As a Parish Council we hold monthly meetings every 3^rd Wednesday of the month. As we are only able to hold virtual meeting at present, if you have any questions or ideas that you wish to put forward please contact bbparishclerk@gmail.com.

We are still hoping to find another councilor to join our Council, if you are interested in finding out more then please do contact us.

We have purchased some new bins to go into the playground these will be put in very soon. Also, we hope you like the new gates with signs and roundels, traffic calming is one of our main priorities – anything to slow the traffic down.

At the moment we are in correspondence with the District Council with the hope we can secure some funding to potentially have 2 or 3 speed humps installed so please watch this space.

You may have noticed that we have orange fencing around two of the pieces of equipment within the playpark, we are hoping to be able to make them safe or replace them by the spring.

As I am sure many of you were aware we were able to secure a grant from our local councilor priority fund to purchase and plant some trees in our village. After many talks with the local council we are now moving forward in purchasing some trees to replace the ones removed from Alvescot Road. We are looking at breaking the purchase and planting down into 3 projects to make it more manageable at this time with the pandemic.

If you have any ideas about where you would like to see the trees planted, please get in touch.

You could read past minutes here.

Many Thanks

Charlotte Cartwright

Black Bourton Parish Clerk.

Many of you will already be aware that RAF Brize Norton has a 25m Firing Range east of our village, about 1km across open fields to the east of Burford Rd.  There is no sound barrier between us and the weapons fired on the range, and the noise travels freely during the weekdays and sometimes at weekends.  Depending on where you are in the village the noise can be particularly intrusive in terms of the sheer amount – it can go on all day – and the loudness.  Sometimes the noise arrives with a window-rattling loud ‘crack’, which is the shock-wave from a bullet breaking the sound barrier and going supersonic.  It can sound as if we are in the middle of a gun battle!

Before the recent huge expansion of RAF Brize Norton the firing range was not really an issue for the village.  However, there are now 5,800 active personnel who – we are told – all need training every year, so the use of the range has increased massively.  In 2013, after a successful intervention by our noise committee, the RAF authorities gave assurances to our MP, and Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron that a full Environmental Impact Appraisal (EIA) would be conducted by the Base.  This was to include such issues as Hercules engine ground run (testing) noise and ….gunfire from the firing range.  Engine noise has largely been addressed, but nothing had been done to address the impact of the increased gunfire on the community.  Until now…..!

In a particular week in April this year, the range was in use every day for a week and the noise was extremely loud, like nothing we had heard before.  This marked the beginning of an extended, very loud, and intense period of noise.  So much so that a lot of complaints were filed with the Base.  The Base maintained initially that ‘nothing had changed’, but clearly something had changed.  We have since worked with the Base to provide feedback on gunfire noise.  They say they have taken measures to help reduce noise but currently the Base will not say what those measures are.  However, the noise has reduced over recent months and the supersonic soundwave ‘cracks’ seem to have gone away.

We understand that the RAF needs to maintain its trained workforce; it’s how they go about it that is the issue.  We would like to see the promised EIA undertaken for the firing range, but the Base seems reluctant to do this. We would also like to be assured that any improvements are not temporary.  We should find out more at a zoom meeting of the RAF Brize Norton Local Consultation Working Group on the 5^th December.  I will keep you posted.

Richard Betteridge
BBENC (Black Bourton Environmental Noise Committee)

BALDies (Black Bourton Against Litter Dropping)
Oscar Wilde described golf as ‘a good walk wasted’…be that as it may, as a BALDIE, the hours walk that you do will never be wasted.

Litter in and around the village is never going to just vanish, so why not be proactive and as part of a team we will meet by the War Memorial once every four to six weeks (depending on how bad the litter problem is) and spend an hour picking the litter from our verges and roads around the village.

If you would like to join ‘The BALDies’ WhatsApp Group then use the Contact form and include BALDies in ‘Your Subject’ and your mobile telephone number in ‘Your Message’ and Nick and Nikki Holmes will welcome you in. The first outing was on Sunday December 13th.

Black Bourton Village Association

November 2020

Dear Resident

As we are now in another COVID LOCKED-IN, we all need to be aware of the help that is available within the village. During the last lock down our village excelled itself through the generosity of spirit shown by many of our villagers. I have checked with the volunteers from last time and if you need help this time with prescriptions/shopping/ hospital trips/ putting out dustbins / postage etc do get in contact via this website.

We hope that you are enjoying the new Village Website. The site has been organised by, the PCC, the PC and the BBVA combined, but it is Lawrence Clarke that we need to thank for most of the ‘heavy lifting’. We all hope that every villager will use the site as the main means of information and contact. Households without IT will receive a printed hard copy newsletter in the usual way.

To make the website work as a central point of contact we hope that everyone will sign-up to the monthly newsletter. To do so just go to the bottom of this page, add your email address and click ‘Subscribe’ and you will receive an acknowledgement email by return. You will see there are many opportunities on the site for villagers to make a contribution or receive information. Any problems with registering please use the Contact form.

The BBVA was forced to cancel its last meeting. The agenda was to be aimed at discussing the possibilities for Christmas events, if any, and a calendar of events for 2021. We hope to reorganise our next monthly meeting sometime before Christmas. We are very keen to hear of your ideas for next year’s events and any innovations you would like the Association to consider.

We can’t wait to get on with organising our usual events and rest assured when all this Covid 19 and Lockdowns are over, and when we are allowed, we will organise a big village party.

Please don’t be afraid to ask for any help that you might need.

Stay Safe and Looking forward to being able to meet again soon.

Kind Regards                                                                                                                                                                      Deborah

Deborah Hextall, Chairperson, Black Bourton Village Association

2020 has been a challenging year so far and one in which good communications have been paramount. So we feel this is an auspicious year for the launch of our new website that combines the inputs of our Parish Council, Village Association and Church Council, together with a number of local groups.

The key to its lasting success is that those responsible for activities and groups keep their content up-to-date and make sure there’s something worth reading in the e-newsletter!

For you dear reader, if you haven’t already, please register for the monthly e-newsletter at the foot of this page. It’s a great way to keep us all in touch. If you know of a neighbour who doesn’t use email do contact us using the contact form and someone will hand-deliver a hard copy.

And perhaps, most importantly, if you have some news you’d like to share or comments about how we might improve the site, then do send them to us using the contact form.