Category: Missed a ThameNews story?

THAME’S weekly market has been running almost non-stop for hundreds of years and the market traders are once again inviting everyone to go along to what has become the annual, Market Fun Day and celebrate all that is good about the local market.

The Thame Market Community Day will be taking place on Tuesday, August 19, in the Upper High Street car park, where there will be fun things to do including watching the street entertainers, having fun on the slides and face painting. There will also be the opportunity to meet and support many of the town’s local oganisations  setting up stalls to promote their causes.

See what happens to your scrap food!

HAVE you ever wanted to know exactly what happens to your food scraps once they’ve been collected? If so, the district council has got just the tour for you!

Together with Agrivert, SODC’S contractors Biffa have arranged for a tour of the anerobic digestion facility in Wallingford so that you can see where your leftovers go – if you’ve not composted them or managed to get creative with another recipe.

Previous food waste tours have proved very popular, and the next one will be held on Wednesday, September 10, at 9.45am. If you’d like to take a look around, contact Alex Pyle from Biffa on 01865 409570 or email her at alex.pyle@biffa.co.uk.

Skate Park wins funding from Chill Out fund

THE Thame Skatepark Working Group’s fund towards replacing the town’s worn out skate park, is another £3,000 better off after successfully applying for funding from Oxfordshire County Council’s Chill Out Fund.

The fund supports those working with children and young people in Oxfordshire to ensure that they can access positive activities in their leisure time. The Working Group has so far raised £168,000 of the £250,000 needed and is currently waiting with crossed fingers for a response from Sport England regarding another funding application.

Town Councillor Casual Vacancy

THERE’S still time to apply for co-option onto Thame Town Council, to replace Andy Gunn who recently stepped down from the council. Those interested in taking up the challenge can send a letter of application to the Town Clerk, by August 22, 2014. Further details about the role and guidance on how to apply can be found on the council’s website HERE    

http://www.thametowncouncil.gov.uk/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2839:casual-vacancy&Itemid=101

ON the day when a public meeting is being hosted by the campaign group objecting to The Elms in Thame High Street being built on, Thame Town Council has defended allegations made about the council’s involvement, in a statement.

After criticising media coverage about the inclusion of The Elms site in Thame’s Neighbourhood Plan, descibing it as ‘provocative’ and designed to ‘raise the hype and produce sensational stories rather than factual articles’, the statement goes on to say that it is seeking legal advice about what it calls ‘defamatory statements’.

Despite stating that it will ‘resist taking part in the media circus’ the town council’s statement goes on to feed into the discussion by criticising the Save the Elms group and to defend how and why land at The Elms was included in the Thame Neighbourhood Plan.

Part of the statement reads: “Previous experience of communicating with the instigators of the Elms petition group have resulted in being talked at rather than listened to. Instead the Town Council will produce a fact sheet that will be issued and made available to members of the public before the Town Council meets to consider the planning application.

The rationale for The Elms to be included in the NP was:

· It was known the owner of the Elms had an intention to develop the site

· By including the site in the NP it would be part of Thame’s 775 allocation rather than an additional windfall site.

· Exactly the same consideration was given to the single site school and Park Meadow View allocations.

· Reserve sites were identified in the NP should the allocation not be achieved. The other strategic sites in the NP do not have reserve sites because they were known to be deliverable and secure development sites.

Being in the NP does not automatically mean that the site will be developed nor how many units will be built. This will all be decided through the planning process.”

Later the statement reads: “The whole neighbourhood plan process and consultation was scrutinised by the District Council and the Plan was tested again when the District Council did an independent six week consultation at the beginning of 2013. It was reviewed again by the independent examiner and subsequently by the police fraud office after claims were made by instigators of the petition group. The result was that the Plan and the process by which it was developed, met all the legal requirements of producing a neighbourhood plan including conformity with the District Council’s Local Plan and was fit to proceed to referendum.

At referendum there was opportunity again for the residents of Thame to reject the Plan if the majority of those who voted decided that the inclusion of The Elms should be rejected.

3634 people voted, close to a 40 per cent turnout, of whom 2779 (76.5%) voted in favour of adopting the Neighbourhood Plan. The reality is that everyone had some aspect of the NP they found difficult to accept or did not agree with, but the democratic vote was taken based on open and accountable information that required an understanding and an appreciation of the effect of the 775 units on all the residents of Thame.”

The full statement can be read on Thame Town Council’s website:   http://www.thametowncouncil.gov.uk

The meeting being held by the ‘Save the Elms’ group is at The Barn Centre, this evening (August 14) at 7pm for a 7.30pm start.

THE Headteacher of Lord Williams’s school in Thame has praised the school’s year 13 pupils who this morning received their A level results.

David Wybron said: “Maintaining high standards is a challenge but our A level students have done just that again this year. A record number of 239 students sat A level examinations. Out of 675 entries the pass rate remained high at 98% with 44% of grades at A*, A or B level.

“It has been a great pleasure to watch them mature into such fine people over their school careers. Their successful results are borne out of their hard work and ability and the support of their teachers and support staff. I know there will be many well deserved family celebrations this week and I am sure these results will be a foundation for future achievements, in whatever areas they choose to venture.”

The following students achieved A* or A grades in 3 or more subjects: Frances Ballaster Harriss, Annabel Basford, Lette Batten-Turner, Jamie Blundell, Roos Bruggink, Joe Gedge, Katy Groves, Jo Haxworth, Caelan House, Chloe Hykin, Sadie Kempner, Eleanor MacDougall, Alex McKeand, James McManus, Michael Oatway, Christopher Stewart and Maja Wilkins.

Two students, James McManus and Frances Ballaster Harriss, are taking up their places at Cambridge University and Chloe Hykin takes up her place at Oxford University.

Kate Sheehan, Head of Sixth Form was also full of praise for the students, “It is time to celebrate the tremendous amount of hard work that has gone in to these results by students, their parents and staff at Lord Williams’s School. Our students feel relieved and happy to finally receive their results; they have made us immensely proud and I would like to wish them all the very best of luck with whatever they now go on to do.”

According to Oxfordshire County Council, the local education authority, early indications appear to show that county-wide results will be of a similar level to 2013, with around 93 per cent of students receiving two or more A-Levels at the pass rate – grades A* to E. Provisional data also suggests that around 43 per cent have achieved two or more A-Levels at grade A*-B. However, these estimates are based only on school and academy results and do not include results from colleges. Confirmed results are always published later in the year.

Nationally, 26% of pupils taking A levels received grade A or A* – down 0.3 percentage points
Overall pass rate 98% – down 0.1% from last year
A* passes 8.2% – up 0.6%
Boys achieving A*  – 8.5%, compared with 7.9% of girls

There were nationally, marginal falls in the proportion of entries in the A* to B grades. But the very highest A* grade has risen from 7.6% to 8.2%.

According to the BBC, it is 32 years since the pass rate last fell.

ENGLISH Heritage, the leading, national advisory organisation concerned with preserving and protecting the country’s historic places, has said that it cannot support published plans to build houses on land at The Elms in Thame.

The planning application for development at The Elms, is opposed by many in the town and is the subject of a petition to have it removed from the Thame Neighbourhood Plan. This latest criticism from English Heritage will be a further blow to the ambitions of the owner of The Elms, Simon Vickers, whose company, Rectory Homes Ltd, has applied for planning permission to build 45 new homes (including 18 ‘affordable’ homes) on the park land around his Listed house, the creation of new public open space; provision of new vehicle access from Elms Road and a new pedestrian/cycle link on to Upper High Street with associated infrastructure works and landscaping.

An English Heritage spokesman said: “We became involved with The Elms two years ago when the site was proposed for development as part of the Thame Neighbourhood Plan. We raised concerns at the time that housing on this site could be harmful to the grade II listed villa and the surrounding conservation area. However, further investigations suggested that the eastern part of the site is not as closely linked with the main listed building as we thought, so we accepted limited housing there. The Plan did state though that the area to the south of The Elms should remain undeveloped.

“Recently, the site’s owners produced new proposals which involve housing on the land to the south of The Elms. We are not able to support these plans as they currently stand as they would contravene the agreed Neighbourhood Plan and be harmful to the setting of this important historic listed building.”

A spokesman for Barton Willmore, planning consultants on behalf of developer Rectory Homes, has defended the application, and said: “We have worked closely with Thame Town Council and South Oxfordshire District Council to create a scheme that will be of the highest quality and sensitive to its surroundings. It includes a total of 18 affordable homes and will open up a brand new park for local people to enjoy on land that has never before been accessible to the public.

“In addition, a further planning application has been submitted for a series of improvements to Elms Park, which will be funded through the development of the Elms.”

In a previous interview with Thame.Net, Simon Vickers insisted that Rectory Homes would “respect all of the ecological, all of the archaeological, all of the aesthetic [concerns] and satisfy all of the statuatory authorities.”

The application will be considered by the Town Council in early September. The council will then send its comments to South Oxfordshire District Council which, as the planning authority will decide the outcome, taking into consideration its own Local Plan and the legally adopted Thame Neighbourhood Plan. Public Consultation on the plans for The Elms will close on September 4, 2014.

SEE previous reports on this subject: LINK  https://www.thame.net/?s=The+Elms. The report headed ‘Parking the issue – Elms parties have their say‘,  may be particularly helpful in clarifying the position of all the antagonists in this battle.

AN inquest into the death of a Thame man who was killed on the M40, has been opened and adjourned until January, 22, 2015.

Ivan Elford, 40, of Pearce Way, Thame, who was a civil engineer, died between junctions 8a at Thame and 9 for Bicester, on August 4.

Oxfordshire Coroner, Darren Salter, reading from the police report of the incident at the Coroner’s Court yesterday, said that Mr Elford stepped in front of an approaching lorry.

The initial cause of death is thought to be multiple injuries.

SOURCE: Oxford Mail

A THAME man who challenged himself to a cross-continental swimming race in memory of his late mother, beat Pippa Middleton – but almost missed the finishing line.

Mike Bishop from Thame successfully completed the Samsung Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swimming Race to raise money for research into pancreatic cancer, the disease that killed his mother, swimming with 1,600 swimmers – including Pippa and James Middleton, on July 20.

The 6.5km swim along the Bosphorus strait in Turkey – the busy shipping lane that forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia – is a gruelling race against the clock because the Turkish authorities close the Bosphorus for two hours only to allow the race to go ahead. Mike described the highs and the lows of the day:

“A single boat took all 1600 entrants from the finish line to the start point on the Asia side of the Bosphorus. At a little after 10am we started with everyone jumping in to the sea in rapid succession, basically a mass of bodies at the start. It took me 200m or so to fully relax into my stroke and breathing, but after that I really enjoyed the swim. It’s a beautiful place to swim – sunny, warm and great scenery. I was really enjoying it, that is until the last 1/2 km or so…

“The day before the race we had an orientation boat trip when the organisors highlighted the best route to take to get the current without hitting the reverse currents along the way. Throughout the swim everything was going well until the last marker (a man made island) which we were told to be around 150m away from before turning in to the finish line. As I arrived at this point I could see that I was way too far away from it, a good 400 or 500m away from the Island. I tried to turn in but then realised that on my current path I was going to overshoot the finish line and be disqualified. Whilst trying not to panic with the thought of failing at the end, I swam as hard as I could directly across the current to the finish line, probably the hardest swimming I’ve ever done. I was helped a little with the reverse current and then finally made it to the finish line in 1hr5m. As I climbed out of the water I felt fantastic!

“For my family waiting at the finish…. It took me a while to find Sue and the boys when I first got out so after 1.5hrs they were getting nervous and worried. Then they saw my name pop up on the screen and so knew that I’d made it. They’re all really proud of my achievement and I got a great reception, not to mention the banner and fake medals my boys had made for me .

“I didn’t get to see Pippa Middleton but looking at the race results we did it in pretty much the same time; I was just 40 seconds ahead!

“Would I do it again? Right now I really want to do it again next year but I’ve also been looking for alternatives, so we’ll see!”