Updates on Major Developments 🏘

Travel and Transport Special 🚂🚎

CANGO A history, and the future

• The Cango Users’ Forum was established, and I was elected Chairman.
• 6000 leaflets were delivered, one to every residential address along or close to the Cango area.
• Passenger numbers increased by 274% on the figures quoted by HCC.
• The Cango Users’ Forum was strongly supported by our local County and District Councillors and by all members of Sway Parish Council and still is.
• The Cango services continued to run at an acceptable level of usage until 2019.
• The last two years have seen an enormous reduction in usage, due entirely to the COVID-19 pandemic. The slogan ‘Use it or Lose it’ is today as relevant as it has ever been. If you only know of Cango by seeing the distinctive yellow bus pass by, you will not know what a unique and brilliantly flexible bus service it is. We now need to make every effort to use this incredibly valuable community transport service which transforms the lives of many of its users.

FOSS and the Community Rail Partnership

• FOSS and the Parish Council presented gifts to mark Station Master Tony’s retirement.
• The ticket office will remain open 3 days a week – a decision is awaited (probably in the next financial year) as to his replacement - or not. 
• There are national conversations that relate to reducing staffed ticket offices at stations, as society switches to online booking etc. This will have implications for Sway and the state of the station, its buildings etc. 
• FOSS received a donation from the Parish Council for planting and displays this year; they await 
• clarification from SWR on funding also towards planting. Planting will start very soon. 
• Network Rail say they have the roof-level repainting planned for the financial year 2022-23; FOSS will maintain pressure from the community to ensure the work is carried out. 
• The Parish Council will receive reports throughout the year about the New Forest Community rail partnership. 
• FOSS is working with Brockenhurst Friends to produce leaflets for Forest-based walks between the stations, promoting healthy living and appreciation of the Forest environments. 
• There has been no clear response yet from SWR as regards repainting the markings for the two designated 20-minute parking spaces on the downside station approach (existing markings have deteriorated considerably over the past 18 months). 
• SWR are still operating a sub-optimal timetable, especially for journeys beyond Bournemouth; this needs constant advocacy to get pre-Covid services reinstated.  Currently to get to Poole, apart from the first 3 trains of the day, it is necessary to take the 27minutes past services and change at Brockenhurst - making the journey 50 minutes or so instead of 35. 
• FOSS remain very keen to have new members, especially in respect of the community partnership, that are keen to realise opportunities and advantages that will hopefully follow from being in the partnership. It offers challenges and opportunities at a more strategic community level, that will hopefully benefit the Sway community. 
• They are also keen to draw in (younger) members or friends to help with the horticulture.

Sway Community SpeedWatch

Hugh Marchant writes: Sway SpeedWatch started in 2014, with numbers speeding in those early days being alarmingly high. In 2015, out of every 100 vehicles that drove past us, only 52 were obeying the speed limit. In that year, SID recorded 3,152 (21%) driving faster than 35 mph – the threshold for reporting to the police. We were reporting hundreds of speeding vehicles each month. 
 
Things have calmed down considerably since then. Although we have now reported more than 7,200 vehicles speeding since January 2016, this figure is much lower than it might have been. We estimate to have reduced numbers speeding during our operations over those 6 years by more than 8,800 – 5,700 of which would have been exceeding 35 mph. 
 
Last year 66 out of every 100 vehicles recorded by SID obeyed the speed limit and those exceeding the 35 mph threshold for reporting to the police dropped to 12%. Four months into 2022 and indications are that this year will be even better. So far this year, 72 out of every 100 vehicles have obeyed the speed limit and just 9% so far have exceeded the 35 mph threshold. Compare this to those starting figures of 52 and 21% and it is abundantly clear that Sway SpeedWatch has been incredibly successful. We hope that this improvement will continue for the rest of this year because the whole purpose of SpeedWatch is to encourage people to drive safely within the speed limit. The fewer people we record speeding, the more successful we will have been.
 
With more volunteers we could operate for longer each month and hence encourage even more people to act responsibly. Why not become part of our winning team?  All we ask is a couple of hours of your time a month. Email sway.speedwatch@gmail.com for details.
 
Remember that SpeedWatch is purely educational and not enforcement. The police send out warning letters to remind people of the need to abide by the speed limit. They may even pay a personal visit to deliver this warning message to those who speed excessively or persistently.  However, nobody receives fines or points on their licence through our reports.

This report shows the results for April 2022. For more detailed analysis and full history refer to our website at https://swaycsw.weebly.com/  This month we conducted 7 speedwatch sessions, reporting 62 speeding vehicles to the police. Highest speed detected was 50 mph – this was the same vehicle recorded last month doing 57 mph. That and one other were recorded speeding twice this month suggesting that more targeted enforcement may be required in addition to our Community SpeedWatch sessions. 



Again, a higher volume of traffic was observed this month especially on the B3055 which is being used as a diversion route while the bridge at Holmsley is being replaced.

What Vera Sees

Sway Parish Council’s Vehicle Activated Speed Limit Reminder counts vehicles exceeding the 35mph reporting threshold. From this data we can extrapolate the total number of vehicles speeding through Sway each week. The chart below shows this, along with the 8 week rolling average trend line. 

Electric Vehicle Plug in Points

What were you doing on the Silver Jubilee Weekend, 4th June 1977?
Cllr Davis writes: I was getting married! 
 

As was the way in the 1970s my parents arranged the wedding but when the date was decided we had no idea the Queen was going to celebrate her Silver Jubilee that weekend too! The nation was celebrating our wedding.

My Mum made my dress - leg o mutton sleeves were all the rage - and cousins were dragged in to be page boy and bridesmaid. They are both now retired - how time flies.

Paul's family and their friends are from the North East - so a bus was hired to bring the guests 'down south'. Many of those who came were friends of our parents - but we had had a pre-wedding celebration with friends in York, where we were living.

We drove down Friday night, picking up the hired morning suits on the way. Unfortunately there was some confusion in who had ordered what - so Paul wasn't able to shake his moves so well at the reception as he would have liked.

The Super 8 recording of my arrival at church shows me taking a deep breath as I get out of the wedding car, and my Dad's reassuring smile. That, and seeing my shoulders heave with laughter as I realised during the hymn that Paul was tone deaf remind me of the joy of the day.

We hired a small hotel for the reception, with guests able to stay overnight. Hearing the mix of accents not only from the north east and south but from Germany (my Mum's relations) was amazing. As the evening progressed the initial hum became more raucous. After the first dance with my Dad (we should have practised) the dance floor was filled with all ages doing their thing. Such joy!

Looking back at the wedding album (no photos saved to the cloud then) many of the guests are no longer alive. But of course, the family and friends group has grown over the years. We now have two daughters, delightful sons in law and their families, and four adorable grandchildren (although we are biased).

So how will we be celebrating the Platinum Jubilee? Food and drink always features in any Davis celebration - so a slap up family meal and get together planned for later in the month. In the meantime, we will be joining our friends in Sway at the Big Lunch on Stanford Rise Green. See you there 👍🏻

Report from EcoSway

Our volunteers, who delivered the Greening Sway cards, have now been around the village to count the cards they could see in householders’ windows. We will report on savings in emissions and monetary savings on our ECOSWAY page on the Parish Council website in May (under the drop-down Community tab). 

Thanks to all villagers who joined in the challenges and Well Done if you are still doing them! Quite a few villagers told us that these challenges are already part of your daily lives and this is something we have taken on board in our thinking and planning as we move forward. 
 
GREENING SWAY is on the cusp of Phase 2. This phase has three pillars: Retrofit; Rewilding and Health & Wellbeing. There is much more material in these to get our teeth into. It’s just a question of managing quite a lot of potential activity all at once.
 
That’s why we will find a way to explain how our community will benefit from looking at these three areas with us and how you can get involved if you would like to. Renewable energies are a big focus at this time and many of you will be considering ideas about how your homes could be adapted to reduce carbon emissions. Some of you have already begun using renewable energy and we hope you will share your experiences, something which will be invaluable.    

Sway is very good at building up nature. We definitely need to do more though for our pollinators and our soil and to capture carbon by planting more trees and shrubs. Letting our grassy areas grow long from May over the summer months will give precious insects the habitats they need to thrive.

And this will be a summer of social activities in Sway - at Open Gardens, the Big Jubilee Lunch and our Carnival events – to name just a few! It will all help us re-establish some normality and equilibrium in our lives and allow us to renew relationships and meet new friends.
 
Please watch out for posters, news and messages on social media about how Phase 2 will roll out. And have fun over the coming months. Thank you.

Team ECO SWAY meetings are held at Jubilee Pavilion on the first Tuesday of the month at 7:30pm (except May which will be held on Tuesday 10th). Everyone in our community is welcome.