Author Archives: John Roper

Welwyn’s First Defibrillator Installed

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Welwyn’s First Defibrillator Installed
As a result of an initiative and fund raising jointly by St Mary’s Church and the Welwyn Parish Plan Action Group, an AED (Automatic External Defibrillator) has now been installed in Welwyn High Street, and will soon be commissioned into service for the community.
The AED is designed to be used by anyone who witnesses someone in cardiac arrest in conjunction with calling 999.
Sponsors

Four Welwyn businesses have actively contributed as sponsors: Putterills, Neel Dentistry, Mimram Vets and Susu, along with many very generous individual AED Barclays Welwynbenefactors.

The Welwyn Wailers also gave a substantial donation from their 2016 ‘Wail’.
Training
The Community Heartbeat Trust will provide some training and the Parish Plan Action Group will advise about that when known.
More details, including instructions in the use of the AED, will be issued on the WPAG website as soon as the AED is commisioned and ready for service.
A Second defibrillator planned.
The Welwyn Parish Plan Action Group is well on the way to raising sufficient funds for a second AED for the civic parish of Welwyn and the project team will meet in early July 2016 to debate where it should be located.
More about that when it is decided.

Bridge Cottage – Patient Participation Group

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P1060360Following an initiative by the Welwyn Parish Plan Action Group the Bridge Cottage Patient Participation Group was formed in February 2016.

The Bridge Cottage P.P.G. comprises 11 volunteers, all of whom are patients of the practice who want to help it provide the best health service possible.

The Stated Aims of the P.P.G. are:

  • To improve communication between doctors and patients.
  • To get advice and support from the NHS and from the national PPG organisation
  • To support practice clinics,  health clinics, health campaigns and local carers.

  • To plan surveys of patient experiences.

  • To discuss changes at the surgery which might affect patients, before they happen, and give them your feedback.

  • TO BE A CRITICAL FRIEND TO OUR DOCTORS AND STAFF.

You are encouraged to pass comments and queries to

Welwyn’s Listed Buildings: 29 The High Street

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This is the second of a series highlighting Welwyn’s rich heritage of Listed Buildings. It is extracted from an old document found within WPAG archives which is represented as  ‘the 29th list of buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest‘,  (for Welwyn Parish within the District of Welwyn Hatfield), and ‘certified on 9th January 1989′ by the Executive County & Estates Officer of Hertfordshire County Council.

N.B. This might not be the latest such list, and should not therefore be relied upon for its accuracy. There have been amendments, and this extract is provided solely for information and interest.

Welwyn High Street (West Side) No. 29

Grade II Listed P1080703

House. Early C19 front, probably to an earlier timber framed building. Roughcast. Old tile hipped roof. 2 storeys. 3 flush sash windows in architrave surrounds. Semi-circular porch with thin wooden columns on cement piers. Mutuled cornice and door with segmental fan. 1st floor French window.

P1080706

1-window block set back on W with large chimney stack at join and 1st floor sash window. Street front with modern shop window.

 

 

Usage:

Currently Old Welwyn Florist.

Formerly ( circa 1967) W.H. Lee & Co – Estate Agents

What is – a listed building?

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Why are buildings listed?

The Secretary of State for the Environment is required to compile lists of buildings of special architectural or historic interest for the guidance of local planning authorities. Conservation policies are often based on the lists.

How are the buildings chosen?

Principles were originally set up by an expert committee of architects, antiquaries and historians.

Buildings that qualify are:

  • all buildings before 1700 which survive in anything like their original condition
  • most buildings between 1700 and 1840, though selection is necessary
  • between 1840 and 1914 only buildings of definite quality and character .

The selection is intended to include the principal works of the principal architects. Selected buildings of 1914 to 1939 are also considered.

In choosing buildings, particular attention is paid to special value within certain types, either for architectural or planning reasons or as illustrating social and economic history (for instance, industrial buildings, railway stations, schools, hospitals, theatres, townhalls, markets, exchanges, almshouses, prisons, lock-ups, mills).

How are they graded?

A  survey is carried out for each local authority area, and buildings are classified in grades to show their relative importance.

Grade I  Buidings of exceptional interest

Grade II  Buildings of special interest which warrant every effort being made to preserve them.

How do Welwyn’s listed buidings rate?

The buildings in the Welwyn schedule are all of special architectural or historic interest,

 

 

Welwyn’s Listed Buildings: 15 Church Street

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This article is the first of a series highlighting Welwyn’s rich heritage of Listed Buildings. It is extracted from an old document found within WPAG archives which is represented as  ‘the 29th list of buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest‘,  (for Welwyn Parish within the District of Welwyn Hatfield), and ‘certified on 9th January 1989′ by the Executive County & Estates Officer of Hertfordshire County Council.

N.B. This might not be the latest such list, and should not therefore be relied upon for its accuracy. There have been amendments, and this extract is provided solely for information and interest.

Welwyn Church Street (south side) No. 15 (Formerly listed as No.15 “Wellingham Store”) Grade II Listed

Early C19 warehouse and shop. Painted red brick, low slate roof. Long Range. E side has 3 1st floor small pane ventilators and ground floor wood frame cart entrance with 20151201_115821carved angle braces; W side has 2 shop fronts both with pilaster and paterae surrounds and fascia cornices. Left hand side is 36 panes, right hand side is double fronted with deep recess to door. Upper-floor window bands with similar glazing bars.

(The photo was taken on 1st December 2015 and shows the building in its current use as a Hair Dressing Salon, and decorated with Christmas Lighting).

Formerly: circa 1967 Grocer (13/15 Church Street) W. Wellingham Ltd

Planning Portal News – 26th November 2015 – Research identifies most promising locations for housing growth.

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The following is report is by the  on November 26 2015

New research from Knight Frank and planning and design consultancy Barton Willmore has identified local authority areas where economic and planning data, combined with regional knowledge, suggest good fundamentals for residential development in the short to medium term.

Factors taken into account include forecast economic and employment growth, as well as future housing supply and demand. Sales to stock ratios, social environment, infrastructure and affordability were also measured.

Local planning knowledge was then added, examining which planning authorities had a five-year land supply and where a local plan was in place, as well as looking at policy support for housing and economic growth.

This, along with input from Knight Frank land agents, resulted in a list of areas where the fundamentals suggested development opportunities.

Key findings highlighted that:

  • Manchester and Leeds are expected to be among the councils which will experience the strongest rates of household growth over the next ten years
  • In the Midlands, Warwick scores highly on “liveability”, and also has strong employment growth forecasts, while robust household growth is projected in Leicester
  • Brentwood is one of the hotspots with the strongest forecasts for future employment increases, as well as showing one of the largest imbalances between pipeline supply and household growth over the next five years
  • South Cambridgeshire also has a particularly strong forecast for employment growth and has been rated highest in an independent survey of rural locations across the UK
  • Bristol and Bath & North East Somerset local authorities have a local plan and a five-year housing supply, and the determination to step up development
  • Guildford and Reigate & Banstead in Surrey are well positioned to take advantage of the housing need generated by the capital.

Iain Painting, Senior Planning Partner, Barton Wilmore, said: “Our shortlist of development opportunities is aligned with an increased emphasis on urbanisation, focusing on many of England’s key cities both in and well beyond the South East.

“Opportunities exist where local authorities are struggling to source a five-year land supply through the local plan system, such as York, but also where councils have a positive appetite for growth, supported by policy, such as Leeds and Bath.”

Planning Portal News – 19th November 2015 – CPRE Challenge to Housing Targets

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The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has called for an overhaul of the way local authorities set housing targets after claiming the present system led to countryside being lost unnecessarily.

The pressure group claimed in a report that research it has commissioned showed that local authorities were being asked to base their plans on aspiration rather than need. This resulted in ever higher housing targets and the consequent unnecessary release of countryside for development without an increase in overall house building.

(The above is an extract from the Planning Portal News 19th November 2015).

The Answer Lies in the Soil – Geology Expert comes to Welwyn

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Welwyn Natural History Society and the Hertfordshire Natural History Society

Joint Annual Invited Lecture

Dr Haydon Bailey will be speaking at this year’s Annual Invited Lecture at the Civic Centre on Wednesday 25th November at 8 p.m in place of Professor John Catt, who is unfortunately unwell.

The original talk subject ‘Aspects of Hertfordshire Geology & Landscape‘, has now been sub-titled ‘Living in Hertfordshire – for the last 100 million years‘.

Dr Bailey is founder and director of Network Stratigraphic Consulting Ltd, in Potters Bar, and is a micropalaentologist specialising in the cretaceous period, and chalk field studies for the oil and related industries in the UK, Europe, and North Africa.

Dr Bailey co-authored ‘Hertfordshire Geology and landscape’ with Professor John Catt, which was published in 2010 to national acclaim. He contributed the chapters on ‘The Upper Cretaceous period’ and ‘Mineral Resources and Building Stones’.

This book is intended to explain the geology of the county to natural historians and others working in the county, who have little knowledge of geology. In the book, Prof. John Catt describes Hertfordshire, ‘in many respects an undistinguished county’, but one that has amazingly interesting geology.

For more information about the Invited Talk go to the Hertfordshire Natural History website .

The Dr Haydon Bailey talk will be held in the Civic Centre Large Hall at 8 p.m. on Wednesday 25th November.

Everyone welcome – entrance £3 – pay at the door, includes a glass of wine or soft drink.

What is – the Government Housing & Planning Bill 2015-2016 ?

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The Housing & Planning Bill 2015-2016 is currently before Parliament and is at the final stage. To read about the Bill in more detail go to:

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/housingandplanning/documents.html

The Impact Assessment (from which the following is extracted) relates to clauses within the Bill and poses two questions:

  • What is the problem under consideration?
  • Why is government intervention necessary?

Explanatory Notes are provided as follows:

In the year to June 2015, 131,000 new homes were completed. Although housing starts are at their highest annual level since 2007, and there are now almost 800,000 more homes in England than there were in 2009, we are still not fully meeting the demands of over 200,000 households formed every year.

In addition, not enough people who want to own their own home have the opportunity to do so.

The rate of homeownership in England has been falling since its peak in 2003, despite the aspiration for home ownership remaining strong. Although over 230,000 households have been helped by government-backed schemes to buy a home since spring 2010, younger households, in particular, are now less likely to own their own home than a decade ago.

The public need to have confidence that housing policy in our country is fair and fit for the future. Social housing needs to work as efficiently as it can. Private tenants need additional reassurance that rogue landlords will be driven out of business. Further government intervention is required to ensure this happens.

(The Impact Assessment proceeds to pose questions about the policy objectives and the intended effects, i.e. getting the nation building homes faster, helping more people buy their own home, ensuring the way housing is managed is fair and fit for the purpose).

WPAG AGM – 12th November 2015

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All fully paid up members of WPAG will have received an official Notice of the AGM to be held next Thursday 12th November. Notices were delivered either by email or by hand.

If you are a fully paid up member of WPAG and have not received Notice of the AGM please contact