Published: 23 September 2024
The Parish Council met our MP Sir Alec Shelbrooke on Thursday, September 19th. Chair Stephen Verrill, Councillors Steve Oliver and Dean Culshaw joined Sir Alec along with Raj Selvarajan from BMAG and senior representatives from Yorkshire Water, North Yorkshire Highways and the Environment Agency to have a site visit and to discuss the challenges facing the village with regard to sewage and flooding.
The discussion highlighted previously aired points about the inadequacies of the combined system and emphasised the need for Yorkshire Water to improve data collection on the manholes in the road along St Johns Road. Yorkshire Water were further pressed to come up with a definitive number of extra houses that would take the system from “close to capacity” to full. Unfortunately, Yorkshire Water were adamant that they were unable to produce such a number. Nevertheless, it was a good opportunity to get the concerns around sewage, highways and footpaths etc in front of senior players, indeed, Yorkshire Water had conversations whilst outside the school around installing water sensors in the manholes, although there was a worry that the mobile signal might not support them well enough.
We also took advantage of the presence of the Highways maintenance manager’s presence and pointed out a couple of road defects on the way, one of which he deemed ‘dangerous’, hats off to Highways, he promised they would be done before the day was out, in fact, it was within the hour.
Our thanks go to Sir Alec and Councillor Nick Brown for facilitating the visit.