Parish Plan/Village In Bloom

It’s amazing how many villages are now adopting/constructing a Parish Plan and getting themselves looking smart and/or entering the villages in bloom competitions.  While I was looking around the web for Village In Bloom ideas for Hale for 2010(thats if owt happens like?),, nearly all of the Parish Plans I stumbled upon contain suggestions and ideas of how to spruce up the village it relates to.  From floral displays on lamp-posts to cleaning up or tidying grass verges and introducing better planting schemes and lots more initiatives. Hale Village/ Hale Parish Council, has no Parish Plan, does it need one!? 

Interesting to see in the below item,,, double yellow lines that don’t even look out of place!?

Last year our local Parish Council set up a Village Pride Committee (whatever it was called), to look into and implement how to spruce up Hale,, there’s only ever been one meeting so far, that was about 11 months ago and nowts happened!  All I have seen, is the chap from Halton Borough Council zoom around the village on his quad bike with his sprayer on the back and dampen a few weeds around the shops and along the curbs and the lads chasing their mowers around the greens.

Locally, across the water in the lovely places of Helsby, Preston Brook and Tarporley where they have cleaned up and got things moving, they have recently held public consultations and the results have helped them form a Parish/Village Plan.  The usual items appear in each plan, from improving the appearance to improving roads and pathways-parapet’s etc in the village/s.

 Below are links to the aforementioned villages, parish plans. 

 Helsby Plan

Preston Brook Plan

Tarporley Plan

Little Crosby,, just North Of Liverpool….

Little Crosby In Bloom

The below link contains a photo-grid, that shows the Mayor Of Halton and the Chairman of Hale Parish Council Mrs Alison Jones (hover your mouse over the lady in red to enlarge it), collecting an award for Hale Village.

It also contains a league/winners/awards table of runners up etc, you can see in one table what Hale achieved last year (2008)

Community Pride 2008

There are lots of items in these plans, that I am sure are equal to the improvements that can be done to our historic village.  After all, we have some of the most famous heritage aspects in the North West, we have some spectacular scenery and we are located on one of the most famous rivers in the world, the River Mersey? 

Over the years,, some of Hale’s locations, buildings and  heritage has been whittled away, removed, not renewed or left to fall into disrepair.  Take one chap who said to me on Saturday,, “do you remember the old red phone box”?, aye I said,, “that was  really nice in the village, now all we have  is a futuristic BT metal thing in front of the shops which the yobs try and smash or raid now and again”!?  Aye he said,,”other villages have kept theirs and they have managed to keep their village as it was”!  We went on for a bit and the outcome was, that nothing ever gets done or it takes too long!?

Hale Village could really look good if it is done in the right way.  It must be done so that any improvements do not look too townie, artificial and out of place - a bit like the odd looking-out of place mounds and pit in the park or the BT phone stand by the shops, it has to be in fitting with the rural and country feel of the village not something from Church St,  Albert Square Shopping precinct or Garden Invaders?

Look at styles of seating/street furniture that could be positioned around the village for people to sit down on (remember the seat on the pavement in front of the village green where the memorial is?),, or new planting schemes?  Tidy up the other village greens, say by the manor or by Aran Close.. The weed killing session the other week, has now left dead and brown grass around the curbing, it looks awful?

The last time anything was done on a grand scale was when her majesty came to the village over 40 years ago, locals cleaned the place up, even Church End/Church Road was re surfaced, at least Fleetwood Hesketh had the balls to tell the then Whiston Council to put back the old curbing that they pulled up and were to replace with modern day stuff. 

This is the type of heritage we need to protect and keep clean.  Just look at the the curbing in question now, in front of the Manor that Fleetwood Hesketh ordered to be left,, it  has grass growing over it, which has been miserly sprayed by the council with round up and now looks awful and brown..  Surely the Halton Borough Council experts over at Street Scene should send out the operatives with a half moon and edge it to make it look half decent?

Looking at some of the above mentioned Parish Plans,, does it not make one envious at to what other villages are now adopting and putting in place to enhance and preserve their heritage around their village.

From the Marsh Bridge to the Triangle up Bailys Lane,, Hale Village needs some form of Parish Plan and agenda to help protect it for future genrations and to make it a heritage and beauty hot spot.

But most of all, to make living in the village more pleasent!?

What do you think/feel?

 

Britain In Bloom