A DRAMATIC intervention by a group of neighbours in Hammersley Lane, Tylers Green this week put an immediate stop on contractors clearing woodland behind their homes.
The neighbours, assisted by local councillors, persuaded the council to impose a temporary tree preservation order on the remaining trees. They say they have been told that the area was being cleared to enable a planning application for up to a dozen houses to be built on the two acre site.
The land is behind Hilltop and neighbouring homes. Residents inquired what was happening when workmen arrived last week and were told the work was woodland management. However they soon became alarmed. It wasn’t woodland management but woodland removal, they said in a letter to the council.
Following urgent lobbying over the weekend Buckinghamshire Council issued a tree preservation order on Monday morning, forcing the work to stop.
The order says the woodland is within the Gomm Valley site and “an important component of the visual amenity and local landscape character.” It added: “The council wishes to prevent any works that are unsympathetic or harmful to the health of the woodland and the visual amenity it provides.”
The site abuts a nature reserve in the Gomm Valley and overlooks an area where an outline planning application has been submitted to build up to 1,000 homes in the valley.
The Hammersley Lane site is privately owned and the owners have until the end of the month to appeal against the council’s order.
The residents are appealing to the rest of Penn and Tylers Green for support in upholding the order. Their open letter is at the end of this blog.
Briefly…
Winter’s garage – The planning application to convert the former Winter’s Garage in Church Road, Penn, into a house has been withdrawn. There had been a number of objections, mainly on the grounds that the proposed house was too big for the site. The garage is part of Slade’s garage opposite.
Pothole protest – Beaconsfield MP Joy Morrissey has secured a meeting with Department of Transport officials to discuss the state of some roads in this area. She told the House of Commons that too many roads in the Beaconsfield area are “blighted with potholes”
Tidy award – A group from Penn and Tylers Green are one of 30 in the county that have been awarded a Keep Britain Tidy Network Award for clearing the roadsides of rubbish and litter last September.
Coronavirus update
- Penn and Tylers Green Football Club, together with hundreds of other smaller clubs in the Step 3 to 6 stages of football, have completed a Football Association survey on their views about the current season. The club’s players have neither trained nor played a game since mid-December. It’s expected the FA will make a statement next week, probably abandoning the league programme.
- In our immediate area the number of new Covid cases has remained static, although for the first time for two months they have fallen to single figures in Tylers Green. In the seven days to last Saturday there were eight new cases in Tylers Green compared to 11 in the previous seven days. In Penn, which also includes Holmer Green and Knotty Green, there were 18 compared to 20; but in Hazlemere the figure has risen to 18 compared to 13 in the previous week.
- In Buckinghamshire there were 181 new cases reported yesterday. This compares with 868 on the worst day of the pandemic on 29 December. Official figures show that in the week from 16 to 22 January there were more deaths (86) recorded in the county among those who had tested positive in the previous 28 days than any other week in the pandemic. In total 815 people have died from Covid in Buckinghamshire.
- Public Health England figures released yesterday covering all 315 local authorities in England shows that Slough has the fourth highest number of infections in the country (482 cases per 100,000 population in the seven days to 20 January). Wycombe is 98th with 285, Aylesbury 112th with 274; South Bucks 190th with 219 and Chiltern 222nd with 199.
- School bus companies in Buckinghamshire, who reckon they have lost £400,000 in the pandemic, are to be compensated with around £300,000 from a special council fund.
Where is all the village traffic coming from?
HERE’S a letter written to this blog from someone in the village whom I know but who has asked to remain anonymous:
Having just walked to Holy Trinity Church and back I have to assume that Covid does not exist in Penn and Tylers Green. Due to suffering from cancer and being over 70 I have spent most of the last year being shielded and have taken it very seriously. Other than walking around the village, we do not get out. Thanks to Joe, Dip and supermarkets who deliver, we are coping fine though.
Two weeks ago I decided to walk to Joe’s to drop off an order and then walk to Holy Trinity Church for a time of peace and reflection. Imagine my horror, at a time when Covid rates and deaths just keep rising, to see the streams of traffic on the Penn Road and also around the village.
With lockdown rules that you can go to work if you cannot work from home, go for medical appointments or for shopping I cannot believe that the hundreds of cars out mid to late morning were all abiding by the rules. What has to happen to make these people realise the dangers they are putting everybody else in?
Regional news
Flooding alerts – The Environment Agency yesterday imposed a red alert along the entire stretch of the non-tidal Thames from Lechlade to Teddington, meaning that boats should not attempt to navigate the river because it is difficult and dangerous. There is flooding along many stretches of the banks. There are seven flood warnings and 18 flood alerts in operation in Buckinghamshire. Ferry Lane in Cookham was closed yesterday as the Thames burst its banks. The road between Bourne End and Cookham was closed at the Hedsor junction.
Driving centre saved -The Government confirmed yesterday that it is intending to keep a driving test centre in High Wycombe and is looking to develop a site in Cressex. The news was announced in an adjournment debate in the House of Commons after a campaign against earlier plans to close the existing centre forcing learning drivers in the area to take their test in Slough, Uxbridge or Aylesbury.
Drug increase – The increase in the number of drug-related admissions to hospitals in Buckinghamshire was the highest in the south-east, NHS figures revealed this week. There has been a 497 per cent increase in the past decade.
Plea to save farmers’ fields
IT’S only mud. Put on your wellies and walk through it. That’s the message farmers and conservation groups sent this week after a combination of wet, wet weather and hundreds, if not thousands, of extra walkers in our area put a real strain on farmers’ patience.
Georgia Craig from the National Farmers Union said: “People are welcome on the signposted rights of way but straying off those paths means crops will get trampled, affecting farmers’ businesses. At this time of year crops might still be below the surface or look similar to grass, but walking on them will compact and damage the growing plants.”
Penn Street Farm, pictured above, is a good example. The path is normally a metre wide through the middle of the field. Now its grown to eight metres wide at either end as people try to walk round the mud and walk on crops instead.
Conservationists are concerned too. Dr Elaine King from the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty said some walkers abandoned paths and followed field edges instead, sometimes damaging areas important for wildlife. She said: “The message is clear, please keep to the paths.”
Not a scam, but…
THERE’S been social media chat in the village about a letter most people have received from an organisation called Nextdoor inviting them to download its free app to find out about information that’s useful in a local community. Some people have downloaded the app and think it’s fine; others are more cautious.
There’s nothing illegal about Nextdoor – an American company that has launched its app amongst local communities around the world, but some of its methods to reach customers have been described as questionable. The organisation Malwarebytes reached the following conclusion about it under the headline Not a scam, but…
“Like many other apps of this kind, Nextdoor gathers information about its customers and uses it for targeted marketing. Given the type of data – community information, locations, names – this is extremely valuable for marketing purposes, but could also be a security issue.
“Sharing your information with people that live in your neighbourhood, but that you really don’t know very well, could have its drawbacks as well. We advise not to ask everyone to keep an eye out while you share your vacation plans. You may also be informing the resident burglar. Stay vigilant everyone.”
My thanks to Peter Strutt for finding this info which, if you want to read in full, is on https://blog.malwarebytes.com/privacy-2/2019/08/nextdoor-neighborhood-app-sends-letters-on-its-users-behalf/
HS2 update
- The 900 construction staff working for HS2 and its contractors in the Chilterns are tested every two weeks for coronavirus. So far this year just 14 have tested positive and consequently put into isolation. Work on the railway was delayed in the new year when hundreds of foreign workers from the continent returned after their Christmas break and had to spend two weeks in isolation.
- Archeologists are expected to resume their work on the part of the prehistoric earthwork Grim’s Ditch which lies in the path of HS2 near The Lee this month after wet weather forced them to pause. As well as unexpected evidence of Iron Age settlements in the Chilterns, the HS2 dig continues to make surprising discoveries including, last month, 12th century cattle horns on the site of the original Bull Ring in Birmingham and a well-preserved but previously unknown Elizabethan garden in Warwickshire.
- Work on a big HS2 accommodation block for railway workers will begin later this month near the southern entrance to the Chilterns tunnel by Chalfont Lane near Denham. It will cater for hundreds of extra workers due in the area when the two giant tunnel boring machines begin their drilling in early May. It will also accommodate workers starting to construct the two mile viaduct over the lakes of the Colne Valley Regional Park at Denham. Two new work compounds alongside the A412 near Denham will also appear early next month. The accommodation block and the compounds will be in situ for around five years. A massive slurry treatment plant is currently under construction.
- There will be overnight road closures on the A413 Gerrards Cross to Wendover road later this month and early March at the junctions with Bottom House Farm Lane near Chalfont St Giles and Gore Hill in Amersham to improve road access for HS2 construction vehicles.
- Contractors expect that Whielden Lane in Amersham will reopen at the end of this month. The lane runs alongside the Amersham ventilation shaft which remains under construction. Its closure has meant buses and traffic going to Amersham Hospital have been diverted. Work will begin shortly on a ventilation shaft in Chesham Road near Great Missenden.
- The construction companies announced this week that once the rail-side building sites around Denham have been cleared the land will not be restored as arable land but as wildflower meadow and calcareous grassland, grazed by cattle and other animals.
Gabby’s blooper
Penn resident Gabby Logan is, of course, a respected and talented sports broadcaster. But you have never really made it in that esteemed profession until you have appeared in Private Eye’s infamous Commentatorballs column.
So congratulations to her on achieving that after a reader of that scurrilous mag noticed this blooper of hers on a BBC commentary… “These young players, who’d never had a debut before…“
An open letter to Penn and Tylers Green residents…
WE are writing to bring to your attention ecological destruction on our doorsteps. Off Hammersley Lane last week tree clearance contractors were brought in to clear a woodland area under the guise of “woodland management”.
The land seems to have a development interest, even though it is home to a wonderful emerging woodland full of deer, pheasants, badgers, hedgehogs, squirrels, foxes, muntjac, butterflies, birds, and a whole host of other fauna and flora.
It borders the Gomm Valley and acts as a green border and buffer to the proposed development there.
Residents on Hammersley Lane, Buckinghamshire Council, and our local politicians acted quickly to stop the destruction, giving some respite to the animals calling this area of Penn and Tylers Green their home. An interim Tree Preservation Order (TPO) has been implemented but to make this permanent we need your help.
Please help the protection of this green haven from further destruction and development by writing to your local Arboricultural Officer and confirming your support for – TPO order number 01/2021 Location: off Hammersley Lane adjacent to Hilltop, Penn, HP10 8HG
His email address is: Alastair.Cunningham@buckinghamshire.gov.uk
Alastair Cunningham,Senior Arboricultural Officer, Planning & Environment, Buckinghamshire Council, Queen Victoria Road, High Wycombe, HP11 1BB
We have already lost a half acre of woodland, which will need to be restocked with a new tree infrastructure. Your support for a permanent TPO will ensure that we can retain this incredible woodland habitat.
Yours sincerely,
Residents of Hammersley Lane
This blog is being updated weekly during the February lockdown. Next update Friday 12 February.
To contact this blog email peter@pennandtylersgreen.com