Grant Money

Talented individuals as well as Voluntary and Community groups can apply for grants from Central Bedfordshire (click here). Offering up to £250 for a person and a massive £10,000 for groups so long as this is no more than 25% of the total cost, the application forms can be downloaded from the above link now.

There are deadlines throughout the year when the applications will be considered.

The Town Council also has grant funding for groups and organisations and will next be meeting on the 23rd June to give out up to £14,000. The Town Council policy is to offer up to £500 to established qualifying groups and up to £250 to new groups to assist in their formation and early days.

The Big Lunch - 19th July 2009

Have you heard of The Big Lunch? It is run by the Eden project and has the support of the Local Government Association and CPRE and a number of national voluntary and community charities and organisations.


The idea is to have lunch and a street party with your neighbours in locations all over the country.

Across Bedfordshire there are a fair number of events planned but locally the take up has not been that great and I think we need to change this.

www.thebiglunch.com has details of events searchable by postcode and you can also express an interest in joining in with an event.

To make it easier, Central Bedfordshire has issued a Traffic Regulation Order covering Temporary Road Closure for Any cul-de-sac in Central Bedfordshire. So as long as you let them know via the website or on the phone (0300 300 8000 - ask for Hazel Potter) by the 6th July you can have your cul-de-sac closed to traffic.

Your ward councillor will be pleased to offer assistance. Insurance must be held for public liability but this does not need to be expensive and you can get advice on this from The Big Lunch or us.

If you want to run an event, particularly in Grovebury ward, let me know.

Police Joint Action Group

Our local police officers have arranged meetings between themselves and local representatives to discuss any issues faced by our residents around crime, antisocial behaviour and Policing matters.

I am going to discuss any issues that you may have in the East of the Town so if you have anything you want me to raise, please leave a comment below.

Central Beds First Full Council

The very first full council meeting of Central Bedfordshire takes place on THURSDAY 18th JUNE at Priory House, Monks Walk, Chicksands, Shefford, SG17 5TQ starting at 18:30.

You are welcome to attend.







Before then, some facts and figures about the new authority area -

• 66 Councillors
• 105,400 Households
• 252,100 Residents
• 16th Largest of 56 Unitaries
• 9,645 Businesses
• 3.1% Unemployment (April 2009)
• 4.1% National unemployment rate
• 85,000 Tonnes of rubbish and recycling to collect in 2009/10
• 39,037 Children in Central Bedfordshire Schools
• 139 Schools
• 2,200 km of roads maintained by CBC
• 2,500 Employees excluding schools staff
• 5,289 Teaching and Support staff
• £166,000,000 net budget (excluding education and housing revenue)
• £500,000,000 gross budget
• 1,100 Queries per day answered by Customer Service advisors

Elected - Thank you

Thank you for electing me to represent you again on Central Bedfordshire for the next two years.

The turnout in Grovebury was better than some had predicted with 30.4% of you coming out to vote for someone but now myself and Ray Berry have the next 2 years to prove that voting for us was the right choice.

Between Ray's votes and mine we had 55.5% of the vote.

The full breakdown is as follows:

BERRY, Ray - 1052
BONE, Jennifer (Labour) 398
FAHN, Adam - 1028
GRIFFIN-JORGENSEN, Hugo (Lib-Dem) 504
McMORROW, Peter Aidan (Lib-Dem) 444
NORTHEDGE, Chris (Labour) 32

We finished the count at Dunstable Leisure Centre at around 4:45 am on Friday morning and of course work started pre 9am so catching up on sleep is a priority however, I would like to get around to as many resident associations and groups that are in the ward as possible so we can create a list of tasks you would like us to achieve in the next 23 months before the next elections in May 2011.

I can't promise to do everything but we really are ready and willing to give it a go.

Polling Day

That's it - the leaflets are done!!

I have just finished putting the second leaflet through the doors of Billington Park and Sandhills and now we are ready for June 4th.

I had a man suggest I should push the leaflet all the way through his letter box even though his dog had already tried to take my hand off - mmm, that's a good idea!

Thanks go to Peter, Duncan, Richard, Colin, Other Peter, Nigel, The two Daves, Andrew Selous and my running mate Ray for their help in this rather large task.

Sorry if I did not get to knock on your door personally, which being open and honest is most of you as we had a decent size team helping this time but the blog is open for comments and you can email or phone with any issues.

Polls are open from 7am until 10pm on Thursday 4th June and you do NOT need a polling card so if you have lost it, please still go to your local polling station and vote. Preferably voting Conservative :)