Tag Archives: Wokingham District Council

Current Affairs, Politics

Welcome to the Borough of Wokingham

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So as of today, we now live in the Borough of Wokingham, after the local council changed it’s name for the third time in five years. The other change is that the Council Chairman is now called the Mayor of Wokingham – a slight confusion with the other Mayor of Wokingham, who is Mayor of Wokingham town only. The Wokingham Borough name is not new though – the name was used up until 1974 when Wokingham Borough, and Wokingham Rural District were brought together to form Wokingham District, which existed under Berkshire County Council, until that was abolished in 1998.

The BBC is mocking the whole name change too, especially as the council is reacting to the many complaints that it is a waste of money by saying that none of the signs will be changed… So why bother?

According to the leader of the Council Frank Browne, it is to get ‘proper’ funding – as if changing the name will have any effect. Sadly, I think he may find that the reduced funding is as much to do with the fact that Wokingham regularly comes high up in quality of life surveys due to the high earnings and above average house prices across the area.

In reality I suspect the name change is as much to do with being called a borough, and having a mayor as any of this stuff over money – just local councillors wanting to make themselves sound important – if they were really concerned about money, they wouldn’t be wasting it on another pointless name change would they? After all, the new name isn’t going to change the people actually running the local authority…

General

High Winds + Bin Day

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So this morning and last night I had the joy of dealing with the unfortunate combination of high winds and bin day. Whilst it is pretty minor compared to some of the other results of the weather, it still wasn’t an overly fun start to the day, nor greeting for getting home.

As well as being bin day, yesterday was also our recycling day, so all along the street, everybody had their two recycling boxes out. Unlike some councils, our recycling boxes are just open plastic tubs, which proves a bit of a problem for keeping stuff inside them in inclement weather. I came home to find our two boxes emptied and left on the kerb, but in the middle of our drive were two more boxes, surrounded by a large amount of plastic bottles, tin cans and bits of cardboard, with more of the same strewn all across our front garden. I couldn’t actually get onto the drive, so I quickly collected all I could into the boxes, and put them on the kerb too. The recycling collectors, like the bin men, now have a policy of not going onto householders property, so will only collect from the kerbside – this also seems to extend to situations like yesterday, where the boxes have fairly obviously blown over – anything that isn’t in a box at the kerbside is ignored.

Come this morning, the orphaned boxes still hadn’t been claimed, and more than that it was starting to act in the same way as a skip left on the road, as I spotted one of our neighbours chucking more stuff into it. As a result I decided that I’d remove the box from where it was, as any more wind would leave the contents all over our garden again. I picked it up and put it in our garage alongside our boxes, and if nobody comes around to claim them I guess we’ll put them out in two weeks time ready for the next collection.

General

Traffic Chaos Gets Worse

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Things got a whole load worse this week with the closure of the A327 that I blogged about last week. Whilst we had a nice break over the Bank Holiday, with the road being reopened from late Friday afternoon until Tuesday morning, the barriers were back up on Tuesday night. However another of the badly timed local roadworks made it’s presence felt today, with three way traffic lights in the middle of Finchampstead for water main renewal – Finchampstead being the unofficial way most people have been going rather than the official diversion which goes via Reading and Hook. (As an aside, it is worth noting that the New Mill has officially published directions to it’s customers telling them to ignore the diversions and come through Finchampstead – is anyone actually following the official diversion?)

Interestingly, Finchampstead Parish Council spotted that there may be a problem and have the following statement on their site:

From Tuesday 2nd August, the 12 and 15 inch water main through Finchampstead will be relined by SE Water’s contractors Pipeway, … this task will take 5-6 weeks. Inevitably, temporary traffic lights will be in use at times.

To compound the potential traffic disruption, from Monday 15 August the A327 at Eversley Street (southwards from Bluebeckers), is to be completely closed (by Hampshire County Council) for up to 8 weeks to allow for major road repairs. Although some HGV traffic will be diverted, we can expect significant volumes of extra traffic to use Fleet Hill/The Village and also Longwater Road (and hence other Finchampstead routes), in their attempts to find alternative routes past the closure. This closure will be featured on TV news programs to alert drivers.

Clearly, there will be 4 weeks where these works overlap. WDC will closely monitor the situation.

For those who are wondering, WDC is Wokingham District Council, and from previous experience when complaining about badly timed roadworks, will take the tough luck, can’t be that bad attitude, when of course the staff involved, as with those at Hampshire County Council who planned the A327 closure, don’t actually have to sit in the road works every day.

Of course as anybody with children will know, the real problems will start next week, when with the two sets of road works in full swing, all the schools go back, so in addition to the extra school run traffic there will be a number of school buses, and parents parking dropping their kids outside Finchampstead School on the route that everybody is taking anyway. Quite frankly it will be absolute chaos, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is an accident somewhere in Finchampstead as a result.

If anyone feels the need to complain about this chaos, the two people responsible for the A327 are James Holt and Martin Milner of the Hampshire County Council Highways office, whose phone number is 01256 764444, and e-mail (thanks to Swallowfield Parish council) is hampshirehighways.north@hants.gov.uk. Whilst, as I’ve said, I fully accept that these things need to be done, it surely doesn’t take much to realise that if you close a major road, you should minimise any other disruption in the area.