FREE NHS Health Checks in West Berkshire Communities

Who can have a check?
• Anyone between 40 and 74 years old who has a doctor in the Berkshire area.
• Anyone not already having treatment for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, kidney disease, high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

How long does it take?
Around 30 minutes

What happens at the check?
• You’ll be asked some simple questions. For example, about your family’s medical history.
• Record your height, weight, waist measurement, age, sex and ethnicity.
• Take your blood pressure.
• Do a simple, pin-prick blood test to check your cholesterol.

Where can I get one?
Checks are being carried out across a range of communities. For more information on where, please contact eclintworth@westberks.gov.uk. For more information about NHS Health Checks visit
www.nhs.uk/nhshealthcheck

Newbury and District Clinical Commissioning Group and West Berkshire Council

Pack of Free Trees

 
The Woodland Trust is offering community groups, youth groups and schools the chance to apply for packs of free trees for delivery in November 2013 and is accepting applications until 13 September.

The packs come in three sizes – 30 saplings, 105 saplings and 420 saplings in various themes (hedge, copse, wildlife, wild harvest, year - round colour, future firewood and wetland). Apply online.

New community orchard takes shape in Thatcham

Cherries, plums, apples and pears, including traditional Berkshire varieties, will soon be arriving in a new community orchard to be planted at the Nature Discovery Centre in Lower Way, Thatcham.

On Monday 9 September, orchard expert Andy Howard will be giving a talk about orchards; planning, wildlife value and local fruit varieties. The talk is open to everyone and is also a chance for people to find out more about the community orchard and how to get involved. It starts at 7pm at the Nature Discovery Centre,.

Ed Sweetman, community engagement officer with the Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust’s Linking the Landscape project is looking forward to meeting people who would like to get involved.

“The idea of a community orchard came from Thatcham Town Council in 2010, and now we’re getting ready to plant the trees this winter. Local community groups will be planting 21 fruit trees including local varieties such as Miller’s Seedling, an apple that originated in a Newbury orchard, and Winston that comes from Welford,” he said.

“This is a great opportunity for people to get involved with planting, pruning and family activities such as a blossom picnic in spring, harvest festival in autumn and wassailing ceremony in winter to celebrate our native fruit heritage.”

“Planting the community orchard on land beyond the car park at the Nature Discovery Centre is ideal, because it is close to where people live, and provides a habitat link between the gardens and hedgerows of houses in Lower Way with the wilder habitats at the lakes,” explained Ed.

The first event planned, even before the orchard is planted, is Thatcham’s Apple Day on Sunday 20 October. Look out for more information about this nearer the event.

The Orchard Talk evening on 9 September is free, thanks to support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Contact Ed Sweetman on 01635 500886 or wbll@bbowt.org.uk to find out more

CCB Turns 40!

In the autumn of 2013 CCB celebrates our 40th Birthday. We started life on the 25th September 1973 as the Berkshire Community Service Council. Since then, not just the name has changed! We have been involved with many different projects, but the thing that links them all is the improved quality of life within Berkshire’s communities resulting from all our efforts.  

To mark this special occasion we are holding our Annual General Meeting and 40th Birthday Part at The Barn, Purley on Thames at 5.30pm. This will also mark the retirement of our long-standing and hard-working President, Baroness Jill Pitkeathley OBE. After the official part of the AGM is over there will be drinks and refreshments and a chance to reminisce over the last 40 years of life in Berkshire.

Attendance is by INVITATION ONLY but if you would like to attend and our interested in our work please do contact us at admin@ccberks.org.uk

Marketing your Town – various autumn events

 

Action for Market Towns (AMT) has set up events across England over the coming months. This follows similar successful events run in recent years. AMT is working with Hidden Britain to help towns, villages and communities understand how they can improve their visibility and make the most of opportunities to boost footfall.
 
Find the details on AMT’s website

The Community Energy Fortnight – 24 August - 8 September 2013

 

The Community Energy Fortnight aims to inform, engage and inspire people about community energy through a series of events across the UK. Events will vary in scale and type, from talks to tours, from open days to workshops, project launches and share offers. 

Events can be featured on the Community Energy Coalition website (launched on 19 July) and they can provide you with an event information pack (including posters, fact sheets etc).
The Community Energy Coalition can provide different materials that make it easy for projects to share details of the Fortnight in newsletters, magazines, twitter and across networks.

Neighbourhood Planning update

 

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has updated Neighbourhood Planning activity nationally.

Over 600 neighbourhoods, including many town and parish councils, have applied to be designated with nearly 450 of these designations now accepted. Almost 40 qualifying bodies have carried out full, formal consultation on their plan with their community.

By the end of July, 15 of these plans had been submitted to the local planning authority for public and independent examination. The three plans in Eden, Exeter and Thame that went
referendum were all voted in.

View activity on DCLG’s interactive map

Help for Hedgehogs

Ecologists based at the University of Reading are conducting a project examining the possible impact of road networks on hedgehog populations. It is estimated that hedgehog populations have declined by approximately 20% in the last 20 years, although some wildlife organizations claim their demise is much more severe than that.

The Reading researchers believe that one factor contributing to this decline is the fragmentation effect of major roads on hedgehog populations, i.e. hedgehogs avoid crossing these major roads, leading to populations becoming more and more isolated from one another, which potentially makes them more vulnerable to other factors.

The ecologists are looking to obtain genetic samples from hedgehogs in a zone approximately 10 miles north and south of the M4 between Bristol and Reading. One source is the bodies of hedgehogs that have been killed on the roads. People are urged to report any sightings they have of dead hedgehogs so that the Reading team can collect the remains and take a small tissue sample for their analyses. To report any sightings, please email: hedgehogs@reading.ac.uk

Just Announced: How to Be a Better Trustee Training Workshop

 

 

Another meeting in the seres 'How to be a Better Trustee' is being held on Wednesday 16th October 2013 at Tidmarsh Village Hall, near Pangbourne, at 7.30pm. It is a repeat of the popular sessions which have been held over the past couple of years and is aimed at at village and community hall trustees in Berkshire. Every person who sits on a village hall committee is a trustee (if it is registered a charity) and this 2 hour session aims to inform volunteers of their roles and responsiblities in this position.

 

Attendance is free for anyone whose hall is a member of CCB's Community Buildings Advice Service, for non members the charge is £10 per person. Bookings to be made by email please to Wendy Dacey at wendy.dacey@ccberks.org.uk or by phone 0118 9612000.

 

Training supported by Adult Community Learning, West Berkshire Council

Story from Inside Housing: Scared Away

Affordable housing starts in rural England have dropped 44 per cent in three years, slowly killing off village life. So what is holding developers back? Pete Apps from Inside Housing investigates

‘When I draw my curtains in the evening and look across at the houses all around me, there used to be lights on, through the gaps in the curtains, or lights on porches. They’re gone now. The houses are all dark.’

Things have changed dramatically since 82-year-old Mary Kempe’s parents bought a cottage in 238-home Osmington, in Devon, in the mid-1950s. Second homes and holiday lettings have led to spiralling house prices in the seaside village, pricing the younger generation out of the area.

‘Our shop has gone, our post office has gone, our school has gone. This place will end up as a sort of dead place - an empty place,’ she says.

Osmington, like many other villages, is the victim of the UK’s rural housing crisis - one that, until now, has been largely overshadowed by the crisis facing urban communities. With the majority of rural areas primarily populated by ageing communities, schools are closing down, local economies are grinding to a halt, and there are no carers living locally to help the older people left behind.

The impact of this crisis is starting to rear its head. Last week a report by the environment, food and rural affairs committee warned that there is an ‘imperative need’ for affordable homes to prevent the ‘slow death’ of villages. This followed figures compiled by the National Housing Federation this month showing a drop of nearly 9 per cent in the number of 30 to 44-year-olds living in rural areas from 2.6 million to 2.3 million over the past decade. Over the same period average rural house prices rose 82 per cent from £126,016 to £228,742, and are now 18 per cent higher than in urban areas.

In the face of fast-growing affordable housing need, figures obtained from the Homes and Communities Agency show there were just 820 rural affordable housing starts in England in 2011/12 and 2,188 in 2012/13. This is down 44 per cent from 3,887 in 2009/10.

Cause and effect
So, what is scaring developers away from building badly needed homes in the countryside - and what can be done to turn the lights back on in villages across Britain?

Rural housing expert, Professor Mark Shucksmith of Newcastle University identifies three main challenges to providing rural affordable housing: cost, land availability and local resistance.

The first two problems are linked. Rural affordable housing is usually provided on rural exception sites - small plots of land, granted an exception from normal planning regulations to provide affordable homes to people with a link to surrounding villages. These sites are usually small, often containing a mere four or five homes, meaning it is difficult to achieve cost savings that can be achieved on bigger schemes in cities.

Furthermore, under planning rules which came into effect in April last year, a percentage of homes built on rural exception sites can now be sold on the open market to cross-subsidise schemes - potentially reducing the number of affordable homes built. This percentage is subject to viability assessments, with no set limit.

The HCA directed that around 9 per cent of the £1.8 billion affordable homes programme outside London should be awarded to rural communities, which it hopes will deliver 9,400 homes by 2015. Housing providers say this equates to an average grant rate of around £20,000 per unit (compared with £65,000 five years ago), which is often not enough to make rural schemes viable.

‘Because it’s very rare to build a big scheme in rural areas, per home, the costs are higher,’ says Sue Chalkley, chief executive of 5,000-home Hastoe Group, which operates mainly in rural areas across the south, east and west of England and built 181 homes last year.

‘You usually build between six and 15 homes to fit in with the village and all the infrastructure has to be built for just these units,’ she adds. ‘Also, there often isn’t the same interest from building contractors.’ This can mean less competition for work and higher prices as a result, she adds.

Arlene Kersley is a rural housing enabler at Community Council Berkshire, part of a network which advises the government on the needs of rural communities. Her job is to get landowners, rural communities and housing providers working together to bring forward rural schemes. She says lack of finance is the biggest problem.

‘When you’ve done the hard work to break down the barriers of resistance [from residents] to a housing scheme - and in some areas that is a lot of hard work - if the funding isn’t there, that is all for nothing.

‘There has been a huge drop in funding in the last five years, and to my mind that is the reason for the drop in the figures.’

‘Housing associations and developers prefer to look at urban areas where they can get more bang for their buck,’ adds Martin Hawkins, housing, transport and services officer at rural charity Action with Communities in Rural England.

And even where the schemes do make financial sense, they require development land.

‘If we’re looking for suitable sites in a village, there might only be one landowner, or two we can negotiate with,’ Ms Chalkley says. ‘If you can’t do a deal, then there are no other options.’

Resident resistance
Local campaigns against affordable housing can also hold back development.

‘People have a fear of what affordable housing is,’ Mr Hawkins explains. ‘They worry that a housing association is just going to take people from the nearby town, and stick them in the village.’

English Rural Housing Association has tackled this problem, to a degree, by recruiting local campaigners to go toe-to-toe with the nimby opponents.

‘It’s a big challenge, because even if a scheme gets planning approval, if the parish council is against it, the scheme very often will not get built,’ says Adrian Maunders, chief executive of the 1,000-home landlord and chair of the NHF’s lobbying voice for rural housing associations, Rural Alliance.

‘But local leadership of the scheme makes a huge difference, and very often they will be just as loud as the opposition.’

That said, Ms Kersley offers some hope for the future. ‘Local resistance is still out there and you have to have broad shoulders, but more and more I’m finding it’s less of a problem.

‘We’ve been screaming about the need for affordable homes for decades and people do finally realise there’s a problem.’

The question now, is whether landowners and developers are listening and willing to help turn the lights back on.

EXTRA, EXTRA - Community Digital Hot off the virtual press!

Community Digital magazine, produced by CCB has just been published. The Summer 2013 edition includes articles on:

* The Rural Economy in Berkshire

* Community Cinema's

* The state of Housing in Rural Area's

* Neighbourhood Planning

* Details of our 40th Annual General Meeting

* Community Led Planning in West Berkshire

* The impact of Localism. . .

and much, much more!

To read a copy please click here