Dec 2012

Well its been almost 6 months since I last updated my little corner of the Society website. So, apologies to those of you who have been waiting with bated breath for the next instalment !

Its been a very busy time and it doesn't look like getting any easier in the near future. Perhaps a quick summary of what's been going on would be good : the Queens Jubilee celebration weekend was a wonderful event, we had a brilliant trip to Liverpool in July and our traditional Village clean-up in the same month. The Britain in Bloom competition took place, witha fantastic silver gilt award for the village, the launch of the Society's very own Civic Pride Award Scheme with the first 3 awards going to Craig at the Fleece, the staff at the Olive Branch and AddinghamGarden Friends.....both in August. The Autumn Fayre raised some well needed funds for the Society and just recently we had a great day out at Chatsworth and a visit by Griff Rhys Jones President of Civic Voice. We had our members Speaker evenings, which continue to be well supported. We held our AGM on the 8th of November and our long standing Hon Sec Mike Bolton decided to hand over the reins to Peter Wilkinson. Mike is remaining on the Committee, thankfully !

Aside, from a busy Social calendar we've been very active elsewhere. We put our weight behind the campaign to stop Kelda Water building 3 new wind turbines at Chelker and as you probably know that was successful. They just need to remove the 4 'stumps' which are an eyesore. We helped with the campaign to save the Village library and are still fighting the plans to dump inert waste at a site near FarfieldFarm. There are many people objecting to this plan and just recently things have gone quiet, so lets keep our fingers crossed. Bradford Council told us that they will not be undertaking a Conservation Area Review this year (due in April) because of a lack of resources (!)....so the Society will be doing much of the work for them. So, if you see Committee members wandering around taking photos, don't be alarmed ! Working withthe Parish Council we looking to put in place a couple of speed monitoring devices in the Village. Basically, they will tell us about the volumes and speed of traffic and armed with these statistics we can hopefully do something about the problem of speeding. Our plans to build a Multi Use Games Area are still proceeding, although as you might expect it is not easy to raise the necessary funds, around £120k. Still, we remain optimistic and we are hoping to receive some good news this month.

Finally, the big one. Our campaign to stop the building of 400 new homes in the Village. In recent months we have seen a number of other organisations/clubs /societies in the Wharfedale Valley uniting to fight Bradford Council. Together, we have a better chance of succeeding, than Addingham going it alone. In reality, large scale building in one local area has knock-on effects elsewhere. A Lot of time is being spent trying to get our campaign into the National arena. We will keep you posted, but remain patient, this thing will rumble on for some time yet.

Thanks to the support of our members we are now the 3rd biggest Society in Yorkshire.....and growing. I'll sign off now and simply take the opportunity to wish you all a happy Xmas but above all a healthy New Year.

Jim Robinson