One hears tell that when the New Authority happens upon us many more of the Planning Applications will be dealt with by the Planning Officers, and that there will be less local input from Councillors, and fewer opportunities for ‘affected’ Councillors to call applications in. Some regret that such will be the case. In the great scheme of things does that really matter?
1.
The December issue of the most excellent Focus Magazine advises that in November The Tisbury Parish Councillors resolved to support an application that a property in Hindon Lane should allow.‘The erection of an internal stud wall and the creation of an ensuite bathroom’.
What on the earth has that matter to do with the Tisbury Parish Council? With great respect to its members, who cares one jot what their opinion on it is ? It seems doubtful to be a planning matter at all, does it not come under Building Regulations. There is no necessity for such an application to be sent to a Parish Council for consideration, and it is only sent to Tisbury because a while back its then membership requested District so to do. FURTHERMORE a House at Snows Hill is to be allowed to fell four Conifers. Disgraceful if such consent should deplete the National Collection of Leylandii! One might wonder how many trees the Tisbury Parish Councillors have planted in the Village that they can be so profligate of our Green Heritage.

With all this nonsense coming before a Parish Council can one wonder that it is now so hard to even co-opt Parish Councillors, let alone get a sufficiency to stand for an Election?
2. HINDON LANE
Yesterday afternoon the latest chapter of the Hindon Lane Saga happened at the Dinton Village Hall. The result of the Match was that Messrs Fry are permitted to build the extra houses as specified. (75+6=81+9=90).

A number of local residents who attended the meeting spoke eloquently against the building of this extra housing, as in particular did Cllr.s Richard Beattie; and David Parker who also chairs the Sports Hall, who wished to defer the decision. No mention was heard of ‘Tisbury Action’ , but one Resident spoke in the name of TisVis. And another voiced the opinion of Tisbury Parish Council, for such is currently the Democratic Process. If one goes back a number of years to the time that ‘Local Plan’ first identified this site as being suitable for building, there was an opportunity to Protest against it at the very expensive Planning Enquiry. WHERE THEN was the Parish Council, where then the Residents of Hindon Lane? I recall the Fonthill Estate registering a dissent before the enquiry as incidentally did I. There is a time and a place for everything and waiting until after something is done if not dusted isn’t either.

About that time the Village seemed likely to lose the Railway Line. I believe that it was the late Brigadier Greer and others who fronted the successful campaign to keep it. Naturally it ensued that more and more people wished to come and live in the village, thus it is, they need somewhere affordable to live.

It is unfortunate that the Hindon Lane Residents sought to have new housing built on the Station Works site, instead of off Hindon Lane, thus if one may so interpret the later TisVis Survey, alienating the greater part of the Village who thought it important to retain our only work site.

What then of all this huffing and puffing? Here we are a number of years down the line and currently the Station Works site remains Light Industrial, and Hindon Lane is to have more houses than originally envisaged, and too an industrial area of its own, which some tell may become a shopping complex sine die. There is still no Parking in the Village or at the Station, the roads in and out of the Village are inadequate. For an instance last Tuesday a lady was trapped up side down in her car when it pitched into the fence at the Former RAF Chilmark. Even so the Village is happy with the roads as they are, for TisVis tells us that. The A.303 is to close for some months, how then will be our Village traffic ? What’s to happen when a body meets a body?

Possibly the Village might have engaged King Canute for less money than it has cost Community Charge Payers to process the ‘Battle of Hindon Lane’. His Majesty would have been equally ineffective. Unfortunately as hinted some eight hundred words back. ‘Planning might better be left to the Planners, than the Lemmings’

TISBURY CHRISTMAS LIGHTS.
Well done the Parish Council. If the Chamber of Trade wishes to put up Christmas Lights, God Bless them, but an average cost of £3 per household is too much. If the cost was to be read as £3 on a D.Banding then the E,F,G,s would be paying much more. Let us not forget that West Tisbury wished for no part of it.

Other News Items

Minutes on alternative Web Sites. Is an excellent idea. Well done and too congratulations on the New Parish Notice Board.

HEARD AT DINTON HALL last Evening a WEST TISBURY PARISH COUNCILLOR say that Tisbury and West Tisbury were essentially the same place. District Councillor David Parker later said much the same. LET US AMALGAMATE THE TWO COUNCILS. I happened to be seated next to the Tisbury Parish Council’s Financial Officer who explained to me it was all a matter of Grant Money. So what ? West Tisbury shares everything, wishes to be consulted about everything, but Tisbury Pays for it. Separateness is uncalled for.

‘THAT WAS THE TisVis THAT WAS, ITS OVER LET IT GO.’ I know some decided to perpetuate this particular Quango long after its Cause was spent, but would it not have been better to have let it die an honourable death. It was an accomplished effort, but its ultimate worth is like Beauty, but ‘in the eye of the beholder.’ Its bad enough having an unelected Parish Council, without having an unelected TisVis as its ‘side -kick. We the Villagers are the legatees of the TisVis Questionnaire, should that not stand as the TisVis memorial? There persists a difference of opinion as to how the Questionnaire should be interpreted. Why am I put in mind of that remark of ‘Humpty Dumpty’s’ on the lines of when he used a word it meant precisely what he wanted it to mean? 12 December 2008 15:32