News-in-brief from Draycott-In-The-Moors in late April 2018
In this post we have news of…: the forthcoming annual village assembly, rural crime questionnaire, the Blythe Colours archive on the move, local council inaction …
(NB – There are also dozens of events coming up in our locality – including a local police drop-in session… Check out the Events page)
For daily updates about life in our district, keep checking the village Facebook page
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Village get-together
It’s that time of year again when this village will be holding its annual community assembly – the yearly meeting when the residents come together to discuss how life is going in the village. It’s a custom that goes back over 150 years. (For more about village assemblies, click here and for their rules, click Parish Assembly rules).
This year however, the village councillors who are supposed to organise it have seemed less than interested in sorting it out. A date has only recently just been advertised for it (it is a fortnight away); it will be cut to just one hour this year; and it’s still not clear what will be happening in the meeting!
However, from what we can gather, it will be a local-information event. It’s hoped that village groups from Draycott/Cresswell/Totmonslow will take a stand at the event and be prepared to talk about what they do. However, if you also want to raise an issue for general discussion, just ask for it to be put on the agenda – any local elector can do it.
But it’s all a bit last-minute…
The 2018 Draycott-in-the-Moors-Parish assembly takes place at Draycott Church Hall on Monday 14th May from 6.30-7.30. To book a stand, email Dawn Plant
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Questions about crime
If you look at a map of our district of Draycott in the Moors civil-parish, you’ll see that the vast bulk of it is rural. Even most of us who live in the ribbons along Uttoxeter Road or Sandon Road overlook fields.
And this is why the Staffordshire Police Commission is asking communities like ours to help fill in the latest crime survey.
This questionnaire is about crime in rural areas specifically – whether enough is done to combat it, and why people in rural areas don’t report crime as much as those in urban areas.
The Rural Crime Network questionnaire only takes a few minutes to complete. If you do fill it in, you’ll make one of our local police officers, Sgt Rob Peacock (seen above with the Staffs Deputy Crime Commissioner Sue Arnold) a very happy man.
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Blythe Colours archive on the move
The difficult situation for the Cheadle History Centre will likely have a knock-on effect for history-lovers in Cresswell. (The centre at Cheadle has moved out of its current premises because the lease is up, and they have nowhere else to go).
Blythe Colours archive arrives in Cheadle
Volunteers from this website worked with the Cheadle history group to save the Blythe Colours Archive (see story), which consists of nearly three filing cabinets of material – all fascinating stuff if you lived and worked at the Cresswell factory over the last fifty years. It has been stored since 2015 at the group’s rooms in Cheadle High Street.
But where will the archive go now?
A temporary home has been found for it, but if nothing else turns up soon, it may have to be transferred out of the Moorlands to the Hanley Library Archive Centre. However, if you have ideas on what alternatively could be done with it, please use the Comments box at the bottom of this page.
Fortunately, we did manage to index all the material, and one of the volunteers has made a fantastic digital archive of it all, so progress has been made even in the short time it has been at Cheadle.
The website showing the material is really good, and well worth browsing if you have an hour or so to spare.
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Council Shenanigans
(Our local Draycott Council gets up to so many odd things that we simply haven’t been able to keep up, so we have given the council its own little section called ‘Council Shenanigans’. However, some people don’t like to read reviews of our leaders – so we suggest that those folk now click on to something else!)
Local Plan… not
Community-level councils such as Draycott Civil-Parish Council have very very few set responsibilities – but one of them is to comment on planning matters.
So, we were interested to see what our councillors would think of the Staffordshire Moorlands Local Plan Final Version. As the official body representing the electors here, our council’s views would have been taken seriously.
And what thoughts did our council contribute?
Umm… None.
This is pretty poor of them.
Virtually the whole of the Local Plan’s ‘rural areas allocation’ of housing & industry for the Moorlands has been shoved into Cresswell – thanks to the Blythe Park development plan – so, surely our council should have been falling over themselves to get their views heard (whether for or against).
However, apparently they thought not. (They have had since February to discuss the matter).
Poor Cresswell… ignored by its own councillors!
The last time our council put in thoughts about the Local Plan was back in the summer of last year, but they were supposed to renew them in time for this final consultation. They didn’t. It’s not clear if they forgot, or just didn’t bother.
Some residents did put in views though, which you can see on the Local Plan Comments page – including thoughts from VVSM, the Cresswell community-action group.
Public participation
Nearly all community-level councils, such as Draycott Council, have a public q&a session at the start of their meetings, because otherwise members of the public would not get a say (the public is not allowed to interrupt the actual formal proceedings).
However, in a strange move a couple of months ago, the council decided to put the q&a session to the back-end of the meeting.
This was very strange, as the poor old public would have had to sit through the one to two hours of proceedings just in order to be able to ask one question…
Not surprisingly, an objection was put in from the public… and the council reverted, and we are now back to a bit of sense.
If you want to put a question in person to the council, you are once again welcome to attend the start of council meetings at 7.30, and put your question then.
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RIP Jean
One of the grand old ladies of this district has passed away. Jean Edwards (born into the well-known local Shelley family) died at the end of April aged 93.
Her wish was not for floral tributes or the like at her funeral, but for mourners to give donations to her beloved St Margaret’s Church.
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Do you have news or information snippets that you think residents would like to see up on this website? If so – email us
Want to comment on any of the items on this page?
Just use the comments box – near the bottom of this page. (The form will ask if you wish to put in your email address. You don’t have to – and it is always kept private anyway and never published -, but, if you don’t add your email, that means you might miss any responses to your comment
Draycott in the Moors News & Comment Website 
Steve,
It’s refreshing to have a proactive response from the council; it’s a real shame that those running this website are so inconsistent with their views. It’s interesting how they are trying to blame the chairman for causing an election when others forced Mr Lee Warburton to stand down from running.
Matt Edwards
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Shenanigans and Flying Geese Paradigm.
OK – I admit it is a bit of a ‘rigmarole’ that the PC has gone through with the timing of public participation during council meetings.
But you recall that we only changed the immemorial custom of having people raise their issues at the start in response to a request from parishioner Glyn Johnson. He argued quite cogently that folk might want to absorb the whole meeting then put their questions to Cllrs at the end. We could have said ‘no’ but we wanted to give his novel idea a try.
Having done so the former practice seems best at giving residents a chance to speak and then leave once their issue has been dealt with.
This matter is a bit like when you asked for us to move the Parish Council tables around into a different shape, the ‘Akamatsu’ V-Wing formation, but we found paper planning applications tended to shoot onto the floor so we have returned to a normal format there too.
Cllr S.Jones. Draycott Council
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I have just read your post and wondered if you would like to pass on my details to the Blythe Colours group. I may be able to give a home to the archive, and display the materials, at the Blythe Centre (Blythe Bridge Library). Regards
Helen Bickerton For and on behalf of ‘Blythe Centre Your Community – Your Library’
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Excellent idea Helen: a fantastic place to display!!!
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Speaking of the (forthcoming Blythe Park housing & industrial estate) development in Creswell… there are a lot in the community who think it is good to grow.
Local business will expand, and hopefully a school will return for our kids instead of them heading into blythe bridge.
Let’s welcome the growth with open arms and stop being NIMBYs.
The alternative is to move elsewhere. Just a thought.
Matt Edwards
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You obviously haven’t read the plans or the S106 agreement.
There is no funding for a school, just for school places, which will be allocated in Blythe Bridge.
AN
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Regarding the PC’s seeming shameful indifference to SMDC’s Local Plan. I have answered this in the previous news comments – ‘The Parish Council’s approach is in line with being advised that collective responses to SMDC carry much less weight than multiple individual complaints’.
We care as much as any other resident about what happens in our parish, i’m sure you know that.
Cllr S.Jones. Draycott Council
ED’s Note: At the next parish council meeting, Steve was asked to explain where he had got hold of this idea that the opinion of a collective such as a council carried little weight, comparatively, and therefore councils need not make major protests. A senior councillor explained that this was incorrect, down to a misreading of a planning advice document.
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