Disclaimer: These observations are not the ‘official’ minutes of the meeting, these are supplied by Whittlesey Town Council, normally (1) month following the meeting and can be viewed on their website.
Agenda to this meeting was published on this site – 07th June
9 Councillors + Cllr Bristow arrived slightly late in attendance.
Apologies Cllrs Jolley, Butcher & Bodden + Garratt (No apology)
7 members of the public in attendance, Children & 2 Teachers from Alderman Jackobs School.
1/ At the request of the Chairman – No photographs were taken.
2/ A good presentation by Karen Igho from PECT (Peterborough Environmental City 
Trust) about planting 5,000+ Tree’s in and around Whittlesey. The funding for the tree’s is already in place, and the type of tree’s will be indigenous broad leaf tree’s native to the UK.
The next step is to identify where the tree’s can be planted, and PECT are looking to everyone to help with this – schools, public and council. The scheme they hope to start in the late autumn and will be advertised later on in the year. This is good news….
(See full size poster at the end of this article.
3/ Police matters & CCTV report – Under a new reporting system, I quote the following from the Neighbourhood Sergeant ” This report is shared in the interests of information sharing with key partners under legal information sharing protocols. It is not intended for reproduction in any public forum online or otherwise“.
Therefor I am not able to reproduce or report what I have heard or seen.
4/ Public Forum – I brought up several issues:-
a) The serious altercation which took place on High Street (pedestrian area) between a hard of hearing OAP and a vehicle, where-by the OAP was verbally abused when confronting the vehicle – See my previous posting. I asked our councillors that it was time that ‘someone’ – Police/County CC/Our councillors took responsibility for this on-going problem – See my posting 07th June
b) The state of our ‘Zebra Crossings’ – No paint (last time I complained was told there was no money for paint) – I now believe these ‘Crossings’ do not comply with regulations.
c) The forever on-going Grass Cutting debacle – which Cllr Wicks and others agreed had been an issue for a number of years. Once more I asked why FDC ‘officials’ were not being held to account! – It is all very well that the contractors have had a ‘notice’ placed on them – this was only done after many complaints and local press pressure!
e) The ‘Hole Digging’ campaign at Kings Dyke A605 – 4 holes moving slowly down the road – maybe ‘they’ will eventually find what they are looking for….causing traffic issues – again.
f) Mr Peter Baxter gave a presentation on the reasoning why ‘he’ thought the Kings Dyke Bridge should NOT be built – his argument centred around whether or if ‘An Environmental Impact Assessment’ had been carried out and if not could lead to serious delays in getting the Bridge built including the possibility of a Judicial review
(A JR is a type of court proceeding in which a judge reviews the lawfulness of a decision or action made by a public body. In other words, judicial reviews are a challenge to the way in which a decision has been made, rather than the rights and wrongs of the conclusion reached.)
g) The leader of Benwick & Chatteris Speedwatch gave a brief update of their campaign.
One vehicle going at speed the detector could not register the speed.
h) Mr Bernard Gray-Esson asked for updates on a question he raised several months ago regarding the ‘issues and concerns’ around Kings Delph Layby.
5/ Other items for discussion
a) Must Farm – meeting held last Wednesday – final proposal for ‘Heritage Centre’
b) Neighbourhood Plan – Poor response by councillors giving input to the proposals for the Draft Policies – on-going.
c) Planning permission for the ‘New’ Council Offices – (Old Police Station) – submitted to FDC
d) Whittlesea Station Lighting – Utter confusion – who owns what and where is ongoing for-ever – now the latest is the ‘temporary’ LED lighting could be installed – which was originally proposed 4+ years ago.
e) Syrian Refugees – No updates.
f) Whittlesey Master Plan – now being rebranded to – ‘Growing Fenland’ under the combined authority.
g) Kings Dyke – Bridge – No update.
Date of next meeting Wednesday 11th July 2018
e&oe Roy Gerstner.
