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Wednesday 27 June 2018

Made in Burton Green 2018

This selection of photos shows some highlights of Made in Burton Green 2018. The event was organised in collaboration with Warwickshire Open Arts and the Coventry Arts Trail.

Art and Crafts in the Village Hall









The centrepiece in the Village Hall was a set of hand made clay models of houses and landmarks, made by their respective residents (with the assistance of Muddy Cottage Pottery), and positioned on an outline map of the village...






Scarecrows on the Greenway

This animation shows the 17 scarecrows along the Greenway...


Mischief in the Wood

'Mischief in the Wood' was the theme for an art project in the National Grid wood. The project featured the witches and gnomes of Burton Green. Burton Green has a long association with witches and gnomes. Hob Lane takes its name from such a figure.







Numerous gargoyles, attached to trees, had been made as an offshoot of the clay houses project...




A notice pinned to a tree explains...
"In Scandinavian folklore, these gnomes protect the homestead from misfortune or evil spirits, secretly acting as their guardian. However, the gnomes should be respected and treated with kindness, as they can be very easily offended, and will then play tricks on their family. Such mischief includes tangling your hair while you sleep, turning your milk sour, or stealing your sausages! 
These kindly yet tricksy gnomes are a very fitting subject for our 'Mischief in the Woods' Sculpture Trail." 

Some of those stolen sausages...


And more mischief...




The Terracotta Snail Army created by pupils of Burton Green School...


Exhibits Along Red Lane

Residents of Red Lane had created various exhibits along much of Red Lane. A sample is shown in this animation...


Previous Made in Burton Green Exhibitions

Made in Burton Green 2016
Made in Burton Green 2014
Made in Burton Green 2012

Tuesday 26 June 2018

Almshouse Vacancy

BERKSWELL CHARITIES 

ALMSHOUSE VACANCY
 BUNGALOW
 CROMWELL LANE, BURTON GREEN. 

Currently the Charities has an Almshouse Bungalow to let at Cromwell Lane, Burton Green.

The accommodation, comprising of a sitting room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, is suitable for a couple, but individuals also will be considered for the vacancy.

All interested parties may contact the Clerk to the Trustees, for further information, on telephone number 01676-535190, or alternatively may write to him at
Clerk to the Trustees, 
Berkswell Charities, 
52 Meeting House Lane, 
Balsall Common, 
Coventry 
CV7 7FX.

Sunday 24 June 2018

Made in Burton Green 2018

The Village Choir will be performing at the hall on Sunday 24th, at 3:30.

Voting for your favourite Scarecrow needs to be done by 4:30, Sunday 24th.

The cafe at the hall will be serving from 10am to 5pm, but the Scarecrows and art in the wood will be around for a couple more weeks.


Saturday 23 June 2018

HS2 Drop-In Session

The next HS2 Drop-In Session will be on 
Monday 2nd July, 6pm to 8pm.


Monday 18 June 2018

The First HS2 Whistleblower Speaks and Project Delays

From The Sunday Times, 17th June 2018...



The HS2 high-speed rail project has pressed staff to falsify figures, mislead parliament and cover up “petrifying” overspends, according to a senior manager turned whistleblower.

In documents seen by The Sunday Times, Doug Thornton, HS2’s former head of property, said the organisation put him under “tremendous pressure to accede to an enormous deceit” that the official budget for buying land and buildings was accurate.

It is in fact wrong by billions of pounds, he said, was based on “rudimentary map-based analysis by interns” and contains errors in the tens of millions even on single properties.

One site officially valued by HS2 at £3,800 will end up costing taxpayers £40m — 10,000 times more. Initially assessed as agricultural land, Whittington Heath Golf Club, near Lichfield, must replace its Victorian clubhouse and five of its 18 holes.

At the Hillingdon Outdoor Activities Centre, in west London, which will need a new sailing lake, a payment initially estimated at £6.4m became a legal commitment to pay the owners up to £26.5m. Payments to Camden council for homes and property near Euston are £38m more than budgeted.

HS2 did not dispute the figures.

Thornton, a former director of property development and acquisitions at Tesco, is the first senior whistleblower to emerge from HS2. He was paid more than £200,000 a year and ranked two rungs below the chief executive.

In the documents, he said he was sacked after refusing to “at worst, severely mislead” HS2’s own board about the state of the programme. He described HS2 as “hostile and dysfunctional”.

A few months later, Thornton said, the head of planning and performance, Andrew Bruce, was also placed on leave of absence 30 minutes before he was due to “present major budget, programme and capability issues” to the board.

The two men left in 2016 as the bill to allow HS2’s phase one, from London to the West Midlands, reached a critical stage in parliament. HS2 told MPs and peers that buying the 11,000 properties and plots of land needed to build this section of the route would cost £2.8bn, a figure it maintains to this day.

However, Bruce had produced detailed calculations that the true cost of property in this phase alone would be £4.7bn. Thornton said HS2 may have “knowingly misled parliament”.

HS2 admitted last week that it had already spent £1.6bn on land and property, the vast majority of it for phase one, but had acquired only “around 30%” of what it needed for the first section. However, it stood by the £2.8bn figure. It said Thornton and Bruce had not been sacked for whistleblowing.

The new revelations are contained in letters and reports sent to the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, the National Audit Office (NAO) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors between 2016 and March this year.

They will place further pressure on the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, who insisted in April that phase one “remains within” the official budget of £24.3bn. The documents suggest one of Grayling’s senior officials, Thomas Barry, knew of Thornton’s and Bruce’s concerns.

In the documents, Thornton said the “scale of the land and property budget error is petrifying” with “a large proportion of properties . . . not budgeted for”.

Thornton and Bruce are understood to have given extensive oral and written evidence to the NAO, which confirmed last night that it was investigating HS2’s land and property budget as part of a report to be published next month.

Thornton’s documents were passed to Lord Berkeley, a Labour peer and chairman of the Rail Freight Group. He said: “HS2 has been covering up and Grayling knows that the budget is not deliverable.

“I am furious with the way they are trying to bat on with this, knowing it cannot be built for the price. The idea is to get it so far advanced that it’s too late to stop.”

Thornton and Bruce declined to comment. HS2 did not respond to requests for comment on its alleged misleading of its own board and parliament.

___________________________________

The original article, which is in the link below, also includes lots of fascinating readers' comments:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hs2-covered-up-petrifying-overspends-mzxhr0nq3

___________________________________

Also in the media this morning (18th June)  is another article claiming that the timescale for some aspects of the project have been pushed back, precisely because of cost overruns incurred so far...


High Speed 2 (HS2) civils contractors have been given an extra eight months to adapt their designs to meet target costs, New Civil Engineer can reveal.

New Civil Engineer understands that HS2 bosses have pushed back the notice to proceed (NTP) deadline from November until June 2019.

The additional time has been given to allow the contractors to cut costs on the project, which New Civil Engineer reported last week were currently coming in around £1bn above the target cost.

Full article here:
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/exclusive-hs2-civils-design-deadline-pushed-back-eight-months/10032032.article

___________________________________

And from 1st June...


Full article here:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-5792655/We-blow-56bn-budget-warns-HS2-boss-critics-urging-pause.html

Saturday 16 June 2018

Ovo Energy Women's Tour Passing Through Westwood Heath

These are some photos of the cycle race which passed along part of Cromwell Lane and Westwood Heath Road on Friday morning.

This stage of the race was for 151 km around Warwickshire commencing in Atherstone and finishing in Leamington Spa.





Here they come...










Some photos from the 2016 race are here
https://burtongreen.blogspot.com/2016/06/aviva-womens-tour-coming-through.html

Wednesday 13 June 2018

Bugle - June 2018

The June 2018 edition of the Bugle has been published.

Just below are thumbnails of the page images. To enlarge any page image, click on the thumbnail below. Once you have the individual page, you may also need to click on the magnifying glass in your browser, where you can view the page at its original size...









The text of the Chair's Report has also been added to the Residents' Association page.

The archive of back issues of the Bugle is here: Bugle Archive.

Tuesday 12 June 2018

Made in Burton Green 2018 Press Release


Don't miss Made in Burton Green 2018 which celebrates arts and crafts in the local community as part of a biennial arts project, in association with Warwickshire Open Studios. The village is hosting a weekend of events on 23 & 24 June to showcase the creative talents of residents, with the outdoor exhibits in situ between 16 June and 8 July.

This year's event incorporates an exhibition, a scarecrow competition and a sculpture trail on the theme of 'Mischief in the Woods', and visitors can enjoy them all with a short circular walk taking in the Kenilworth Greenway and the National Grid Wood. Local community groups, Burton Green School and Berkswell Beavers and Cubs have all contributed to the project so come and see what we've been up to in the woods. This area of the village will be closed to the public in the future due to the construction of HS2, and the Greenway will be diverted until the completion of the railway. So do come along and help us celebrate our environment while we still can!

The exhibition at the Village Hall (CV8 1PH) will feature photography, painting, woodwork, ceramics, jewellery and textiles, with opportunities to purchase works and to talk to the artists. Opening times are 12pm to 5pm on Saturday 23rd and 10am to 5pm on Sunday 24th June. Refreshments, light lunches and home-baked cakes will be available, and the Village Choir will be performing at 3.30pm on Sunday 24th June.

The scarecrow competition will be held over the weekend, and visitors to the Made in Burton Green events will be encouraged to vote for their favourite scarecrow. The scarecrows will be exhibited along the Greenway at Burton Green and maps of their locations will be available for visitors. The more scarecrows the better - anyone can make their own and enter the competition - all that's needed is a little creativity and imagination. Scarecrow competition entries should be brought to the Village Hall on Friday 15th June from 3.30 to 7pm for registration and display. The winner will be announced at 4.30 pm on Sunday 24th at the village hall. Follow on #madeinburtongreen and find us on Facebook and Instagram.


Kenilworth Community Forum – June 2018

Kenilworth Community Forum – June 2018 – Policing Priority Vote

The next Kenilworth community forum will be held on Tuesday 26-JUN-2018, 6:30pm at the Kenilworth Senior Citizens Club, Abbey End Car Park, Kenilworth, CV8 1LA. Your local Safer Neighbourhood Team policing priorities will be agreed at the forum. Prior to the forum, members of the public can vote online re their top suggested priority.

One of the suggested priorities is for speed checks/monitoring on Cromwell Lane, Burton Green. For more information and to cast your vote online, please visit https://www.warwickshire.police.uk/article/48076

Kenilworth Safer Neighbourhood Team

Jubilee House Kenilworth CV8 1QG
Dial: 01926 684404
Email: kenilworth.snt@warwickshire.pnn.police.uk 
Website: http://www.warwickshire.police.uk
Twitter: @KenilworthCops

Wednesday 6 June 2018

OVO Energy Bike Races

For the past two years the OVO Energy Women's Tour bike race has travelled along part of Cromwell Lane, between the station and Westwood Heath corner, and then down Westwood Heath Road.

This year two races will take place. The Women's bike race (as previously) will take place on 15th June.

Lead cars are expected to arrive at Westwood Heath Road at 10.39. The cyclists are expected to arrive between 10.50 and 10.58.



Then on 5th September, the OVO Energy Tour of Britain race (for men) will follow the same part of the route.



There will also be a charity ride along the same route, passing along Cromwell Lane and Westwood Heath Road, on 4th September.