Archive for category: News

The parish council is proposing a new chicane at the junction of the B4009 and Aston Rowant Road. Further, the council proposes lowering the speed limit in Aston Rowant village from 30mph to 20mph.

Oxfordshire County Council as the overseeing authority has opened a consultation into the two proposals via https://letstalk.oxfordshire.gov.uk. The documentation regarding the proposal are in the attachments below.

Comments need to be lodged by 23 September 2021.

 

Update:

A note for those interested in taking part or avoiding the area.

On Saturday 21 August, the Glorious Gravel Chilterns ride will be held for cyclists looking to complete a 92km route.

Based around the Chilterns, the route will start and finish in Kingston Blount. More detail is here and a map of the (updated) route is below.

In either respect – taking part or avoiding the cyclists – you have been warned.

Over recent years, vehicle speeds exceeding the legal limits on roads in and around the parish of Aston Rowant have become an issue of considerable concern. So much so that your parish council (ARPC) has collaborated with Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) to address this problem head-on. The results of OCC Highways monitoring equipment in 2020 clearly demonstrated that action was urgently required to make our roads safer for all users.

Devices to control vehicle speeds are known as “traffic calming installations”. These methods come in various forms which are now familiar features on roads throughout the UK and include computer monitored average speed cameras; speed humps; road narrowing pinch points and chicanes, to name but a few.

The most recent application of traffic calming measures in the parish was building a chicane at the southern approach to Kingston Blount (just south of the junction of the B4009 and Kingston Hill/Stert Road).  The effectiveness of this installation triggered the proposal for a chicane at the junction of the B4009 and the Aston Road village road, another busy location.

OCC therefore designed a similar construction for Aston Rowant, painted a provisional layout on the road surface, and on Tuesday 27^th July built a temporary chicane of traffic cones to monitor the practicalities of such a future installation.

This test run was very successful and demonstrated that, even without full road signage, traffic speeds were significantly reduced, and junction safety was visibly improved.

For those not familiar with this form of traffic calming, chicanes regulate traffic speed by means of creating a serpentine curve in a road, added by design rather than dictated by geography. They slow traffic approaching a lower speed limit zone requiring them to give-way to oncoming vehicles heading towards a raised speed limit. The chicane proposed for Aston Rowant is in fact a mirror of the Kingston Blount installation, with similar proximity to the Kingston Hill junction as that proposed for the Aston Rowant village road.

Traffic from Kingston Blount approaching the 30mph stretch of road at Aston Rowant will be required to give-way to vehicles heading in the opposite direction. Kingston Blount bound traffic will be slowed down but have priority and flow uninterrupted past the junction.

Before finalising the design and precise location of any calming installation, and following test runs, OCC will conduct a consultation process which involves the police service, fire and ambulance authorities, and publishing information in local media. In the case of Aston Rowant, this process will also apply to the forthcoming implementation of a change of limit from 30mph to 20mph within the village itself and, beyond that, potentially extending the same reduction to 20mph on village roads in Kingston Blount.

Comments on all calming proposals are also welcomed from the general public, and to that end ARPC suggest that if you have any queries or comments on the current scheme please put them in writing to myself and I will share them with OCC in order to contribute towards their decision making procedure.

Cllr John Wyatt

Traffic Calming Coordinator for Aston Rowant

 

 

It has become apparent that trees, close to the church, are interfering with the power supply in Aston Rowant.

This has been reported to SSEN and the landowner is helping the network prune the trees back.

SSEN has an obligation to protect the power supply. It’s easy to report trees that are interfering with power lines. Navigate to this webpage or call 0800 048 3516.

The trees will be cut back at no cost to the landowner.

Eight weeks on from my last message to those that have expressed interest, an update on FTTP in the parish.

Let me start by saying that running this FTTP process is painful and at times I feel that it might be easier to lower the Atlantic than raise the Titanic.

Following a recent Teams meeting with two high-level Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) contacts running the FTTP rollout across Oxfordshire I now understand more of what is an incredibly opaque process. It should also be noted that OCC are as frustrated as I am; they are having to run between Openreach and Whitehall and the ground rules seem to be in a state of flux.

In summary, delays were fed into the process following a change of voucher scheme in February and new terms and conditions applied to the replacement scheme. Due to the changes set out in the new terms, Openreach entered into extensive talks with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). This was meant to have been resolved by the end of May and then by the end of June. The contacts at OCC have confirmed to me today that this has now, finally, been resolved… to the best of their knowledge.

According to OCC, our scheme looks to be fully funded from the conversations they have had with both myself and Openreach. This means that we, as residents, shouldn’t have to pay for any of the infrastructure providing we pledge our vouchers in the correct timeframe and we meet the terms and conditions for the voucher scheme.

However, in June – see https://news.oxfordshire.gov.uk/gigabit-capable/ – Openreach unilaterally decided that it would commercially (not part of a voucher scheme) bring FTTP to a number of exchanges. Kingston Blount was announced as one of the exchanges featuring in that rollout. The theory is that these exchanges will be FTTP enabled by 2026, however what OCC does not have sight of is confirmation of what proportion of premises on an exchange will benefit from this rollout. In other words, it may miss out some.

Will this impede our use of the voucher scheme? Both I and OCC don’t know, but rest assured both myself and the council are looking at every option available to us.

Our scheme has now been sent to the DCMS for approval and until we know more there’s no telling which way it’ll go. However, what we are aware of, is if we are given the green light, then Openreach will ask DCMS to issue the vouchers to our community to verify that we can, and will, pledge them for our premises to the scheme. Residents will then receive validation emails where they will need to enter their details on a separate website within a certain timeframe. Following this step and the target value being reached once the pledges begin verifying, the process should lead to installations within a defined 12-month period.

So, what does all this mean? In answer, we are in a holding pattern for the moment and nothing else. It’s not ideal, but it’s not bad news either. The saving grace is that in the unfortunate event that our scheme is not approved, unlike other areas of the county, a solution will still present itself over the coming years.

Lastly, regarding Airband. I still feel that Openreach, one way or another, is the favoured option – for a number of reasons too. Firstly, it took Airband a year to garner just 26 expressions of interest. We’re at 158 with the vast majority coming though in two-three weeks. Secondly, Airband will tie subscribers into its offering; Openreach permits subscribers to use any ISP – BT, Sky, Zen and so on. Thirdly, while not guaranteed, because Openreach already has an extensive network it should require the installation of fewer telegraph poles.

I want to keep residents informed and am happy to take any questions.

As before, if you know of anyone not signed up, do send them my way. Remember – at this point there is no obligation and we gain strength through force of numbers.

Cllr. Adam Bernstein
T: 01844 350440
M: 07785 905120
E: