Cllr Pearl Lewis

Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

The Local Area Forum (funded by Bucks County Council) has agreed to grant us £5000 from it’s local priorities budget to set up our Community Interest Company (CIC) to begin delivering on various broadband projects around the region. The idea of the company is to explore options with commercial companies to commission, deliver and finance various solutions for broadband. There are many ways that broadband can be delivered to rural areas – options range from satellites, wireless towers, ducting being laid over or under ground, or linking villages up with already enabled ‘community hubs’ like schools, hospitals and churches – and the CIC will be looking at creating the right ‘formula’ for working out what solutions are both logistically and financially most suitable for this.

A particularly interest element that we are looking at is the use of rights of way to lay ducting for fibres. The  CIC would apply for grants to repay the cost of the ducting and therefore making the ducting a community asset, renting it out to service providers and putting profits in to the CIC to continue it’s work.

The Business, Innovation and Skills department has money available for projects like ours  - £530million from their £830million for broadband project will go to help rural areas build digital hubs for fibre optic connections. The grant applications open in March 2011.

Click on ‘Broadband’ at the top of this page to read about the CIC in more detail.

We’re all aware of the challenge we face connecting our rural communities up to an acceptable standard of broadband speed. BT are bringing 40mb speeds to Buckingham in December 2011 which means we can move faster on connecting up the outlying villages – click on ‘broadband’ at the top of this page to find out more about the project that we’re working on, and sign up for BT’s Race to Infinity at the same time.

Things have been so busy since the election, so I’ll try and briefly outline a few of the things I’ve been working on:

Canal Restoration: The most exciting project I’m working on, with the Buckingham Canal Society. At present we’re trying to raise awareness of what a great project the restoration of the Buckingham branch of the canal is.

Residents of the Old Ragdoll could be coming to Buckingham once the canal is restored...?

We’ve put together a draft ‘prospectus’ to present to local authorities, interested parties, organisations and individuals to raise awareness, and hopefully funds for the work to continue. The restoration has exciting benefits for the local economy, wildlife, flood defences, tourism, history and heritage, leisure and tourism, and possibly even the freight trade.

Bourton End Clearance of the Buckingham Canal

Wifi grant application: Terry Cavender from Akeley Parish council has been working really hard on this, and the Community Interest Company we want to set up to help fund the canal restoration in Buckingham has applied for a grant to expand the broadband supply and internet access to some rural areas in our community that are still without acceptable standards of internet connection in 2010. The idea is that the restoration of the canal works in conjunction with the laying of cables under the towpath.

Flooding group: We’re hoping to get this group as a sub group to the Local Area Forum up and running again. The work that I’m doing with the canal society to push for the restoration as part of a wider flooding planning strategy is part of this.

Speed review, Area 14 (North Bucks): I went to the briefing session for this along with parish and county councillors. While it was a little frustrating to spend an hour being told what you’re NOT allowed to do with speed limits, each parish has now submitted their ‘wish list’ of how they want the speed limits changing in their areas, and I think we could see some interesting results – particularly in Maids Moreton where the new development has big consequences for the density and speed of traffic along the A413. Once the review is completed in the Autumn we can look at what we’ve managed to do and go from there if people still feel things like SID’s are useful.

High Speed Two – the buzz phrase on everyone’s lips! Although ‘Route 4’, which is a suggested route that affects the areas north of Buckingham, is not the proposed one, it is one of the alternative proposed routes, and I’ve been working with the parishes to keep them up to date with AVDC’s consultation on the Exceptional Hardship Scheme to work for the rights of all those not just on the proposed routes but also all the routes shown. I’ve also been working with Beachampton to create an action group to examine the feasibility of Route 4 alone.

High Speed Two trains threaten the areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Buckinghamshire.

They have sensibily pointed out that we need a coordinated forum with proper arguments against the route should the government change their mind about the proposed route in the south of the Vale. Lets hope that the public sector cuts mean that HS2 goes off the national agenda for a few years – £18billion is hardly spare change. We must be sensible as an authority and make sure that we are fully informed about all the HS2 proposals to make a well rounded and sensible suggestion to government when the formal consultation begins in Autumn 2010. It’s an interesting time, and I am sure that AVDC is united in its feelings about the blight on our countryside that HS2 will bring.

Silvertone IAG briefing group: I went to a meeting for all local councillors at Silverstone race track a few weeks ago. It was a briefing session run by Jean Morgan, CEO of South Northants District Council to explain to us the role of the Silverstone IAG, which is an officer-based group that means regularly to discuss the impact of the events at Silverstone on the local community. It is made up of local fire, police and council authority representatives and the briefings we hope to have as an aside to their meetings will enable us to feed in local residents feelings about how events are managed. It is mainly logistical discussions to do with camp sites, traffic flows, crime and health and safety, but this is still important as it affects the local residents of Dadford, Silverstone, Stowe and Whittlebury. It will be even more relevant over the coming years with the growth of the site now we have secured the F1 Grand Prix for another 17 years (yey!), and the Moto GP which had its first year at Silverstone last month. Each event brings different crowds of people, different kinds of traffic, and different kinds of problems.

Planning Applications: I’ve had several applications where residents have asked for my input lately, and its been complicated at times. I’m going for some planning training soon to understand the basics of planning law and my role as a member in planning situations. It can be an emotional time for applicants and residents and I would like to think I could support them through this.

Housing: I was pleased to be able to help a constituent who was being unfairly evicted from their home a few months ago. I would like to thank VAHT for being so understanding and sensible in this matter. They do a great job and are a housing association to be proud of. The presentation that I saw from them at my last Communities Scrutiny Committee meeting was most impressive, particularly their work to reduce crime and Anti-Social Behaviour in the areas of housing they control, using measures like varying the types of dwellings that are grouped together.

Party Conference 2010/CF North Bucks Branch: I’ve bought my ticket for the Conservative party conference! October 2010! Very excited, there will be so many people there, and lots of networking opportunities. I’ve also met lots more young people in the party (I did some campaigning for Conservative Future during the election) so it’s nice to have some councillors my age group to chat with.

Setting up a Conservative Future branch for the under 30 Tories of Buckinghamshire...

I’m also hoping to find some time to set up a Conservative Future branch for North Bucks and Milton Keynes – there isn’t one between Oxford and Bedford, a lot of ground to cover! It could be great fun and I’m sure there are lots of Bucks based Tories out there who would definitely enjoy all the benefits of a well run CF group. I’m meeting the Regional Chairman next week in London to discuss how I could go about it.

Phew – that’s just a taster of a few things I’ve been doing! I’ll try not to leave it so long next time… I’m just enjoying it too much I keep taking new things on…

We should hopefully be making some progress on the flooding outside Church House  – the drain was due to be cleared on the 9^th March. The agencies seem to be passing the buck a little on this one, due to the nature of the drain – it is unclear whether it is storm (AVDC) or foul (Anglian Water). The investigations on the 9^th should have hopefully answered this question for us and we can get onto getting it fixed.

Is 'Akeley WiFi' the way forward?

The most exciting bit of this meeting was the discussion about village WiFi. Grants are available to cover almost all of the set up costs of such a scheme and it would mean Akeley residents internet access would be considerably cheaper – and covered by the parish precept. It would widen access to the internet for villagers, prove a selling point for things like the pub, village hall and school, and be an attractive advantage for potential buyers of houses in the area. Culturally and socially, it could unite the villagers more if they are reminded that every time they go onto the internet they are logging on to ‘Akeley WiFi’ – we discussed earlier on in the meeting how disspointing it is that people do not seem to get involved in village life any more. This could be a new way of reminding people of the community around them, as well as convincing them that we are aware of the needs of the 21^st century village. Perhaps it might even attract more people to get involved in the governance of their village?

Of course it could pose problems: wireless access inevitably has ‘blackspots’, and it may be that such a scheme would not interest villagers. We decided to bring the discussion up at the next meeting, perhaps with some ideas of costing, and then present it to villagers for their opinions. It would have to be ‘sold’ right to the villagers to convince them to use it. I’m meeting with Terry Cavender, whose idea this is, on the 2^nd April to bounce some ideas around about this.

It could be a great thing for the village.