Coronavirus update
- Our immediate area is going against the trend of falling new coronavirus cases. In the seven days to last Saturday there were 21 new cases in the Penn/Holmer Green/Knotty Green area compared to 18 in the previous seven days. In Hazlemere there were 26 new cases compared to 18 the week before, while in Tylers Green the figure remained static – eight new cases last week; eight the week before.
- Penn Surgery and Highfield Surgery, the two main GP surgeries in the village, are well on schedule in their Covid vaccination programme. In fact some under-70 patients at Penn Surgery had their vaccine this week, before Monday’s target for all over-70s to be vaccinated
- Penn 7 and Fun Run, due to be held on 20 June, has been cancelled for the second year in succession because the organisers feel they don’t have sufficient preparation time. The local scouts spring jumble sale, due at the village hall in April, has also been cancelled for the second year.
- The first centre for rapid testing for Covid in Wycombe opened this week at the council offices in Queen Victoria Road. Our local ambulance service says it plans to use rapid testing – known as lateral flow tests – on all patients at home before transporting them to hospital. It’s beginning a trial in the Oxford area.
- Visits to the dentist by under-18s dropped by more than 50 per cent in Buckinghamshire last year compared to a normal year, figures released to the Bucks Herald from a Freedom of Information request show. Councillors are due to consider the pandemic’s impact on dental services next month.
Beauty and the beast
Briefly…
Crime dips – Crime fell slightly in December compared to the lockdown month of November in the Chepping Wye police area, which includes Tylers Green and Hazlemere. There were 77 reported incidents compared to 94 in November. In the Chalfonts area, which includes Penn, the figures were exactly the same – 112 in November and 112 in December. In both areas violence and anti-social behaviour accounted for more than half reported crimes.
House demolitions – Planning applications submitted this week include one to demolish 24 New Road, Tylers Green and replace the existing house with two semis. Plans to demolish the three bedroom house at 182 Penn Road and replace it with a four bedroom house have also been put forward.
Council objects – Penn parish councillors are objecting to a plan to convert an old barn opposite The Chinnery in Church Road, Penn into a small house.
Local shops thriving says report
SHOPS in Beaconsfield have thrived during the pandemic according to a report this week by a retail property consultant.
The company studied a thousand retail centres in Britain as part of an annual “vitality ranking” and moved Beaconsfield from 64th position last year to top this year. Henley was second.
“Beaconsfield is one of the many smaller, accessible, commuter-belt towns which have outperformed city centre destinations as consumers’ shopping habits have become very localised as a result of the pandemic,” the report by Harper Dennis Hobbs says.
“Shopping patterns have changed significantly since the start of the pandemic and consumers’ local high streets are benefitting at the expense of major destinations. Affluence is a factor here, and some consumers are protected from job losses seen in other industries.”
Beaconsfield MP Joy Morrissey said this week that 3,700 businesses in the Beaconsfield region had received £200m worth of Government-backed loans since the start of the pandemic.
Regional news
- Two lifts came into operation at Amersham Station last week, greatly improving wheelchair and disabled access at the tube and mainline station. Previously, wheel-chair passengers had to cross the line to access north-bound trains. Manual boarding ramps are also supplied to help those boarding national rail services.
- Buckinghamshire is to install 32 on-street electric vehicle charging points in roads where off-street parking is unavailable in the next few weeks. They will be the first of hundreds that will appear on streets in the coming years.
- Anthony Stansfeld, the elected police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley Police, has been reported to the independent Office for Police Conduct after a police and crime panel upheld a complaint against him that he got involved in a civil matter that was outside his jurisdiction. He denies the allegation.
- Land Registry figures show house prices in Buckinghamshire rose 4.6 per cent last year. The average price of a house in the county was £397,000 by the end of November 2019. It had risen to £415,000 by the end of November 2020.
- Councillors will debate a scheme next week to plant more than half a million trees in Buckinghamshire – one for each person in the county – over a ten year period.
On the back benches
Ex’s down -The pandemic is costing the taxpayers a fortune, but at least we’re not paying as much for our MPs. In the latest publication of MPs expenses Penn’s MP Dame Cheryl Gillan, who has been self-isolating for virtually the entire year and can only speak in Parliament via Zoom, claimed £1,500 in travel expenses in 2019/20. In this current financial year so far it’s £10.
Even the ubiquitous Wycombe (and Tylers Green) MP Steve Baker, who is certainly far from self-isolating, hasn’t claimed as much in this lockdown year – £10,478 this year so far compared to £16,318 last.
Tackling scammers – Police minister Kit Malthouse told Penn’s MP Dame Cheryl Gillan this week that since its launch last April the Suspicious Email Reporting Service – part of the National Cyber Security Centre – had removed 30,000 scams from the internet. Dame Cheryl is campaigning for tougher penalties against scammers.
In another debate Mr Malthouse told Wycombe (and Tylers Green) MP Steve Baker that surveys showed 85 per cent of the public were satisfied or fairly satisfied with the way the police had acted during the pandemic.
Airlines plea – Beaconsfield MP Joy Morrissey is urging the Government to commission and fund airlines and airports to directly run the proposed coronavirus border restrictions as they have “the experience, market innovation and incentive to deliver safe travel for Britain.” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that was the Government’s goal.
Don’t panic!
There are some similarities between this crisis and the last one 80 years ago. Take the lack of PPE at the beginning for instance.
Peter Bond published on the admirable High Wycombe Now and Then Facebook site this week a letter he unearthed from March 1941 addressed to the local Home Guard units in the 4th Bucks Battalion.
Not all the Home Guard volunteers had been supplied yet with military caps so a decision had to be made on which type of civilian headgear should be worn by our cap-less warriors for the sake of uniformity. The letter gave a list of possibilities: Homburg/trilby; porkpie; cloth cap; bowler; moleskin with earflaps, straw boaters, berets or deer-stalkers.
The commander concludes: “It is suggested that the bowler imparts, when worn with the serge battledress, an appearance of solid respectability, with the additional advantage that when an issue of cap badges is made the material and shape of this hat would render the fixing of the badge an easy matter.”
Within days a newspaper published the cartoon below. It has to be said: keeping a sense of humour in the face of adversity is something we’re rather good at.
This blog will be next updated on Friday, 19 February. To contact me please email peter@pennandtylersgreen.com