You will be aware, if you’ve walked by the playing fields, that the turf on the play area suffered badly from the unusually hot and dry conditions last month.

Despite Councillors spending considerable personal time watering with hosepipe and bowser, large parts of the turf died back. Currently, the dead turf is being removed while we consider our options. Those options will be based upon the limited funds we have at our disposal.

There is no doubt that the play area will look superb once the grass is restored and the final snagging is completed on the contract with Jane’s Pond. In the meantime please bear with us, keep out of the construction area, and understand that we share your disappointment that the play area cannot be opened during the school holidays.

The autumn litter pick will take place on Saturday 25th September 2010.

These village clean-ups have been very successful over recent years – the Spring Clean in March and the Autumn Litter Pick in September. Apart from the obvious improvement in the environment, many folk have appreciated the opportunity to put something good back into their community. Hopefully this year will be well attended and offer better weather than we had in the spring…

Councillors will be on hand between 10h00 and 16h00 to give out gloves, black bags and litter pickers (we’d like the pickers back please!) to anyone willing to volunteer an hour or so of their time. We’ll have a list of village areas, in order to ensure everywhere gets a looking at and nowhere gets a wasted second visit, but if you know of somewhere you want to give special attention to that’s fine too. There’s an obvious opportunity as well, to speak with one or more of your Councillors and put questions and comments to them.

As you will be aware, Charfield Parish Council – in cooperation with South Gloucestershire County Council StreetCare – has been running a trial of part-night street lighting.

This trial came to an end with a final review meeting on 13th July 2010.

South Gloucestershire Transportation Services’ Senior Safety Engineer confirmed that there had been no reported accidents or transport related injuries in Charfield village in 2009 or thus far in 2010. Police statistics showed a slight fall in crime throughout the trial (from 49 to 34 reported incidents).

Both the Parish and County Council representatives agreed the trial had proven the technology and the principle of switching off streetlights during the middle of the night, and Charfield Parish Council later Resolved that the trial should henceforth become permanent.

The minutes of the final review meeting are available here.
A copy of the working Risk Assessment is here, and a copy of the original Criteria is here. Police crime statistics for Charfield village are here (before) and here (after).

Post-Trial Project Summary

page updated 31 August 2010

Only two nights ago I wrote the piece for the forthcoming CHARDA newsletter, inviting everyone to marvel at the new play area. Sadly, subsequent to that the effects of one of the hottest, dryest summers for eighty years have taken their toll, aided in part by the youths who tore up sections of the turf on Friday night, leading to the loss of larger areas of turf as the air got under the edges.

Despite Councillors spending hours pumping water from bowsers and hose-pipes, the turf has shrunk and browned in several areas. May be it will die if we have no substantial rain soon. It is more than distressing to see our plans for a summer opening come to nought, but plainly this area will not be useable for some time. We are continuing to water the turf in the hope that rain will allow some of the remaining grass to grow, and keep the turf alive, and offer our apologies to the children who were hoping to use the facility during the summer holidays.

If you have any information regarding the vandalism on the night of of Friday 2nd July, the Police Crime Reference is 80368-10.