The recently elected members of the Parish Council met for the first time on 10th May. Their first task was to elect Cllr. Peter Biggs as Chairman and Cllr. Colin Charlett as Vice-Chairman. Six new people had been elected to the Council. You can see them all on the front cover of the Chronicle. The main business of the meeting was to sign the Heads of Terms Agreement with T Mobile. This would start the process for the installation of the telecommunications mast on the field in Playfield Road.
The Statement of Accounts and the summary income and expenditure financial statement were also considered and approved. The documents will be available for inspection in June.
The clerk and the village warden attended a meeting organised by the Oxford Preservation Trust on the proposed plans for an Oxford Flood Risk Project sponsored by the Environment Agency. The consultants from Black and Veatch, who were working on stage 2 of the project, explained what had been discovered in the first part of the study and they showed slides of the work that had been done at Towles Mill near Redbridge to renew the gate. They were now looking at specific solutions to protect Oxford from a hundred year flood. They emphasised that there would not be a huge storm channel dug around Oxford as had been suggested by the Oxford Mail. It was likely there would be a range of options including using land north of Oxford to store more water and regular maintenance of the streams and culverts. As they were planning three stages to the project up to about 2030 and no specific funding had been allocated by the government, it was likely that it would be many years before there was any major work on this project. It was felt by the audience that there needed to be more communication with landowners and local councils around Oxford.
The clerk had been contacted by Anthony Roberts on a number of matters concerning the Community Woodland. The second field had been prepared for planting. He was submitting another grant request to the Trust for Oxfordshire’s Environment for £5,000 and the Parish Council agreed to continue to be the third party sponsor. At the time he was concerned about the hot weather but the recent rain would have saved many trees. He was intending to hold a public meeting with a guest speaker to get a ‘Friends’ Group’ started to care for the trees. The Parish Council agreed to host it -so watch the notice boards for details.
