Minutes:
Public Speaker one
Mr Alan Swift (member of the public) was accompanied by Robert Hutchings - Chair Burmington Parish Meeting and Dawn Fisher - Treasurer of Burmington Parish Meeting. Mr Swift spoke about a complaint made by Burmington Parish Council against the county council regarding their village’s green. Mr Swift made the following statement:
“We are here representing the Parish of Burmington, asking this committee to look into our complaint against Warwickshire County Council. We would like to ask this committee to appoint someone independent to review the details of our complaint and report back to this committee on their findings. Warwickshire County Council believes it can reclassify legally registered village greens in Warwickshire as being part of the Highway. They argue, that once reclassified a legally protected village green is no longer protected. It can then be driven on, parked on, dug up, tarmacked, even completely removed by widening the carriageway. In 2018 the County Council granted permission for a property developer to excavate a new 5m wide tarmacked driveway straight across the middle of our village green. There was no consultation and no notice. The Council state that they can return at any time to do further works on, what remains of our village green, and on any other village green that they decide is a part of the highway. When diggers turned up and started work excavating the village green, we notified the Council that this was a criminal offence. Rather than apologise, the County Council assigned their legal defence team to ‘impartially’ investigate the issue. It was impossible for this team to support our complaint without incriminating the Council. They did the only thing they could and attempted to bury the complaint and ignored it. It took two attempts by our MP, Nadhim Zahawi, to finally get the Council to respond. We eventually waited over a year to receive a biased response that frivolously dismissed all our evidence. For 3 years the Council’s legal team has blocked all attempts by the Parish to speak to anyone impartially, and openly about this issue, refusing all our requests for a meeting. Even our County Councillor was spoken to, inferring she was ‘warned off’ from helping the Parish. After two years we received a visit from someone from the Communities Directorate. However, they had been instructed by the Council’s solicitors to not discuss the issue and the legal protection of the village green, making the visit a waste of time. We just want someone impartial to talk to us openly and frankly about this issue. The basic issue is that, if Burmington Village Green is a legally registered village green, and that it isn’t a part of the Highway, then the Council has no power whatsoever to do anything on the land. In fact, to do any works on the land is a criminal offence. Some of our evidence supplied by the Parish to this committee includes a signed statement by the County Council’s own County Surveyor, stating that no part of Burmington Village Green can be a part of the Highway. Also attached, is a declaration by the clerk of Shipston Rural Council which has been legally witnessed by a Justice of the Peace stating that no part of Burmington village green is Highway. This legal declaration has been stamped and approved by Warwickshire County Council. We would like this committee to look into the issue of carrying out works on legally registered village greens in Warwickshire”.
The Chair thanked Mr Swift for attending the meeting and noted that there was not an immediate opportunity for the committee or council to respond to the statement. He stated that members were free to contact the parish council after the meeting.
Public Speaker two
Keith Kondakor (Councillor at Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council) spoke firstly on item 4 (O&S - Bermuda Connectivity) and made the following statement:
“The Bermuda bridge project has been a long running saga over about five years now. It has taken a vast amount of money, most of which is now effectively burned, and the project isn't effectively stoppable now, but it can be improved. We have a climate change emergency, and we have residents will be badly affected by the scheme; about £1.5 million noise compensation in the project as well. One good thing back in February the portfolio holder at the time agreed to extend the cycle route along part elect Bermuda Road and I hope the officers will agree that that is actually happening. Other things we need to do is sort out the bus service because obviously if we want a modal shift, we need to provide bus service along this new route, not actually have it as a big a rat run having negative impacts. We really really need this route have a 7 tonne or similar weight limit because you're going to pay one and a half million pound noise compensation for driving lorries past people's homes and if we can minimise that noise by actually saying this is actually a residential or lightly used route and is not a B road a seven and a half tonne weight limit will actually help that, or a 7.5 weight limit would mitigate some of the harm to lorries things going through the west of Nuneaton than lorries using this as a rat run. We need to be looking at an average speed camera along the route, it's quite a long route through a residential housing area and we really need to be a nice 30mph if not 20mph limit; the technologies here now that we can put cameras each end of the route and use it to trial some of our average speed routes
limit stuff. I think that would reduce the cost in terms of noise compensation, it would actually make the route safer for all the people who currently have a nice safe quite route. I think it be a positive benefit to start reducing speeds, we aren't getting to a low traffic neighbourhood which would be great, but we are at least making sure that we haven't got cars going through 40mph through this residential area as result of the county council. This is a massive mistake, this project, but we should go ahead and try to mitigate the problems as much as possible, look at noise, look at speeding definitely get cycle connectivity as good as possible and then work with stagecoach to actually make sure it will get bus connectivity. We should never do this project again with the climate change emergency and we'll be more careful before starting such a project.