Published: 27 Aug 24
Hopefully everyone is still enjoying the summer - as we write the forecast is for dry and settled weather for at least the next couple of weeks !
There are a number of things to report since our last post and village hall newsletter item.
We hoped to have completed the re-marking of the village hall car park in advance of the flower show but unfortunately things didn’t go completely to plan. After a morning’s very hard work to remove the loose gravel from the car park surface it rained immediately before the contractor was due to repaint the white lines.
This brought a lot more dust and loose material to the surface and the contractor advised that his method of lining would not be durable enough to be worthwhile. However, our ‘Plan B’ is to etch the parking spaces ourselves with an appropriate acrylic marker which can be done at negligible cost. Whilst this approach is not as permanent as having it done professionally, it is very cheap and can be continually refreshed as required. We are about to mark the spaces on the playing field side of the car park as a trial.
This year’s flower show was clearly a huge success and we hope that visitors will have appreciated the outstanding condition of the recreation ground on the day. The parish council are extremely grateful to our grounds contractor who returned in the middle of his family holiday to ensure that everything was properly cut and tidied in readiness.
As readers will be aware from our previous post, as part of our agreement with our grounds contractor we have a number of ‘ranger days’ built in every month for work beyond the normal process of cutting and maintenance. He has now completed cutting back the edges of the village hall car park and has also just recut the length of Orchard Path. His next priorities include the footpath leading to the bus stop on the Montacute Road and the vegetation around the church perimeter wall.
The parish council often deals queries regarding use of the recreation ground, and it can become complicated with regard to liabilities, insurance and balancing the requirements and safety of different users. We have recently posted our ‘Recreation Ground Usage and Access Policy’ which clarifies the principles around the use of the recreation ground, and it can be found at POLICIES - Odcombe Parish Council
We also recently organised a walk around the village for the purpose of assessing areas that could be improved. We are very grateful to Mark Rodber and Steve Cook for their contribution to this. A number of issues were immediately obvious - most notably badly overgrown hedges and verges in a number of places that are constraining visibility, narrowing the roads and obscuring road signs.
Terry Heath wrote to Somerset Council to ask whether they will be doing further hedge and verge cutting, and their immediate response was that they will not. We are therefore hiring our own contractor to manage the most badly affected areas in Dray Road, Boundhay and Donne Lane and areas in Lower Odcombe. We are hoping that this can be done as early as possible in September.
Terry also wrote to our local councillors to request action on a range of other issues that were noted including obscured signposts, dilapidated street name signs and so on. We are awaiting their response. Some of the hedge and vegetation growth that was noted is the responsibility of individual homeowners and we are writing to request that it be cut back.
One of the things that was evident during our walk around the village was that even where individual shrubs or bushes encroach the highway it can force drivers into the centre or opposite side of the road which constrains traffic and is obviously also a safety issue.
We are very grateful to our local PCSO who manages to attend the start of most of our meetings despite an extremely busy and pressured role. On a positive note, she informed our previous meeting that incidents of crime in and around Odcombe are very low compared to neighbouring areas. She has also managed to produce a dataset that focuses specifically on our area and we hope to publish this on the website as soon as we receive it.
She is also always happy to discuss highways-related and other matters with residents when requested.
Adam Dance, the Member of Parliament for Yeovil has written to local parish councils to ascertain the views of local residents regarding the reopening of Chinnock Hollow. This is because our local councillors have asked him to write to the Minister of State for Transport to ask for special funding to do so.
We intend to randomly sample 25 homes in the village to ascertain their views on the reopening of Chinnock Hollow in order that we can respond to this request in an informed way. However, if you would like to be certain that your view is included in our response, please email Terry Heath at clerk@odcombeparishcouncil.gov.uk
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