Annual Residents Meeting June 2024

Annual Residents Meeting – June 2024

Hard on the heels of last year’s success, and on another warm June evening, we managed to fill St. Mary’s to the point of standing room only. All the current parish councillors and the Clerk were present to hear your questions and concerns for our four guest speakers. This is a summary of what we learned.

First up was John Cove, Chair of the MK DONS SET, which currently holds the contract for the management of the Woughton Playing Fields and pavilion. John described the credentials of the SET to win this MKCC contract – which also includes the Brooklands and Fairfields facilities – and cited some notable achievements already: replacement of the floodlights with more environmentally sensitive models; access road repairs; some initial tree management; and now attention to the footbridges with MKCC’s Rights of Way Officer. A start has also been made on changing out the litter bin provision to facilitate recycling and clearance of the blocked ditches to aid drainage on the pitches. John summed up by saying that the whole site appeared to have suffered from ‘a lack of love’ and that the pavilion, in particular, had received no obvious investment since its original development, which meant it was rising up his personal agenda to address. For a list of questions that John Cove received and the answers provided see the table at the bottom of this article. Click here.

Next up was Ben Thomas, Director of MK Citizens Advice since 2015. Ben gave a potted history of how local CABx first came into being – briefly, to assist the Government after WW2 to explain a new approach to social welfare, whilst also helping to trace missing relatives and locate evacuees. To this day his organisation remains a local charity, albeit within a national brand, and fund-raising is a significant part of his own role. Staggeringly, going into the pandemic, MK had 80 volunteers to help deliver services, but those levels have not returned and are now down to just 35. Despite this obvious challenge, over 500,000 cases have been handled since the MK office opened in 1972 and advisers can be seen by appointment in a wide range of settings: some GP surgeries; the new Cancer Centre; and local children’s centres. Some parish councils – like Old Woughton and Simpson & Ashland PCs – also support occasional local advice sessions.

Ben also dealt head on with the perception that Citizens Advice is mostly about financial affairs – these do figure very strongly, but its national systems give it direct access to a vast number of official databases, so that other – and even more complex – cases can be progressed (Housing, Welfare, Immigration, Relationships etc). This breadth of interest was illustrated by the recent consolidation of Works for Us into the services offered – WFU was, a stand-alone local charity providing a range of employability services like CV drafting; workwear for interviews; and skills courses.

Which is a very neat segue into saying that Ben was utterly delighted to then receive not just one expression of interest in becoming a volunteer before we closed, but two– well done Old Woughton! See Ben’s further details of being a CA volunteer.

The last speaker slot was a two-handed presentation by PC Tom Evans, Neighbourhood Supervisor, Thames Valley Police (TVP) Neighbourhood Policing Team and Nick King Chair of Milton Keynes Neighbourhood Watch Association MKNHWA

PC Evans, who is new in the role for Old Woughton was pleased to report that since the start of 2024, reports to TVP were only 20 for the parish, although there has been a noticeable increase in garage and shed break- ins more recently. That said, there was a level of anti-sociable behaviour that needed to be better reported and so PC Evans was pleased when our past Chair brought him up to speed about evening activities in the Walton Lake car park. PC Evans was clear that the number of public reports of incidents now drives the scheduling of patrol routes in real time and so ringing 101 has a direct bearing on TVP attention.

Nick King started by congratulating Old Woughton on such a large audience for the meeting. The NW brand is long-established, with high public recognition scores. In fact, there are 180 registered NHW schemes just in MK. Nick urged us all to take home the leaflets he’d left on our chairs – these gave details of how easy it is to sign up to join NHW and receive police alerts at ourwatch.org.uk. In response to the question from the floor about how you know whether your local team is still active, he said the database will tell you!