Its been a long time since I put together any local news for our community.
To summarise...
The Private Water Supply
In September last year, the water supply situation was finally resolved, with residents on the Wall Street side who wanted to be in control of their own bills rather than a communal bill agreed with Guy Smith of Smith Farms Ltd to pay for their own consumed water via the newly installed water meters he fitted at each property. This finally means we have a bona-fide private water supply, residents are now responsible for taking their own meter readings, calculating the cost and Veolia were happy to receive our individual cheques from each household towards Smith Farm's account which was set up after the new main was installed last year.
More Houses for sale
We have several houses for sale at the moment, all in Wall Street.
Traveller's site is no-more
One of our residents now owns the old traveller's site - so no more worries on that front.
Gated Community
A new "gate" has been installed between Wall Street & Beach Road to make Beach Road more private.
Back from the Dead
Smith Farms is currently renovating the "Old Cafe" which has stood derelict for decades and is converting it to rented holiday accommodation. Nice to see it being used again.
Access Road Repair
The access road to Lee-Over-Sands - specifically the track from the sewage farm to Beach Road and Wall Street has been levelled finally by Guy's men, (you'll remember our repairs and pleas went unheard before
click here) who hired a large digger for groundwork on the old Cafe - travelling down the road several times, they realised how annoying it can be and suggested to Guy that they work on it.
Some residents theorised that now the track has become an issue for the local farmer (presumably as it might put off potential customers / visitors to the 'Old Cafe' it is unsuprising to find that an offer was made to improve it unofficially (e.g. not in writing), by supplying manpower to improve it, as long as residents supplied Type 1 stone. Several residents (including myself) attempted to rally support, but after the usual doorstep inter-house attempts to rally interest, and meetings with the more experienced construction savvy residents happened, we realised that this would be too costly for residents given the amount of stone required. Not only that, that type 1 would only be suitable for a final "covering", and that the real problem (as ever) is due to the mud/clay/silt content which causes the "humps".
By scraping and applying stone this would mean that the stone would have been embedded into the mud very rapidly and would not be worthwhile. Whereas the hardcore Andy Haynes and I used to fill dips in the road 2 years ago had remained sound and not moved - while the rest of the track had deteriorated.
After much discussion, we decided that this approach would be a waste of money for residents and crushed hardcore needs to go down first, and the road re-shaped into a "camber" to prevent water pooling (which does the most long-term damage), before topping off with road planings which are more cost effective and allow proper drainage.
We also agreed that most residents would be happy to endorse and financially share costs with Smith Farms if a bigger project is done based on our proposals (similar in scale to the water supply update). Although most residents want the entrance point (near the sewage farm) to remain rough looking to discourage sunday drivers and "explorers".
Since the temporary work was done "scraping mud" over the road, whilst it improved things for a month, as expected since recent rains, the usual pools of water have appeared, which in turn are made worse by vehicles - although its still miles better than it was - and you can get down the road in 5 minutes now, instead of 10!
Although this perhaps is what puts off people wanting to buy a house here, I know as a resident we've got used to the track, and my Citroen has survived 3 years of travelling up and down with no suspension or tyre damage. When the road is "passable" but rough looking it brings benefits of peace - and I applaud that, but I can't help think that the desirability and value of homes in Lee-Over-Sands is affected massively by this issue (and the reason why they aren't selling) is partly because of this - people with money have decent cars, most luxury cars have a low-profile tyres and they won't want to damage them. It doesn't bother me because I want to stay here... Every visitor and delivery driver says the same thing - "how do you cope with going down that road every day".
I'd like everyone to give this some thought and seriously consider supporting any future action by Smith Farms to improve the road.
