Village Plan
You all will remember that the Parish Plan for Keinton Mandeville was published in May of this year. This plan summarises all of your wishes needs, and ideas to improve the quality of life in the village in the next few years. However, the plan is not fixed in stone and is a rolling programme that will be revised and updated as circumstances change. We are delighted to let you know that a number of actions have already taken place which are detailed below. However, there are a number of outstanding actions, which require volunteers from the village but we have not been overwhelmed so far! Please, please do take the time to have another look through the plan and see if you could offer to do something.
So what has been happening?
Community safety
Neighbourhood Watch now has a huge database of contacts and the whole village is covered. This is a real success and all the other community safety objectives in the plan are underway. Sgt N Stone from Somerton, attended the April Parish Council meeting in response to a letter highlighting issues from the parish plan to explain about future policing in Keinton Mandeville. Community speed watch is up and running and identifying those drivers who speed habitually through our village.
Economy
The Parish Council has invited the South Somerset District Council Community Regeneration Ofiteir to attend a forthcoming PC agenda to give advice on starting the business register project. We are looking for volunteers to take this project forward, maybe a local business? Please contact Beverley on 223743. You may be interested to know that there is now a mobile wet fish van that visits the village weekly.
Education and Learning
After school club, pre school, play scheme, adult leaming 1 evening classes.
Environment
We asked for volunteers for footpath maintenAnce group in Parish magazine and have 2 members already. the Parish Council have registered for Parish Paths stewardship scheme and are looking into the state of the stiles in the village. The Sea Scouts are intending to produce a footpath map of the village, which will enable us all to find out where all those paths are.
Litter picks already take place twice yearly and we are very grateful to the handful of people who front this up. 127 people offered to help with litter picks via the parish plan questionnaire.
3 dog bins have been purchased recently which should sort one of the main gripes expressed in the consultation and a litterbin has been purchased for the green. The Parish Council will be discussing purchase of one for the bus shelter. Unfortunately, community composting has proved not to be economically viable at the moment.
Health
The village hall committee have been asked to look into potential use of the surgery area for complementary therapies, extension of Doctoes surgery etc.
Housing
An affordable Housing Site has been identified and an application is currently being considered by Highways. A key objective is for the village to produce a design statement as this will enable us to have a greater say in what nature and style of developments are permitted in the future. We desperately need a small committee to undertake this work. Please call Vega on 223759 if you would like more information.
Leisure and cultural activities
A website is currently being set up. All village groups have been contacted and asked to provide details of group organisation to webmaster who hopes to have various links including one to the village diary.
Transport and traffic
Initial research is being carried out with Somerset Highways in order to try to reduce the speed and volume of traffic driving through our village. The first option to be considered is pinch points. These discussions regularly take several years to come to fruition as a great deal of feasibility work has to be carried out in order to find the right solution for the problem.
In the meantime, temporary flashing speed indicators (for 1 week at each end of village) have been promised by the Highways engineer. Police have been informed of all parking issues, on pavements/double yellow lines at crossroads, and particularly at the school. A meeting was held between Parish Councillors, Highways officer, Head teacher, SSDC officer about parking at school which will result in the creation of a new turning area fbr buses.
Youth
A Youth Champion has been appointed by the Parish Council, Chris Harrow, who will be visiting all local youth groups in the near future.
Finally, please don't say 'When are THEY going to do something about this' anymore. This is our plan and we should be saying 'When are WE going to do something about this'. Please volunteer. Contact Beverley. Contact Stephen.