Chearsley Roadworks and Lane Closures March 3-18

The Parish Council has for several years been lobbying Buckinghamshire Council (BC) to improve the roads in and around chearsley. There has been some progress, with the main route through the village and with School Lane, and we are pleased now to see that the remaining lanes are imminently due to receive attention.

Most people will have seen the road signs already in place and received a communication through the door from Buckinghamshire Council with details of the works. If for any reason you have missed this, a copy is on the Parish Council website here. Alternatively, speak to any Parish Councillor. Please note that whilst the BC letter is entitled Dark Lane, the works will affect other lanes as the letter indicates.

The timetable and detail provided by BC is very helpful, but the Parish Council advises caution in the way it is used simply because of inevitable delays that we know can occur to works of this sort. So please make allowance for short notice changes to these arrangements.

To help anyone with vehicle access difficulties during the works, especially those in Dark Lane who may be impacted for longer, a number of temporary car parking facilities are being made available:

• Cllr Paul Bown has kindly offered the use of his Pasture. For anyone not familiar with the location, go to the bottom of Church Lane, turn left and it's the gate 30 yards on the right. If you use this facility, please take great care not to cause damage to the pasture: it is clearly very soft at the moment and easily churned up by vehicles.
• The Church car park may be used but please not on Sundays

These two facilities will of course not be accessible during periods when the lower part of Church Lane is closed, and anyone using them overnight should be particularly alert to this.

• There will be limited temporary parking potentially available in the Village Hall car park. Please be mindful that it is used daily by CHUF staff, parents dropping off young children and other hall hirers. All parking is at the owner’s risk and Chearsley Village Hall does not offer any liability or security for parked cars.
• Chearsley Cricket Club is offering use of their car park. However, they need the main gate to be kept locked, so if you wish to use this please email Louisa (louisagadsby@hotmail.co.uk) who will share the code for the padlock on the gate. If there’s a lot of rain the park can become very muddy which may make other options a better choice.

We have spoken to Gary our postman who says he will do his best to deliver mail on foot where he cannot get his van through. His allocated time for delivering to the village is however limited and he may not complete his round every day as a result.

Even with these mitigations, the work will inevitably cause inconvenience and difficulties and we’re sorry for that. It is unfortunately unavoidable if we are to realise these much-needed improvements to the village.

It will not be possible for the Parish Council to issue regular updates on the progress of the works but we will do all we can to keep everyone informed of any significant changes to the plans. A copy of this note is on the PC website