There are signs of spring at last, but perhaps not too late for more grit bins that residents have requested. In the cold weather, a number of requests were made by residents for grit bins. One is being provided, in Rennishaw way, but in Masefield way, Arthur St. and Ainsdale close residents requests were rejected by the Tory County Council. Richard Church has offered to fund them with his ‘councillors empowerment’ budget, but this too was turned down as the County said they could not keep them filled up with grit and salt.

By next winter, the Conservative County Council plan to cut the standard of winter gritting. We can only hope it won’t be so cold!

Work is progressing well with new play facilities. The Planning Committee unanimously backed the planning application, which will allow for one particularly tall piece of play equipment, which will be set in the dip and close to the trees. It is expected that the play ground will be open in April to allow time for the grass to grow.

People in Northampton will have the chance to get involved in deciding how the Borough Council spends money on services. Northampton Borough Council is inviting local people to discuss its proposed budget at:

The Guildhall, Northampton on 4 February from 6.30pm.

Neighbourhood Partnership 8 meeting held at Barry Road School, on Wednesday 3 February from 7pm to 9pm.

The 7 different consultation events that were held during October concerning play space on The Racecourse resulted in 203 people completing surveys, including 72 children & young people aged 6-13 yrs.  Apart from 3 people who had concerns about any new play space at all being provided, everyone else recorded their support and enthusiasm for the new play space with by far the most commonly heard comment that ‘we can’t believe this is actually going to happen on The Racecourse’. The Playbuilder Project Group met on October 30th and selected Miracle Design & Play based at Moulton Park as the preferred contractor.  We have subsequently met with them and have negotiated a few changes to their proposals and would like to invite you to see the design that is proposed for this exciting development.Please drop in to The Picturedrome, 222 Kettering Rd., N’pton NN1 4BN anytime between 4.30pm and 7.30pm this Thursday, 3rd December to see the design and to speak with Miracle & members of The Project Group.

Richard attended a meeting organised by Labour MP Sally Keeble at Kingsley Primary School on Saturday. He hadn’t been invited, but since it was discussing the future of the County Council owned Raeburn Special School, it seemed approprite that the County Councillor for the area may be able to help. It was made clear to Andrew Simpson that he would not be welcome.

What is Sally worried about? That councillors form different parties may actually be able to work together for the good of local people? Surely with the current reputation of politicians that is exactly what we should be doing.

Anyway, lots of local issues were raised, not just the old school site, and we have already taken some of them up with the local authorities, as we are sure has Sally.

Using the mobile speed gun purchased using Richard Church’s Councillor empowerment fund, the Police have targetted Kettering Rd, Kingsley Rd, The Drive and Hazeldene Rd to tackle nuisance and danger caused by speeding traffic in residential areas. So far, nearly 90 vehicles have been found to be over the 30mph speed limit. 16 of these were found to be 35mph or over and drivers were issued with speeding tickets/£60 fine.

Heritage Open days this year are turning into a heritage open weekend with historic places all over Northampton open Friday, Saturday and Sunday 11th-13th September.

In Kingley St Matthews Church will open on Friday 11th September noon-2pm, Saturday 12th 10am-4pm and Sunday noon-4.40pm. The School of Art at the University on St. George’s Avenue will also be open just on Friday 11am-2pm.

Throughout Northampton, other buildings are open, with an antiques fair on the Market Square and a family history exhibition in the ex servicemen’s club in Sheep St. For more information visit the Northampton Heritage Open Days website. There is much more to see in Northampton than the town is ever given credit for!

I will be joining Northampton Borough Council’s housing team in an estate walkabout in Kingsley next Tuesday (8 September).

The walkabouts give residents the chance to meet and let their housing officers know about environmental issues that are concerning them to make the area a better place to live.

Residents interested in taking part are asked to meet at 10am on Tuesday 8 September at the top of Kenmuir Avenue on the Kettering Road.

Door to door glass collections for recycling are to be extended to all homes which do not have wheelie bins, but have black sack collections. This will include streets like Poets Corner and Holly Rd.

Earlier this year over 65,000 households in Northampton received new black glass recycling boxes and over 700 tones of glass was collected in just 2 months. Over the next couple of weeks new calendars and black boxes will be delivered to an additional 15,000 houses so even more people can join in with glass recycling from the kerbside. For these households the new collection will start week commencing Monday 21 September. Glass bottles and jars will be collected every four weeks, on the same day as the black sack collection.We want to make it as easy as possible for people to recycle and reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill. This will give every household the chance to have their used bottles and jars turned into new glass.The new recycling calendars and black boxes will be delivered in early September.