As I understood the meetings I attended at the weekend, the Core Strategy is to be the subject of an Inquiry, probably next Spring. The weekend consultations were held with a view to Thame?s drawing up its own Neighbourhood Plan, under legislation yet to be enacted. The idea is to have serious and convincing local proposals ready to put before the Planning Inspector, as an alternative to the Core Strategy.

I am happy to be corrected on any of this information, if I have misunderstood it. It is very complicated.

I was impressed at the extent of the detail of the weekend study and the consultants? grasp of Thame?s character and needs.

To sum up: as I understand the situation, it still remains a fact that Thame could be instructed to build 600 homes on the pig farm site, with the ?privilege? of deciding itself where a further 175 homes would be built. Everything depends on the Inspector?s ruling and on our Council?s ability to convince him or her that our alternative, when it is drawn up, is better.

A lot seems to be hanging on the new consultation. About 400 people attended these meetings. I wonder how many of those unable to attend are aware that the Core Strategy may be lying down for a while. But it is very much alive.

I think few may have argued against the need to provide homes for future generations. I certainly do not. But a disproportionate block influx of say, 2000 people, with their cars, maybe two per family, would put the quality of life, the traffic flow, the various services and above all the unique good humour and manners of the people of Thame to great strain.

Norman Brand
6 Fanshawe Road, Thame

Dear friends and colleagues, Please see below a letter I have written to my MP in respect of a proposal under the Localism Bill. If you are concerned about the
power of big business in forcing through planning applications against the wishes of communities, please write to your MP about this. Further information at
LINK

As a local councillor myself I would certainly want my community to have such powers if a large company was seeking development in my area.

Regards
David Lyons
Haddenham.

Dear John Bercow
I write in respect of the proposal before parliament under the Sustainable Communities Act by Leiston Town Council in Suffolk and the Suffolk Association of Local Councils.

Please write to Localism Minister, Greg Clark, asking him to please agree to implement the planning reform proposal to empower parish and town councils submitted under the Sustainable Communities Act.

The Sustainable Communities Act was intended to help local democracy prevent communities turning into ?Ghost Town Britain? and empowering local people.

If agreed by the government this proposal will apply nationally. 1100 Town and Parish Councils across the country have formally given their support to the proposal.

The proposal is a modest and reasonable suggestion for the government to amend planning guidance in a way that would help locally elected decision makers.

In summary, the proposal is to require applicants of major developments to:

– attend a meeting of the local Town or Parish Council, or of a duly called Town Meeting, to answer questions on the application for development; and

– fund the council or duly called town meeting to commission an independent report on the application and critique of any reports that the applicant has submitted in support of the application for
development.

The rationale is that local elected representatives and local people should be making their decision on whether an application should go ahead based on the best evidence, and this would help ensure that evidence was available.

I would be most grateful if you would forward me the respone from the Localism Minister.

Many thanks
David Lyons

THE following letter was sent to The Thame Gazette on 7th July 2011, in response to a letter of “outrage” about the Shop fronts improvement scheme in Thame. It is reproduced with the permission of the writer:

To the Editor, Thame Gazette

Dear Sir

I write in response to a letter from Mr Steve Roberts published in the Thame Gazette on Friday 10th June regarding the ?Shop Front Improvement Scheme?.

Mr Roberts could have saved his ?outrage? by directing his concerns to me. As the chair of the organisation delivering this project, I would have been able to reassure him that public money is being spent for the good of the town, and not for to ?fund private businesses, let alone banks?.

Mr Roberts has grasped the wrong end of the stick and is trying to beat us with it! He has grossly misrepresented the project and our work, and I?d like to correct some of his statements.

It is true that 21st Century Thame has secured

Dear Friends, we are getting a little desperate. Due to the geography it is not easy for Joe and I to pop down to Thame and dish out flyers so we do rather depend on you, our local Stewards. We really appreciate the work you do for us and hope that just a couple of you would be able to stretch your diaries to help us in the next few weeks.

On the 30th July it is Thame Show. There is no better spot to get all the people of Thame together in one space and distribute flyers. This could be done either inside the Show or at the gates on the way in, or wherever you are able to go. We are happy to pay for your entry fee into the Showground. Please would somebody volunteer to do this. Many thanks to those who have already said they can?t. I hope there are a couple hiding out there who can.

Soon after that, on August 11-13 there is an Italian Market in Thame, another perfect spot to do the distribution. I hope somebody will come forward soon and give us the good news. Wilber Sears and friend are already on board ? we need 2 more.

I look forward to hearing from you.

With all best wishes,
Steve Heap
Festival Director
___________________________________
TOWERSEY FESTIVAL
25-29 August 2011

DEAR Editor, It is with great disappointment that I read of SODC’s need for ‘windfall site’ to make up the number of new houses demanded as part of the Core Strategy for future development in South Oxfordshire.

It would be a great shame if the playing fields at Lord Williams’s lower school were built over, as is being discussed. It is also common knowledge that property developers are now sniffing around the Thame Tennis Club. This is just the kind of valuable open space that will have to be sacrificed if we are forced to rely on these so called ‘windfall sites.’

If we are to be forced to accommodate such a large number of new homes in Thame – which I believe is fundamentally misguided in the first instance, then surely we should at least be looking to place these houses on a site that is of adequate size to take the full location and as such protect the existing town and its few open spaces from the bulldozers.

Yours faithfully
M.L.
THAME

DEAR Editor, Further to my e-mail of last week, I have had the opportunity to produce what, I hope, is a more considered view (on the Core Strategy. Please find below therefore, a paper I wrote on the above. I have distributed it to SODC cabinet and planning committee members, as well as Thame Town Councillors, in advance of this week’s meetings.

The paper is, I believe, self-explanatory and not excessively long. It demands that a consultation takes place before a final decision is made. Given that only a very short time has passed since the Lower School announcement of June 17th, it represents the only means available for comment.before the SODC deliberations.

Regards
Bob Austin

Thame: Core Strategy

In advance of the decisions regarding the submission of the Core Strategy as it affects Thame, I wish to make the following points:
Various figures have been quoted for the total numbers of houses to be built from 560 to 850. It appears that the total increase in housing stock could be 1170, being the original target of 850 plus a windfall development figure of 320. The latter I calculated from the original 850 figure as reduced to 530 for the original figure for site F. It is a matter of regret that a serious error was made in the inclusion of windfall development by SODC. One does have to ask, however, whether the scale of the windfall development (320 houses) amounts to the possibility of almost unrestricted large scale development between core strategy reviews. Does it?

At 2.5 persons per household (probably an underestimate given the family nature of the town), the increase in the population provided by 1170 houses will amount to a population increase of between 25 and 30%. This together with the potential, purely commercial, Sainsbury’s proposals would transform the town utterly. It would be a milestone along the road of Thame ceasing to be a market town. The infrastructure investment implications would be enormous for schools, doctors, transport etc. It was reassuring to read the Mayor?s comments about getting the infrastructure in place but there is a lack of detail. What work has been done?
With regard to the Lord Williams?s School , and unless demographic trends intervene, the population expansion could imply an increase in size towards 3000 pupils a figure so big that it might necessitate a split back into 2 schools- a return to the current 2 sites!

Alternatively, numbers could be restricted by reducing intake from the surrounding, Buckinghamshire, villages. The latter would necessitate Buckinghamshire having to build a new secondary school. This would be a denial of Thame?s role as a market town at the centre of a hinterland that naturally pays scant regard to administrative boundaries and, also, of current parental expectations that appreciate a fully comprehensive school environment.

Nimbyism can apply to local authorities just as much as to protestors against development! Have proposals for a single site school included consideration of these issues? What are the conclusions?

Presumably the consolidation of Lord Williams?s School on a single site would be financed by a one-off sale of publicly owned land. The announcement of June 17th by the school was short of detail but can an assumption be made that all finance (including contingency) would be in place to fund an extended development? Given the sale of land, where will the new primary school be built? As an additional point, and in the real (commercial) world, the demolition of modern buildings (some very modern school buildings) would have a financial impact and give pause for thought. Do the savings and benefits justify the cost?

In the Thame Gazette of 24th June, Angie Paterson (SODC cabinet member for planning and councillor for Watlington) states that there is a housing need that has to be met. I don?t think anybody would disagree with that but the fulfilment of that need must be reasonable, complete and proportionate. The word ?strategy? implies a co-ordinated plan, fully worked up and openly broadcast. Angie Paterson admits, however, that the ?possibility of school site coming forward helps enormously? to fill the void created by the windfall problem. The single site proposal appears, therefore, to be a tactical response created by an urgent need to meet the Inspector?s expectations- not a strategic need. Coincidentally, it meets the ambitions of a very important stakeholder in Thame.

In circumstances as described above, it might be considered reasonable that the citizens of Thame were not informed of the school development before 17th June. More particularly, the people living near the Lower School site have not been able to submit their views before the deliberations of the scrutiny committee, or the full cabinet, as has been the case with the resident associations of Lea Park and Southern Road. However, this lack of consultation is not justifiable. As early as October 2010 a submission by the Town Council to SODC in the document ?Thame additional consultation Oct 2010? SODC website) clearly states a preference by Thame Town Council for the housing development replacing Lower School on Towersey Road. Furthermore, the Town Council were proposing to reduce houses on site F by the number to be built at the Lower School site- even at a time when the windfall problem had not arisen.

A verbatim quote is as follows (page 2):

?Comparing Site F to Site D the town council considers Site F would be preferential.
– Reasons include:
– site is ?contained? by the by-pass;
– provides the opportunity to facilitate enhancements to Lord Williams by enabling a single site school and the potential re-development for residential purposes of the existing Lower School at Towersey Road, which would reduce the number of houses to be allocated to Site F
– opportunity to develop and enhance green infrastructure along Cuttlebrook;
– various access options;
– easy to connect to existing (and extended) bus routes
– scope for strategic scale planting to reduce the visual impact
– good access to the town centre with potential for pedestrian/cycle enhancements.?

Why were those residents affected not consulted about the Lower School option? Given the availability of time, was lack of consultation proper procedure? The inevitable consequence of this omission has been that any comment, like this one, is isolated and forced by a deadline. This may be convenient but it is not right.

Conclusion:
Angie Paterson is quoted in the Thame Gazette as saying: ?If we delay or fail we don?t have a plan and Thame could find all the sites being built on.? Some might regard this comment as alarmist and intended to encourage acquiescence. Nobody can dispute that Thame must bear its fair share of new housing but then so should Henley, Wallingford and Watlington. Notwithstanding her comment, it does not excuse the lack of consultation. It could have been done. It should have been done. The people of Thame deserve better.

The Lower School option should not be approved before it is properly debated with Thame residents. This is not nimbyism but ensuring a proper democratic response. There is undoubtedly a need for more housing but it should be appropriate, proportionate and subject to consultation.

DEAR EDITOR, I read the article on Lord Williams?s School, in last Friday?s Gazette, with interest. Though short of detail, it laid out the understandable ambitions of one, very important, stakeholder in Thame.

The implications for the town as a whole, however, caused me some concern that public knowledge of the latest possibilities for the Core Strategy might be lacking. Apart from some recent references to the need to increase the number of houses specified in Site F, I am not aware of any references to any ultimate figure for house building.

As I understand it, and purely from memory, the following could be the situation:

Site F accounted for 560 houses. The school proposals could account for 250+ with about 200 houses recently built, being built or about to be built already. (I obtained the latter figure from a recent local election leaflet.) The total amounts to about 1000 houses – a potential increase in the population of 25%? This together with the potential, purely commercial, Sainsbury’s proposals would transform the town utterly. It would be a milestone along the road of Thame ceasing to be a market town. The infrastructure investment implications would be enormous for schools, doctors, transport etc.

To take Lord Williams?s School as an example, and unless demographic trends intervene, it could imply an increase in size towards 3000 pupils a figure so big that it might necessitate a split back into 2 schools- a return to the current 2 sites! Alternatively, numbers could be restricted by reducing intake from the surrounding, Buckinghamshire, villages. The latter would necessitate Buckinghamshire having to build a new secondary school. This would be a denial of Thame?s role as a market town at the centre of a hinterland that naturally pays scant regard to administrative boundaries and, also, of current parental expectations that appreciate a fully comprehensive school environment.

I do not raise these issues to be alarmist but to enquire whether enough public discussion has taken place. The Inspector is about to begin work. We need to know the parameters of what could happen.

A few questions:
What could be the figure for the houses Thame is expected to provide?
Would this figure be proportionate to Thame’s size in comparison to South Oxfordshire as a whole?
What are the potential infrastructure implications and are they fundable?

The people of Thame need a further opportunity to express their views and, also, to be fully informed.

Regards

Bob Austin

Dear Editor, My wife and I, combined age 149, have just spent a precarious 30 minutes replacing a faulty smoke alarm. The combination of agility, balance, dexterity and good eyesight needed for this simple task does not come easily to our age group. I think I read years ago on your site that the Fire Brigade can help older people with this task if they need it.

I don?t think we would have felt we could ring up and ask for such assistance but maybe some charity within the town would have some suggestions. The smoke alarms are very effective though. They always warn me even if the toast is slightly overdone.And ours, may I reassure you, is up and bleeping now.

Norman Brand, Fanshawe Road