Police checks at Stanage and Longstone

CHECKS were carried out on 54 vehicles in the Longstone Edge and Stanage areas of the Peak District in a crackdown on illegal off-road bikers.
Police checked that all the vehicles they stopped had insurance, tax and MOTs and checked that they were safe.
A total of 47 were off-road motorbikes and officers spoke to them about Operation Blackbrook, which is a long running scheme to reduce illegal biking.

Debate on planned sale of Ripley Town Hall is put back

Councillors have voted to delay a debate about the proposed sale of Ripley Town Hall.

A 1,200-signature petition was handed in before the Amber Valley Borough Council meeting, calling for the hall to be returned to Ripley Town Council.

The borough council was given the 130-year-old building in the 1970s but plans to sell it to help save £2m over the next two years.

Councillors voted to defer a debate until they are closer to a decision. This seems somewhat strange because wouldn’t you have a debate to enable a decision to be reached? Perhaps that is why I am not a councillor – I do not have twisted logic!

What's with the warnings? Ashbourne's got it wrong!

The following extract from a Derbyshire based website suggests that prospective road law abusers should come to Ashbourne.

"Defects were found on school buses during a safety crackdown in Ashbourne.

Operation Safedrive took place at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School and involved police officers and other agencies.

The team inspected 15 buses and coaches as they arrived at school and found two buses with defects that needed to be fixed as soon as possible.

Another bus had to be towed back to the depot for immediate repairs after officers found two wheel nuts which had sheared off.

The team then set up outside Ashbourne Fire Station and handed out a mixture of warnings, notices and fixed penalty notices to:

*6 drivers for using their mobile phone while driving

*3 drivers for having tyre defects

*2 for number plate offences

*1 driver for not being in proper control of the vehicle

*1 for not having a valid MOT

Twenty-eight drivers were stopped for not wearing a seatbelt.

In addition, VOSA issued five immediate and two delayed prohibition notices for defects on vehicles which seriously affected their roadworthiness.

Seven vehicles were also found to have no road tax."

PC Ian Salsbury said: “The check was extremely positive, reassuring the people of Ashbourne of our and our partners commitment to road safety. I would like to thank all the agencies involved in the checks.”

When parking offences carry an unavoidable and substantial fine imposed by lowly wardens, how can it be right that our expensive police force spend time giving "warnings" to motorists?
Surely, the crimes drawn to our attention here require instant and punitive action.

"Book 'em Danno"

Fight to stop sale of Ripley Town Hall

Campaigners have begun a fight to stop a council selling off a town hall in Derbyshire.

Ripley Town Hall was put up for sale by Amber Valley Borough Council in June.

The authority said selling the 130-year-old building and offices next door would help it save £2m over the next two years.

A petition with more than 1,200 signatures calls for ownership of the hall to be transferred to Ripley Town Council instead.

Ripley Town Council said it should be offered the building for free as it gave it to the borough council when the authority was created in the 1970s.

In a statement it said that if the town hall was sold then the police office, the registrar’s office, the town council’s offices, and the council chamber would have to be relocated, which would be “extremely costly and very problematic”.

The council said it was putting the 2.8-acre site on the market because the authority no longer needed such a large building. Then why not lease the excess to other businesses?

The sale of the property will be discussed at a council meeting on Wednesday.

£5.5m moor restoration

A £5.5 MILLION conservation project is under way in the Peak District to restore pollution-ravaged areas of peat moorland. Work is being carried out by Moors for the Future, a partnership led by the Peak District National Park Authority.

Funding has come from a range of bodies, including Yorkshire Water, the National Trust, Derbyshire Council, Sheffield Council, the RSPB and the Environment Agency.

A team from environmental consultants Wildscapes has been involved in the latest phase of the work, one of the biggest conservation projects ever undertaken in the UK. The scheme aims to return 1an area of badly damaged peat moorland to a healthy condition and to protect a much larger area.

Polluted air has been killing off the plants that keep the moors healthy. Overgrazing, summer wildfires and the weather have also contributed to a management problem that, in large moorland areas, cannot be tackled by one organisation alone.

The partnership’s mission statement is to secure the legacy of 8,000 years of moorland life and ultimately to vastly increase the number and diversity of mosses and moorland plants that provide the basis for an important ecosystem.

Wildscapes was selected to deliver the latest phase of work because of their local knowledge of the delicate moorlands, as well as their heather and moorland restoration skills which have been developed from past initiatives, including the Coalfield Heathlands project as well as work for the National Trust.

Their efforts will help stabilise bare peat in some of the most damaged areas of moorland, including Kinder Scout, Bleaklow and Saddleworth, near Manchester.

All bottled up and no where to go

High Peak borough Council have again unanimously rejected resubmitted plans for a large water bottling factory at Cowdale Quarry near Buxton.

Local residents, conservationists and countryside campaigners are celebrating after working so hard to keep this beauty spot protected.

Cowdale is an important part of the buffer zone between the Peak District and Buxton, and crucial for stopping industrial sprawl, noise and light pollution affecting the Peak District National Park.

Chris Sabian is a writer with http://www.peakdistrict.com and co-owner of http://www.paragonprints.co.uk

Follow @pdview

More injuries in Peak District

A 16-year-old student was stretchered from a footpath after breaking his ankle while on a field trip.

The student, from Rotherham, was with a party on an outdoor education trip near Millstone Edge, Hathersage on Friday when he went over on his ankle, causing an open fracture.

Group leaders gave the boy first aid and alerted mountain rescuers. Edale and Buxton Mountain Rescue Teams went to the scene and an Edale team paramedic treated the student at the site, on a rocky footpath.

He was then stretchered to a waiting ambulance and taken to hospital.

The Derbyshire cold Eyre

Mia Wasikowska has admitted that she was surprised by how cold the Derbyshire
moors were during the filming of Jane Eyre.

The Alice In Wonderland actress has the lead role in the new film adaptation
of the Charlotte Bronte novel.

She said that it was so cold, she got hypothermia on the second day of shooting. You should try living here “me duck”.

Tourism promotion row

A ROW is looming over a tourism campaign aimed at attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Staffordshire Moorlands.

Community leaders say the Staffordshire Peak District brand was adopted  to ensure that the Moorlands gets its fair share of national park tourists.

But only one third of the Moorlands falls within the Peak District boundary and opponents fear tourism outlets in other areas, such as Biddulph and Cheadle,  could lose out.

How was the motion passed in the first place?

Former Moorlands District council leader Ron Locker has tabled a motion to Saturday’s full meeting of the district council calling on the authority to ditch the brand and market the Moorlands in its own right.

Volunteer speedwatch a success

POLICE in Hathersage are thanking volunteers for helping to spread the word on road safety.

It is after more than 200 letters have been sent out to motorists found speeding through the area during 2011.

They were found during Community Speed Watch checks carried out by the Hathersage Safer Neighbourhood Policing Team and a team of 27 volunteers from throughout the area.

Between January and September this year a total of 36 checks have taken place as part of the scheme in many different villages including Stoney Middleton, Calver, Grindleford, Bradwell, Foolow, Eyam, Froggat, Curbar and Hathersage.

Community Speed Watch was set up in the Hathersage area in November 2010 to target residents concerns about issues with speeding and to give people a chance to work alongside officers on road safety issues.

Signs, paid for by the Safer Derbyshire Dales Community Safety Partnership, are put up to advise drivers about the checks and anyone caught speeding is sent a letter which advises them about their speed and reminds them about the limit.

Data recorded through the scheme may also help officers to identify locations for future speed enforcement checks.