Monday 6 July 2009

Fosse Division Community Forum - 30 June

Last Tuesday night I attended the Fosse Division Community Forum, held in Monks Kirby. This is a quarterly meeting, open to all members of the public, to discuss issued affecting residents in the Fosse division (which includes Shilton and Barnacle). Representatives from Warwickshire County Council, Rugby Borough Council and the Warwickshire Police Safer Neighbourhoods team were in attendance to discuss issues and answer questions on any matters that were raised.

There was a lot of interest from those present in the problem of speeding in the Fosse area, and numerous calls for the Police to take action. At each meeting, the Police ask those present to suggest policing priorities that they would like to be looked at more closely during the next three months. At the last meeting in March, a resident from Barnacle who had turned up to the meeting suggested that speeding through the village was a problem that needed addressing. The Police therefore took this up as a local priority and reported back on Tuesday night on the outcome of their work.

They reported that during the last three months, they had undertaken a number of high visibility foot patrols through Barnacle, as well as driving through in a marked police car. In addition, a marked police car had been parked at the junction of Top Road/Chapel Lane over a weekend to act as a deterrent to vehicles that may be speeding through the village. Whilst they considered their work to have been useful, they did not identify a significant enough speeding problem to warrant further specific action. I couldn't help pointing out that the rather old looking marked police car, parked up on Top Green (I'm sure many of you saw it over a weekend a while back), was unfortunately left in the one place in the village where cars had to slow down anyway because of the tight bend at Top Road/Lower Road. It may have had a greater effect had it been parked at either of the entrances into the village. Next time, perhaps?!

The Police also provided a number of other interesting snippets of information during the course of the meeting, including:

  • a total of 206 drain covers have now been stolen from roads in the Fosse area, at a cost of £30,900 to replace them all - and still no-one has been caught.
  • between December 2008 - March 2009, reported incidents of crime in Barnacle were: burglary - 0, criminal damage - 0, rowdy behaviour - 2, vehicle crime - 0. They had also received a total of 28 telephone calls so far this year from Barnacle residents, concerning the full range of matters that one might have cause to call the police for.
  • two men have been arrested in connection with a high value fraud in Barnacle. They have also been detained for the offence of money laundering, and are currently on police bail whilst enquiries continued.

Finally, in seeking local policing priorities for the next three months, I suggested that the speeding problem along Church Road, as it enters Shilton from the Ansty direction, should be something the Police could look into further. They agreed to do this and will report back to the next Community Forum meeting on 15 September.

Despite it being a very warm night, it was a useful meeting to go to. If you want the Police or the county/borough councils to look into something that is important to you, I would very much recommend that these are the meetings to go to in order to have your say. Further information on these meetings is available here.

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