Notice Board

For further information on Forestry England's current Land Management Plan for Savernake Forest please follow the link below. You can also download two documents they have produced from here, the "Our Shared Forest Land Management Plan", and also a report named "Our Shared Forest - Savernake Forest - You Said We Listened" responding to the discussion document released without their knowledge last year which created a lot of high feeling. 

Forestry England - Our Shared Forest

Please find attached an update on the last year by Cllr Caroline Thomas, Wiltshire Councillor for Marlborough East

A Waste Update

The council’s current household waste management strategy follows the waste hierarchy, aiming to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible, while dealing with residual waste in the most sustainable way. The council has two landfill diversion contracts in place to help manage its residual waste and very little Wiltshire household residual waste is sent to landfill, with any food waste present used to contribute to the generation of energy or processing into a fuel.

You may have seen in other local authorities, and indeed overseas, weekly or twice weekly doorstep food waste collections. Wiltshire Council’s current waste strategy is to not provide a separate collection of food waste as it would be prohibitively expensive to implement and operate across the large rural county. The current plan is to prioritise working with residents to reduce the amount of food wasted in the first instance, helping families to not waste money, and by continuing to offer subsidised home food waste digesters.

Wiltshire Council has teamed up with Great Green Systems to offer Wiltshire residents discounted food waste composters, called a Green Johanna. These “hot composters” are available for only £60 (discounted from £129.99). More information is online at Reducing your waste and composting - Wiltshire Council

However, the Government has consulted widely on a proposed policy which would mandate consistency in household and business recycling collections in England. This is expected to include the mandatory introduction of weekly food waste collections by 2025.

All the council’s kerbside collected recyclables are managed by Hills at a materials recycling facility at Sands Farm, Calne and the council benefits from a 79% share of the income generated from the sale of materials collected through the kerbside service. During the six months April to September 2022, this realised £2.24m in income, as recycling commodity prices were particularly strong during the first part of the year. However, increasing levels of contamination can result in downgraded prices paid, or material being rejected. Residents can help improve recycling rates, and ultimately reduce the cost of managing waste to the council taxpayer by ensuring that:

· Only recyclables are put into blue bins – sadly, all too often bags of general waste and nappies find their way into the blue bins;

· Flexible or soft plastics, such as bread bags, packaging film and carrier bags cannot be recycled through the blue-bin scheme – people should place these in their residual waste bins where the waste is used to generate energy, or alternatively take to a local supermarket if they have facilities to collect them for recycling;

· Packing materials in cardboard boxes (such as polystyrene) can’t be recycled so we recommend that non-card packing materials are put into the residual waste

• Only paper wrapping paper can be recycled. To check if wrapping paper is made of paper, people can use the “scrunch test”. Scrunch the paper and if it stays in a ball, it can be recycled in your blue-lidded bin;
• For Scrap metals – large biscuit tins can be recycled, but large car parts cannot!

Wiltshire Council has recently introduced a kerbside battery collection service. People can now leave most small household batteries for recycling (as long as they are not leaking) including D, C, AA, AAA, 9V and button-type batteries and these should be placed on top of blue-lidded bins in a sealed, transparent plastic bag ready for collection.

Every year hundreds of fires at waste facilities across the country are linked to batteries thrown out in the bin. People can help to prevent fires and keep staff safe by only disposing of batteries using the new kerbside collection service or at battery collection points at locations such as supermarkets.

Finally, I would like to thank residents across Marlborough East, Savernake and Mildenhall for everything you do to reduce the impact on the environment and the cost of managing waste to Council Taxpayers. More detailed information is online at Rubbish and recycling - Wiltshire Council

Caroline Thomas

Wiltshire Councillor for Marlborough East.

Email: caroline.thomas@wiltshire.gov.uk

Local Highway and Footway Improvement Groups (LHFIGS) have replaced Community Area Transport Groups (CATGs) and are sub-groups of the area boards. They aim to find solutions for local transport issues such as road repairs, traffic problems, road layouts and parking. More details on the type of measures which can and cannot be considered for funding can be found in the LHFIG Terms of Reference April 2022 Each group has about 10 members including area board members, town and parish council members and community representatives.

The meetings are also attended by relevant officers from Wiltshire council including a senior transport planner, a senior traffic engineer and a local highway maintenance engineer as necessary. Their key purpose is to offer advice and support to the group but they do not vote on the issues raised. The LHFIG may also invite representatives from local organisations to its meetings to give technical advice or to share local knowledge. Further information on the LHFIG decision making process can be found in the LHFIG Guidance Notes April 2022.

The amount allocated is dependent on the geographical size and population for each community area. The funding allocation is for capital expenditure and can only be used to provide new and improved highway infrastructure. The funding is suitable for small scale schemes which improve safety, increase accessibility and sustainability by promoting walking, cycling and public transport and improving traffic management. It cannot be used to fund revenue functions such as maintenance schemes or the provision of passenger transport services.

Individuals may Report a highways improvement issue which should then be submitted to their town or parish council. Only those issues which are supported by the town or parish council may be considered by the LHFIG.

Further information about how the groups operate, including membership, meeting schedule and the decision-making process, can be found on the Local highway and footway improvement groups.

Individuals who wish to raise a matter should download the form below and complete it, then submit it to Savernake Parish Council by email to info@savernake-pc.org, so the Parish Council can discuss the matter and if necessary raise it at the Marlborough Local Highway and Footway Improvement Group.

Are you aged 18 – 30, running a small business or thinking of starting one in the next 6 months?

We are working in partnership with the South West Enterprise Fund (SWEF) to provide business grants of £2,000 to young people in Wiltshire and Swindon that are aged between 18-30. As part of the programme, SWEF provides the opportunity to join a network of peers who are also in the early stage of starting their business to share ideas, experiences and learn.

To be eligible to apply, you need to be:

• aged 18 to 30
• living in Wiltshire or Swindon
• planning to start your own business within the next 6 months or running your own business which has been trading for no more than 2 years
• without easy access to other sources of finance

Grants can be used towards capital items and running costs such as:

• stock, equipment or materials
• rent or business-related bills

Further guidance on the programme is available here and you can apply online via our website WCF - South West Enterprise Fund Grants Wiltshire Community Foundation

Sandcliff House, 21 Northgate Street, Devizes SN10 1JT,

Tel: 01380 738985

www.wiltshirecf.org.uk

We have been asked by Helen Robertson, Customer & Community Advisor for Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) to make people aware of the SSEN’s Priority Service Register. Please let family or neighbours know about this service if you think it may be beneficial for them to be signed up to this.

“It is that time of year again where we are beginning to get prepared for any inclement weather that may come our way and to ensure our customers are prepared should any loss of power occur in the area.

I am keen to ensure that anyone over 65, anyone with children under 5 or anyone with a medical condition is signed up to our Priority Service Register. It is a free service and just highlights to us those people that may need a little extra help in the event of a power loss. Some customers rely on medical equipment such as medical beds, oxygen or stairlifts and it is key that I know where these customers are, their level of vulnerability and how we can look after them in a storm situation.

I can provide some glow sticks (safer than candles to light up a room) and some information on how customers can keep up to date with any faults that occur and how they can report any problems with their power that they may have.

We also wish to make people aware of our contact number for anyone who has lost power. It is 105 and that will take them straight to our call centre. (This is the number to use for any power company to get an update on power cuts, as it will connect you to your local company). It can be dialled from a mobile or land line (however many land lines will not work in a power outage so we recommend keeping mobile phones charged). It may be worth buying a simple power bank that will re charge your mobile phone.

We also have an App that can be downloaded on any smart phone called Power Track – it is dark blue with three white lines whooshing through it. People can see all the power cuts on there, get updates and also see when it will be restored.

Our Priority Service Team will call those on the register so it is important they provide a mobile number."

Please contact Helen if would like any further information, or would like to sign up to the Priority Service Register.
helen.robertson@sse.com helen.robertson@sse.com

T: 07876 837305

Please use the following link to access the Marlborough Area (including Savernake and Mildenhall) neighbourhood Plan

View plan here