Parish Councils

May I call your attention to an article on page 21 of the Sunday Times today (April 27th) which points out how wonderful Parish Councils are.

Quite true Duncan,some parish councils are probably fantastic.
Just struggling trying to think of one tho’.

Oh ye of little faith.
Take a look at the park compared with 3 years ago.
Take a look at the cemetery compared with two years ago.
See the new Medical Centre leap into life this year (blame the NHS for the delay, not the P.C.).
I wish more people would attend the monthly PC meetings to tell the PC what they think/want; you get 15 minutes to have your say!
Onwards & Upwards eh?

Yeah Duncan look what they are doing to the allotments on Heyes Lane.  They are really great (sic)
Sarah Dalton

Yeah Duncan look what they are doing to the allotments on Heyes Lane.  They are really great (sic)
Sarah Dalton

Hi Sarah,
sorry to be so long in replying but I’ve been on holiday; good heavens, a parish councillor away!
There is a wish for lots more parking in/near the village or at least the vast majority say so. Its called democracy?
Tinkering with bits and pieces is no longer enough.
In the perfect world, all the people working the Hayes Lane allotments plus those on the waiting list can be accommodated on a new site. Wouldn’t that please just about everybody?
If someone can come up with a perfect scheme to relieve parking problems, keep the allotment users happy and have a great new medical centre, I’ll vote for it.

Eh Up Duncan,
Glad you had a god hol.better to have a councillor taking a hol than having one that. Doesn’t even live in the Country!!
Car parking. You have two good sites in Alderley,
big field at the back of Lydiat Lane,totally out of site of the village therefore not an eyesore or seeing as the P.C. Are giving A.F.C a new pitch and home why not Chorley Hall Lane sports field as a long stay car park for all the non residents of Alderley,as this group seems to be the main concern of the P.C.
And finally,I don’t think the medical centre and allotments shoul be tagged together in the same sentence as one and all know the plans etc for the new centre have no interest in the allotment site.
Ta Ra for now,..Terry.

Hi Terry,
good to see a man coming up with positive suggestions:
1.Chorley Hall Lane might well make a good site for a car park; the Parish Council pressed C.E.C. for that, for a limited period but C.E.C. said ‘no’.
Has A.F.C. said that it will give up the C.H.L. pitch? or (as I’ve heard) will they wish to retain it, as well as the new pitch/s?
2.By the ‘big field’ do you mean the field that used to be the playing field for St. Hilary’s school? If so, it is now owned by AESG. As you may know, there is a proposed land swap whereby AESG get a piece of CEC land to build their new sports facility on and in return CEC get the field and will immediately hand it over to become the new much larger allotments site (at least I think that’s how it is meant to work!).
Are you suggesting keeping the field as a car park and the Heyes Lane site as it is?
It is a viable plan, sort of, BUT access to the field, as a car park is not good and car parking there won’t be of any use to the people using the new medical centre.
3. You suggest not tagging the medical centre with the allotments: too often the proposed car park at Heyes Lane is said to have only one purpose but why not more than one? A general car park for the village and a car park for the users of the medical centre as well?

Re:
Duncan Herald
Oh ye of little faith.
Take a look at the park compared with 3 years ago.
Take a look at the cemetery compared with two years ago.

What a shame you can’t get to the cemetery (safely) with a wheelchair or pram from the village !!!!!!!!!
Footpath - it’s gone

Hi Trevor,
Can you please be specific as to what prevents wheelchair progress? Is it vegetation on the footpath or damage to the footpath or what?

Footpath too narrow due to vegetation / hedge, footpath damaged, lamp post positioned on footpath.
You need to walk from Ryleys Farm to the by-pass to see it.

DDA:
The law has been designed so that you only have to make reasonable changes, but if you fail to do what is reasonable, a disabled person could take legal action against you for treating them unfairly.

Hi Terry,
I did not supply you with any data when I responded to your suggestion that the AESG field might be turned into a car park, so here goes.
The track from Netherfields/Beech Cottages to the field is approx 100 yards long and only approx 8feet wide at it’s narrowest. The track is pretty much a dirt track and so probably mainly impassable in rainy times.

Hi Trevor,
sorry it has taken me so long to respond.
I had a look today.
The most awkward thing about the whole approach is that you have to switch from side to side as there is no single footpath; I doubt that I can do much about that!
I agree with you that the foorpath is overgrown with vegetation in places and so today I started trying to get CEC to remedy the situation i.e. carry out a large-scale cut-back.
I’ll try to keep you posted on how that goes.

Hi Trevor,
as promised here’s an update: I contacted ‘Highways’ , who passed me on to ‘Highways Maintenance’ (who do hedges I am told) and I have emailed them to request an hedge cutting. There will be no delay due to possibile breeding birds, after August 1st.Hopefully things will go ahead; I’ll update again, as and when.

Good Morning Trevor,
another up-date.
As the land adjacent to the footpath is not owned by CEC, the actual owners of the land have to be consulted/approached; this I was told by the CEC Officer.
This may involve a search of the Land Registry and if so, that will take some time probably.
If anyone out there knows who owns the land adjacent to the footpath/s, please tell me and I will pass it on to the CEC Officer.

Hi Trevor,

is it only you and I on this !

I am now informed by CEC Officer that the land owner has been found and contacted and he has stated that as soon as he can organise a contractor, the hedges will be cut back.
Sorry its taken a month but at least we are getting there !

Thanks Duncan,
A couple of other area’s for you to look at when you are out with Matilda, Davey Lane - going down to Hayes Lane - the overgrown bushes on the right hand side (Emmerson - old Cottage Hospital), I have asked Emmerson’s if it’s up to them, but still no response from weeks ago.
Mottram Road on the way to Hough Lane - overgrown footpath - not so much as hedges, but weeds.

The hedge has been done on Ryleys Lane / Chelford Road, all that remains to make it
DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) legal is to improve the footpath !

Hi Trevor,
re. Davey Lane & vegetation.
I have always found ‘Emersons’ to be most helpful and so I ‘phoned them.
They do the management for Cottage Lawns; which I take to be the land from whence the green stuff is oveflowing.
The lady at ‘Emersons’ who is i/c this stuff is on holiday until next week. In the meantime I will email her and hopefully all will be cut back.
What can go wrong? (hollow laughter off-stage!).

Talking of footpaths the path towards Wilmslow from Alderley Is very nearly impossible to walk along also ,there is a sign telling drivers to go round the roundabout on by pass to then enter Merlin from the correct side(what many people dont realise is that to turn into Merlin from Alderley crossing the solid white lines and on a slight brow is very dangerous)  however the sign is obstructed by trees

Did the Parish Council have a Lengthsman not that long ago ?

(Lengthsman is a term nowadays used mainly in English National Parks and previously in the Peak District National Park. The term, coined in the 1800s, originally referred to someone who kept a “length” of road neat and tidy, but lengthsmen were used on canals and railways from the beginnings of both. On roads, lengthsmen were responsible for a few miles between adjacent villages and sometimes their duties encompassed whole villages. Employed by local parish councils, their job was, inter alia, to keep grass and weeds down in the verge and keep drainage ditches clear. Litter, such as it was in those times, was collected and even wild flowers were tended to.

Good Morning Trevor,

the parish does indeed still have a Lengthsman (Nigel).
We used to have an orange coloured three-wheeler that you might have seen around the village, driven by the lengthsman as he went around tidying the village (leftover plastic bags of dog-poo were his ‘constant delight’ !).
Alas CEC took that vehicle away from the Parish Council !
We are at this time trying to decide whether or not the P.C. might buy a replacement van, so that the Lengthsman can once again be able to roam around the village and indeed further afield)  to tidy, remove feral greenery, effect repairs etc.
This may well be an item at the next Parish Council meeting; why not come along to that meeting and ‘say your piece’?

Davey Lane now a right mess, cars parked right to Hayes Lane now (No yellow lines due to road surface work (I won’t call it Tarmac, as it is not), leaves all over footpath, trees NOT cut back yet !!!!

Hi Trevor,
1. ‘they’ have come along and put yellow lines, at last. I did ask whether ‘they’ were to do Lynton lane at the same time; alas no
2. I’ve approached ‘Emersons’ twice, as they are (I am told) the managing agents for ‘Cottage Lawns’. I’ll try again and if that doesn’t work then I’ll suggest to CEC that they do the cutting and then demand payment from ‘Emersons’.

Good Morning (again) Trevor,

this to keep you in the loop.
My first email was Aug. 27th, to the lady at ‘Emerson’ who deals with ‘Cottage Lawns’. She was on holiday. I sent a second email on 10th Sept. to the same lady.
Today, following your understandable irritation, I ‘phoned ‘Emerson’ Office and spoke with a different lady at,  who promised to pass the message directly to the gardeners at ‘Emerson’. I also forwarded to her copies of the two earlier emails. Hopefully I have now been enough of a ‘pain’ to them, to get the cutting back to occur.

Trevor,

I believe that the offending greenery has been chopped back?
Sorry its taken so long,  ’ mea culpa’ !

Morning Duncan, yes Emerson did do some “cutting back” but left the leaves that had been there for years, so I gave them a call and they have been cleared - it’s much better now.

Hi Trevor. Glad that problem has been solved.
The next desired cut-back is the hedge alongside the allotments on Heyes Lane. The Parish Council removed the prickly bits around the seat, so at least that bench can be sat upon.
As for the whole length; I tried CEC but they told me that the hedge ‘belongs’ to the allotments. Might the ‘allotment society’ do it? As they are under notice to quit the site, good luck with that one eh? Mayhaps the Parish Council will get it done for xmas? Watch this spot as they say.

Hi Ho.
I am told that in the contract between the allotments soc. (tenant? and the P.C. (landlord?) it states that the cutting of hedge is the responsibility of the allotment people.
So I’ve emailed Fenton to ask if ‘they’ would please do it.

Duncan.  so know you are saying that the Heyes Lane site is still the responsibility of the allotment society?  Wow I thought AEPC had evicted them all?  So can we still class them as allotments?

Duncan.  so know you are saying that the Heyes Lane site is still the responsibility of the allotment society?  Wow I thought AEPC had evicted them all?  So can we still class them as allotments?

Hi Fiona,
so good they named it twice?
I had hoped, back then, (Nov), that the hedge would be cut thus making it easier for people using the pavement. The bit of hedge around the bench was actually cut by the P.C’s lengthsman and me. I wanted the hedge cut and didn’t really care about titles and such like. I sort of like to see the job done.
Hopefully the users of the Heyes Lane allotments will enjoy the extra land available at Lydiat Lane? At some time, hopefully there will be an effective dialogue re. what facilities can be offered at the new Lydiat Lane allotments?