Melsonby Parish Council

North Yorkshire Council collects around 310,000 tonnes of household waste each year from over 300,000 properties. About 45 per cent of this is reused, recycled or composted.

As part of Let’s Talk Local and Let’s Talk Money, you told us that we should focus on providing the best value for money and tackling climate change. At the moment there are seven different ways of collecting your recycling. Having just one way of doing this would be more efficient and give you better value for money.

Like you, we want to keep our county attractive and clean so everyone can enjoy it.

Collectively, by reducing waste and increasing our recycling, we can help conserve our natural resources, protect our ecosystems, save energy, and support our ambitions of becoming carbon neutral by 2030 and carbon negative by 2040.

We know this is an important subject, so please tell us about your rubbish and recycling, so we can look at what we can all do to help achieve our goals.

There are several ways you can take part in Let’s Talk Rubbish:

You can fill in an online survey here https://www.northyorks.gov.uk/LetsTalk  – the survey is on Commonplace, which is a safe and easy-to-use online tool used to engage with communities, by over 250 organisations including neighbouring councils in Leeds and West Yorkshire. 

If you would prefer, you can pick up a paper copy from your local library, leisure centre or main local office and return it in the envelope provided.

You can also email letstalk@northyorks.gov.uk  or call 0300 131 2 131 (please say ‘Let’s Talk’ when prompted) to request a survey.

You can write to:

Let’s Talk

North Yorkshire Council

County Hall

Northallerton

DL7 8AD

Accessible formats of the survey are available on request. Please share your views with us and encourage your colleagues, friends and family to do the same. The survey closes on 16 September 2024.

Questions from members of the public?

Please ask residents to email LetsTalk@northyorks.gov.uk or call the number above if they want to speak to someone.

Highways have advised the Parish Council of an overnight closure of the A66.

Highways will keep us informed of changes and updates.

Overnight closure (8.00 p.m. to 6.00 a.m.) of A66 for essential resurfacing work.

This work will commence soon.

Diversion signs will be in place to try and minimise extra traffic coming through Melsonby.

Highways will be monitoring this and use CCTV to assist.

Signs will advise HGVs to use the A1 diversion.

We will use our speed cameras to provide number of vehicles information to Highways going through the village during these hours.

Unfortunately there is no way to discourage drivers whose sat navs direct them through Melsonby.

If you are out and about during the above hours please take extra care.

The alternative to overnight closures was to have contraflows on the A66.

This would have meant extra traffic through the village 24/7.

The ability to cross the A66 would also have been removed to a large extent.

National highways customer service contact details are:

Email – info@nationalhighways.co.uk

Phone – 03001235000 which is a 24 hour number

Communication received from National Highways. We appreciate the previous experiences you may have had during any previous work, especially with traffic using Melsonby and East Layton as shortcuts. Here’s what we’re doing to address this

What We’re Doing:

1. Diversion Routes: While we can’t stop people using Sat Nav’s, we’ve informed all key stakeholders including the haulage community, of the appropriate diversion routes and the routes are available on our website; along with comprehensive signage which will be deployed in the area.
2. Traffic Monitoring: We will monitor traffic in Melsonby and East Layton to manage any issues promptly where possible. We have traffic count data from our monitoring of the A66 and this is why the work has been planned to be carried out over-night when traffic is at its lowest.
3. Night-Time Closures: The A66 westbound will only be closed from 8 pm to 6 am, when there is less traffic. This should reduce the risk of shortcuts and allows us to keep the road fully open during the day.
4. Signage: We’ve already put up signs on the A66 to let drivers know about the closures and diversions and we will be installing further temporary signage around the villages to discourage people using it as a short cut.
5. Safety: We’re conscious of the safety concerns for school children and elderly residents. The night-time work will help reduce potential risks since fewer cars would have been using the A66 and and therefore will not potentially use unofficial alternative routes.
6. Minimising Shortcuts: By doing the work at night, we aim to keep the A66 fully open during the day, encouraging drivers to use it instead of cutting through local villages.

Working with the Community:

• We appreciate your offer to share data from your speed cameras. This will help us understand traffic patterns and the impact of the project going forward.

Moving Forward:

• Updates: We’ll keep the community updated on traffic and any changes to the project plan.
• Feedback: Please keep sharing your observations and data. This will help us make timely adjustments to reduce disruption.

We know this project may cause inconvenience, and we’re committed to working with you to minimise its impact on Melsonby and East Layton. Together, we can ensure everyone’s safety during this necessary work.

Thank you for your understanding. If you have any questions or need help, please contact our support desk https://nationalhighways.co.uk/help-centre/

The village has been entered into the Rotary Club of Richmond’s annual “Best Kept Village” competition. The judging will take place in the first two weeks of July. We would encourage residents to join in and support this competition. The judging criteria is available to view and download below.

The latest the Parish Report Richmond and Rural – April 2024 is available to view and download.

Correspondence from Openreach:

By way of introduction, I’m the regional engagement manager at Openreach and we look after the broadband network across the UK, including in Melsonby.

I’m getting in touch to inform you about a community scheme we’ve recently launched to upgrade the broadband network for around 500 properties in the East Layton exchange area including properties in Melsonby, Ravensworth, East Layton and Forcett.

If successful, we’ll roll out full fibre broadband – a considerably faster and more reliable broadband service than the existing part-fibre, part-copper lines that serve the majority of properties in the villages today. We’re currently rollout out this technology across the UK (we’ve reached over 14 million properties so far) and the Government has made some funding available to help subsidise the rollout and ensure that rural areas like yours don’t miss out. To secure the funding, we need to prove that there is demand within the village for the faster broadband speeds.

We’re asking people to pledge their support for the scheme on our website here: Connect My Community (openreach.com). We need to secure 177 vouchers for the scheme to go ahead. One important point, people will be able to choose their communications provider e.g. Sky, TalkTalk, BT, EE, Plusnet, we are not endorsing any one particular provider.

Letters will be dropping through the doors of all eligible properties this week and if you haven’t already you will soon see our vans and engineers out and about completing some initial survey work.

Full details of the scheme are included in the attached document. I would really appreciate it if you could help us spread awareness of the scheme so that everyone who wants to support this, has the opportunity to do so.

Please do let me know if you have any questions. Look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards

Wendy

Wendy Sycamore
Regional engagement manager
Openreach

Update report from Councillor Angus Thompson – April 2024