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The Grapevine Magazine June 2003 Issue No 181
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Summer Services at St. Margaret's Watlington Hospital - Care Home
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Andrew Main, director of property and development at Soha, and Caroline Hjorth representing the Parish Council, officially opened the Lewknor Village Shop on Thursday 8th May. It was a great occasion representing the welcome return of a shop to the local community. As he waited to cut the red ribbon, Andrew recounted how Soha had become involved. "The parish council came to us and said they were without a village shop and it was a little bit different to what we are used to as housing landlords. But we are aware that a sustainable village needs a shop and we were really pleased to support the parish with their vision." Caroline added " This is a very special day for us, we are grateful to Soha and Helen Datsun of the Oxfordshire Rural Community Council as well as so many others for all their help in getting this project to this stage." The shop was decorated with balloons, which were given to all the children who attended as well as a drink and an Easter egg. The success of the shop was toasted with champagne, which was provided to everyone who came along to the opening. As well as creating much interest from the locals, the event was also attended by several district councilors, including Rodney Mann, our re-elected councilor and the outgoing Chairman of SODC, John Griffin. To commemorate the occasion the school children were asked to create a picture of the shop. The winners of the drawing/painting competition were: 1st Sarah Greensmith Year 6 2nd Deacon Ashworth Year 1 3rd Phoebe Hayward Krakatoa Playgroup Several journalists and a cameraman attended and you may have heard Caroline giving an interview on Radio Oxford! The shop is opening from 7am to 8pm at the moment. Sureshan is very happy to hear from you with suggestions of what you would like him to stock, and there is a comments book for your views. Please give the shop your support. We all need to make regular purchases rather than just using it when we run out of bread or milk!
Summer Services at St. Margaret's During August the congregation of St.Margaret's and St.Gile's will be joining together at 10.30am. The pattern of worship will be as follows: Aug 3rd. St.Giles Family worship. Aug10th. St. Margaret's Family Communion. Aug17th. Service on the Green at Tetsworth. Aug 24th. St.Margaret's Family communion. The service of Holy communion at 9.00am.at St. Margaret's on Aug.17th remains unchanged. On July 27th there will be a service of sung Evensong at St. Margaret's led by the Festival choir. In September we will be moving out of the church building to allow restoration work on the fabric to proceed without interruption or risk to worshippers. The time of our morning worship will also be changing to 9.30am. for an experimental period. The pattern will be as follows: 1st. Sunday. Morning Worship from Common worship. 2nd. Sunday. Family communion Common worship. 3rd. Sunday. Holy communion from the book of common prayer. There will be no Sunday service on the 4th. Sunday, but we will be holding Children's church on the Saturday at 4.30pm. Please note there be no service at St.Margaret's on Sept. 7th. as we will be joining the congregations in Thame for a united service. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions on the above changes to our service rota. Tel 281827.
The children have been very busy exploring patterns and the many different ways they occur in everyday things. Along with sewing and weaving, patterns and shapes found their way into cooking too - with triangle sandwiches and decorated pizzas. The theme continues after half-term, with prints, collages and - our favourite - bubble painting! We also have a couple of fun events coming up: Saturday 7th June: The grown-ups will be learning to Jive at the Jubilee Hall (ring Morag for tickets - 01844 281752) Tuesday 10th June: Krakatoas' Annual Sponsored Trike Ride - at the school. Do come and show your support for the children.
This half term has been very short and with many pupils taking SATS tests there hasn't been a lot of time for much else. However, the whole school went up to Aston Rowant Nature Reserve during the last week and learned amazing facts about our local habitat. They then walked all the way down again, which in this weather must have been interesting! The whole school will be visiting Hill End during the last half of the term. This is the first time we have been during the summer and everyone is looking forward to some lovely weather and exciting things to do. As there wasn't time to do the Maypole morning last month, there will be a Maypole Assembly on Friday 20th June at 1.30pm. Please do come along and watch the dancing. The rounders team will be giving their all at the "Small School's Rounders Tournament" to be held at Lewknor Recreation Ground on Friday 27th June at 11am, please come along if you can , to cheer us on. Sports Day is going to be held in the early evening this year, hopefully it will be cooler for everyone and enable more parents to be there. The date is Tuesday 8th July at 6.00pm. Just before we break up there is the School Music Evening, held in the Jubilee Hall on Thursday 17th July at 6.00pm. The last day of term is Friday 19th July when there will be ten Year 6 pupils leaving this year. I'm sure you will want to wish them all well in their move up to Secondary School. It has just been announced that Mr Richard Hudson has been appointed as the new Head Teacher at Icknield Community College and we look forward to seeing him at Lewknor in the future.
I was delighted to be invited to go to the launch of Red Kites in the Chilterns "Nest Watch" Launch last Friday. It was held at Blooms of Bressingham, Studley Green on the A40. After a few introductions the television was unveiled showing the nest that the cctv camera had been set up to record. As if on cue the mother arrived with something fluffy, but dead, to feed to her three chicks. We were all amazed when instead of fighting for mother's food they waited in turn to be fed. The nest site cannot be disclosed, but it is within 4 miles of Blooms. Cathy Rose is the Project Manager and she told me that the mother was born in 1998 and these are her second brood on the same nest. Her mother was one of the last kites brought from Spain in 1994. The chicks hatched at the very end of April and they will be ready to leave the nest for the first time in about 4 to 5 weeks. Do try to go along to watch them, it is a fantastic sight. The television is in the Coffee Shop and there are volunteers at hand to answer questions. Blooms is open Monday to Saturday 9-5.30 and Sunday 10.30-4pm. If you would like to be a volunteer for any of the Kites projects, Cathy can be contacted on 01844 271306. The website for Chiltern Conservation board is www.chilternsaonb.org. I have lots more information about the project and red kites - please contact me if you want to know more. Caroline Hjorth 352720
Age Concern is seeking to extend its Local Link Scheme by recruiting additional volunteers to ensure that older people in their community are kept in touch with the resources of Age Concern Oxfordshire. This involves acting as a conduit for information and advice and a degree of practical assistance where appropriate, for instance, the collection of pensions or prescriptions, and perhaps a little grocery shopping. There are already more than 100 such volunteers in the county but more are needed. If you are interested, contact Penny Thewlis or Penny Clover at Age Concern Oxfordshire (01865 849400).
ST MARGARET'S PARISH CHURCH, Lewknor The P.C.C. Have asked me to give you an update on the progress of our fund raising efforts. This fund raising is for regular giving by people in the village to make certain that our church is not closed, that services will continue to be held in Lewknor (not just in Thame) and we shall keep our right to have a vicar, when 3 other local churches have already lost that right. We have received an additional 17 standing orders and 4 cheques as donations. A further 4 more people had made pledges and taken envelopes. In total the extra money pledged amounts to about £2,000. With the tax rebate, this should come to sum of about £2,600. I would like to express on behalf of the P.C.C. Our thanks to everybody who has contributed to making this such a success. We also wish to say a special 'thank you' to the person who has anonymously donated £3,000! This was a magnificent gesture and shows how much people care about keeping our church open. Thus the total sum raised to date amounts to around £5,600, which carries us a long way towards our targeted amount of £13,500. This will allow us to meet the every day costs of running the church and pay the sum of just over £9,000 this year to the Diocese for the cost of having a vicar. We still have some way to go and I would like to ask anybody who has not made his or her pledge as yet to please help us make our target. Many people are now giving £1.00 per week in envelopes as we suggested. It does not seem a great amount to pay so as to ensure that all of us can carry on enjoying the right to have all our services, including weddings, baptisms and funerals in our Lewknor Church and not in Thame.
OCC has just published an updated map of the whole county showing all bus routes and providing an indication of the frequency of each service (which is not the same as a timetable). Copies may be obtained from OCC on 01865 815087 or 815088.
Oxford Tube Junction 6 Bus Service Parish Councils and members of the public are being invited to contribute their comments to the new proposals for the J6 link bus service and the road works at J6 to provide improved access to the Oxford Tube bus stops. Plans will be displayed at the Jubilee Hall on Friday 13th June between 10.00am and 12 noon and at Lewknor School on Monday 16th June between 7.00pm and 8.00pm. Everybody with an interest in the bus service, the safety of all users of junction 6 and the physical environment of our area should take the opportunity to make their views heard. The new proposals for the interchange between the link bus services and the Oxford Tube seem very complicated. No-one knows how the new services may work but the County Council is keen to make a start and learn from experience how well it works. Between 5.30am and 8.00am a shuttle service using two minibuses (one 6 seater and one 8 seater) will run between Chalgrove/Watlington/Lewknor and Thame/Chinnor/Lewknor. It may be possible to incorporate some short diversions along the route to collect passengers from nearby villages. These could include South Weston and Postcombe but nothing is guaranteed at this stage. Between 8.00am and 5.30pm there will be a service on demand which could be on an hourly basis. People will have to phone a central controller to arrange times for collection. There will only be one minibus in service during the main part of the day. This minibus also provides the area 'Dial-a-Ride' service for people with physical disabilities and who use wheelchairs or similar mobility vehicles. After 5.30 until half past midnight a 'demand responsive' service is also proposed. Passengers will have to phone the controller to be picked up at the J6 stops to be taken back to Watlington, Thame, wherever. The proposals for improving safety at the junction include a new 40 mph limit and central traffic islands. There will be two pedestrian crossing points opposite the existing stops which will be lighted by 6m light standards. The new bus shelters will also be lighted. A new, paved, footpath is proposed from the Oxford bound stop to the top of the Lewknor steps. At first sight it seems that there are still many issues of safety still to be resolved. The parish council is hoping to be able to discuss their concerns with the key people at County hall. It still seems to be the case that plans have been proposed by professionals who have spent no time observing the actual patterns of traffic and pedestrian movements at junction 6. Hopefully some improvements will be made to the plans before they are submitted to the County's Transport Implementation Committee on 31st July. If the scheme goes ahead it is proposed to begin in early 2004 and is estimated to cost £240,000.
You may recently have had a flyer through your letterbox from a company seeking to install solar panels on your property to reduce your energy bill. Over the next few years the government will be increasingly advocating the introduction of these and other devices to reduce both the consumption of fossil fuels and the production of pollution; indeed it has recently launched an associated grant scheme (the Clear Skies Grant) to provide financial assistance with the installation of this kind of technology. Unfortunately, like the introduction of double glazing and cavity-wall insulation, renewable energy is going to be a growth industry and there will be ample scope for 'cowboy' operators to flourish. Before commissioning a contractor, therefore, it would be wise to ensure that the company is registered with the Solar Trade Association as this will provide some sort of guarantee of competence. The STA's website is at www.greenenergy.org.uk/sta/ In this context, later this summer SODC will be relaunching the Solarsavers scheme at www.solarsavers.com (this site was not active at the time of writing, but watch that space). This scheme will offer local residents independent and trustworthy advice, recommend different options for solar hot water at discounted prices by reliable companies, and provide assistance with applying for the £500 Clear Skies Grant. Full details of the latter are not yet available but an update can be obtained via a dedicated Website www.clear-skies.org or from the help line number 08702 430930. If you wish to pursue this further, another agency worth investigating is TV Energy who promote renewables in the Thames Valley. They can be found at www.tvenergy.org or at 01865 817420.
Alan, Philip and Andrew Nunn would like to thank everyone for their donations for their late father Frances Nunn's chosen Charities. Thank you again.
The Living Well Programme is a new initiative being launched by the South East Oxon Primary Care Trust. It is a free course for adults suffering from long-term chronic medical conditions including MS, arthritis, heart disease, asthma, back pain and so on. The aim is to help people to acquire new skills and gain the confidence needed to help them to manage and cope with their condition. The first course, which will consist of six 21/2-hour sessions run on consecutive Tuesdays, beginning on 17th June. The venue has not been confirmed but it will be in the Watlington area. Anyone interested in this opportunity should contact Hayley Reynolds on 0800 052 3225 or 01491 208579 or hayley.reynolds@seoxon-pct.nhs.uk
WATLINGTON HOSPITAL - CARE HOME Current Progress The new, multipurpose Care Home to be managed by our partners Sanctuary Care, is now well under construction and the project is planned to be completed in April 2004. It should be able to receive the first patients a few weeks after this when commissioning and the necessary inspections have been completed. The Care Home will be able to admit a wide spectrum of patients and will include virtually all the categories of care which used to be available in the old hospital and some that were not. The ground floor will have a 10-bed unit for Intermediate Care to enable patients to be discharged earlier from NHS hospitals. These patients will, we understand, not be 'means tested' and will be funded by the NHS. The other 20 beds on the ground floor will be for general nursing care, some longer stay and some respite care, the majority being funded by Social Services perhaps with medical or nursing care costs covered by the NHS. On the first floor will be the 30-bed unit for elderly people with mental health needs (including Alzheimers disease). This too will include some beds for respite care. It is also good to know that the adjoining new and enlarged Doctors' Surgery, with its much improved facilities, is due for completion by the autumn of this year. It will be excellent to have such modern medical support so closely available to the Care Home. Now that the project is satisfactorily under way, we can turn to the part WHCT will play with Sanctuary Care when the new Care Home is open. An important part of this will be the Patients Fund. Patients Fund The Trustees of the WHCT have always made clear that the project to revive the former hospital as a multi-purpose Care Home would require and benefit from some regular and continuing support by the WHCT to ensure that its new services were best used. When our appeal was originally launched in 2000 we estimated the need for an endowment fund of £600,000 although, at that time, four years before the projected opening, we could not be certain how the income from the endowment would be utilised. Now, with less than a year before the projected opening in 2004, we can be clearer where financial support will help most. We can also take into account changes in the rules for NHS and Social Services support since the project started which have been clarified in discussion between ourselves, Sanctuary and the revelant State authorities. It has never been the Trust's object to pay the cost of individual patients at £600 - £900 per week (depending on the degree of dependency). This would clearly not be possible. The great majority will be paid by the NHS or Social Services and there will, we expect, as before, be a small number of fee paying patients where there are vacancies over and above the authorities' block or spot bookings. We have stressed from the start the importance of assuring some access at all times for those within the catchment area, roughly from Chinnor to Nettlebed and from Chalgrove to Ibstone and Hambleden. These are the people whose generosity and determination have made the Care Home possible. We have reached an agreement with Sanctuary that, for a much discounted annual payment by the Trust (discounted in relation to the cost of the bed), one bed will always be kept available for local people. When it is occupied, the next available bed will be kept open and so on. This, taken with a clause in our operating agreement with Sanctuary which gives local priority, and the confirmed policy of Social Services to place people as close to their families, will achieve WHCT's objective. This payment of some £7,500 per annumm will be the first call on the Patients Fund The next call on the fund will be to support a regular and professional transport system for patients, their families and staff to and from the new Care Home and the surgery from within the catchment area. A 15-seater minibus, with a lift for the disabled chairs, has been generously donated to WHCT. WHCT will provide part of the cost to extend the availability and the use of the minibus to both the Care Home and the Surgery. We calculate that some £12,000 per annum will be required for this. Lastly we must budget for the upkeep costs of the adjoining land in the ownership of the Trust so that, once set right, it continues to be maintained better than it has been for the last 50 years. We also require a small provision for compliance with the planning conditions that are WHCT's responsibilities. There will, in addition, be other contingencies which we cannot as yet foresee. We therefore believe that an annual income of some £25,000 per year will be needed. If this were all to be covered by endowment, the capital sum required would be, at current interest rates, close to the £600,000 originally estimated. We hope that fund raising and support by the successor to the marvellously active league of Friends of the old hospital will contribute to the financial need and also to other comforts that future patients may require. So far, we have some £130,000 raised towards our target. Several events are, we know, planned for this year by our Events Committee which will certainly add to the total but we will need a continuation of the wonderful help we have had so widely from the community to reach our final financial target. The Trustees May 2003
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