Weather warning for West Somerset as more snow on way tonight

ANOTHER weather warning for West Somerset has been issued by the Met Office as two-and-a-half inches of snow was expected to fall on Exmoor tonight.
People living in some of the highest areas were likely to receive even heavier snowfalls.
It was also forecast to be a windy night with gusts of up to 25 mph in some areas, which would make the air feel even colder.
Met Office spokeswoman Sarah Holland said most of the rest of the Westcountry was likely to escape the worst of the winter weather, and slightly warmer temperatures should move in overnight.
She said: “If people are out and about, they should still take extreme care.”
Earlier this week, there was chaos on the area’s roads with a string of minor accidents, people unable to travel to work, bus and coach runs cancelled, and schools closed in Stogumber, Crowcombe, and Milverton.

Concern over 'ghost hunting' grant as Lottery supports West Somerset toddler group

A WEST Somerset support group for parents with young children was celebrating today after being awarded a National Lottery grant of more than £3,000.
Stogumber Toddlers and Tiddlers will use the money to buy equipment which it can use to deliver activities for parents and children who attend the group.
The group, which meets weekly, has received £3,340 from the Lottery’s Awards for All initiative.
Awards for All is the small grants scheme administered by the Big Lottery Fund on behalf of Lottery good cause funders Arts Council England, Big Lottery Fund, Heritage Lottery Fund, and Sport England.
The scheme makes awards of between £300 and £10,000 to grass-roots community groups and voluntary organisations.
Big Lottery Fund regional head Mark Cotton said: “Overall, 59 fantastic schemes secured funding across the South West region this month, including a remarkable festival of earth science, an important chance for veterans to remember brothers from the Second World War, and a determined group of volunteers taking the environment into their own hands.
“I am so pleased over £350,000 will be shared out among all the successful schemes in this round of Lottery awards.”
However, some concern has been expressed at the fund’s controversial decision to award more than £2,000 to a group of ‘ghost hunters’.
It was the second Lottery award in a year for the group, Paranormal Site Investigators, based in Wiltshire.
Awards for All justified the £2,133 grant to the physic investigators by saying it would be used to ‘promote the haunted heritage’ of the South West with material sent to schools and made available to the public, as well as five ‘heritage events’ being organised for school pupils, college students, and the public.

Meeting and greeting Crowcombe and Stogumber new beat PCSO

‘MEET and Greet’ sessions are being organised by Crowcombe and Stogumber’s new beat PCSO David Rowe.
PCSO Rowe will be available from next month to accommodate anybody living in his new beat area who wants to discuss any issues of concern.
He said: “My meet and greet sessions will still be held in the Community Policing (CPU) bus and will still be an opportunity for you, the local public, to meet your Neighbourhood Beat Team and discuss any issues that you may have.”
The sessions will be held on the first Monday of each month and will last for 45 minutes.
The new times and venues are as follows:

• 5.30 pm - outside Crowcombe Post Office
  
• 6.30 pm - Notley Arms car park, Monksilver
  
• 7.30 pm - Roadwater Post Office car park
  
• 8.20 pm - Lysaght Hall car park, Old Cleeve

PCSO Rowe continues also to cover Old Cleeve parish, while his previous beat of Carhampton and Withycombe has reverted to PCSO Sue Hurley and PC Mark Curran, who work from Minehead Police Station.
The Crowcombe and Stogumber police neighbourhood beat team is now managed by PC Fiona Clopet, who works from Williton Police Station.

Nu-Folk evening with 3 Daft Monkeys

HAVING spent last summer wowing festival crowds across the country, and the previous winter touring the UK and Europe with The Levellers, the 3 Daft Monkeys perform at a ‘Nu-Folk’ night in the Elworthy, Monksilver, and Nettlecombe Community Hall next month.
The band performs self-written material with celtic, Balkan, gipsy, Spanish, and Cornish influences with frenetic fiddling, rhythmical 12-string guitar, dancing bass, and foot drum.
Supporting 3 Daft Monkeys will be Bag of Rats ,who formed three years ago from musicians from across Somerset and Dorset and play a mixture of traditional English, blues, Irish, jazz, and country, together with a smidgeon of ska.
The ‘Nu-Folk’ night has been organised by Under One Sun, whose co-ordinator Jamie Robertson said: “The 3 Daft Monkeys traverse dance, dub, punk, reggae and traditional folk with ease, creating a stunning blend of upbeat, danceable music which despite all its influences remains undeniably British.
“Bag of Rats will be giving a rousing warm-up. Their unique blend of high octane, funked-up folk is guaranteed to blow away the winter blues.”
The 3 Daft Monkeys’ latest release ‘Go Tell The Bees’ is titled after an old Cornish saying meaning that if you have news to share with the world then you go and whisper it to the bees, who will then spread the word far and wide.
The gig takes place on Saturday, February 9, from 8 pm, and tickets cost £10 while stocks last from www.wegottickets.com, Taunton Tourist Information Centre on 01823 336344, Toucan Wholefoods, Minehead, on 01643 706101, or by cheque to Under One Sun, 12 Hill St, Stogumber TA4 3TD.
Further information is available from 01984 656727 and on the website http://www.underonesun.org.uk/.

• Our photograph shows the 3 Daft Monkeys. Photo submitted.

Under-fire Conservatives step down in council financial row

THE leader and deputy leader of the minority Conservative group on West Somerset Council are quitting their political positions amid a row over the authority’s financial crisis.
The Conservatives lost control of the council in last May’s elections when Independent candidates backed by the Liberal Democrat-founded pressure group Direct won more seats.
Since then, Conservative leader Councillor Christine Lawrence (pictured, right) and her deputy Councillor Roger Webber (pictured, below) have been accused of allowing council finances to spiral out of control.
It resulted in both the council’s chief executive Tim Howes and deputy chief executive Rod Latham receiving huge pay-offs from the new Independent administration to leave their jobs, which plunged the authority further into the fiscal mire.
Council leader Councillor Keith Ross was forced also to abandon the much-vaunted New Horizons healthplex scheme in Minehead because there was no money in the kitty to fund the district’s share of the costs – even though work had already started.
New Horizons, which was a partnership with Somerset County Council, Somerset Primary Care Trust, and the West Somerset Community College, included a modern replacement for Minehead Hospital – and now the PCT has been unable to guarantee that it will still be delivered.
The council’s deputy leader, Councillor Simon Stokes (Labour) later called on Councillors Lawrence and Webber, who was the finance portfolio holder until May, to accept their share of responsibility for the crisis and to resign.
Now, former headmaster and chief executive Councillor Tim Taylor, who was elected in May to represent Crowcombe and Stogumber, is to succeed as Conservative group on February 1.
Both Councillors Lawrence and Webber will continue as district councillors.
Councillor Lawrence, who is also a Somerset county councillor for Dunster, said: “I have enjoyed serving the community and I am proud of the projects we were able to deliver during my term, especially the groundwork for the new hospital.”
She said she wanted to devote more time to resolving issues in her Minehead north ward and to her responsibilities as a county councillor.
Councillor Lawrence said she originally intended to hand over to somebody else after the council’s annual meeting ion May, but thought it sensible to allow a new team to be put in place beforehand.
Councillor Taylor said: “West Somerset owes them an enormous debt of gratitude and I am sure this will become more obvious over time.”

Back to the Future for rural schools : Victorian-style classes feared

SCHOOLS built by the Victorians in some of West Somerset’s rural communities could soon be forced to again deliver teaching in Victorian-style classes.
The step back to a teaching style of 150 years ago could be forced on small schools by funding proposals being considered in the New Year.
It could mean schools such as Exford Church of England First School being reduced to a single class where all the children from the ages of four to nine years were taught together by the school’s only teacher.
Similarly, Dulverton Middle and Community School could find its nine classrooms cut to six, with subsequent redundancies among the teaching staff.
Governors of the two schools are fighting the proposed changes to the way in which funding is allocated to schools throughout Somerset.
The county council is due to decide on January 16 on a package of 11 proposals.
One of those who will be attending that meeting to address councillors is the chairman of the governors of the Federation of Exford and Dulverton Schools, Dr Brian Martin.
The federation, which was only formed in April of this year as a result of county council pressure to cut the costs of running small schools, also includes Dulverton All Saints Church of England First School.
Other schools which have federated under recent county council pressure include Cutcombe and Timberscombe First Schools, as well as Danesfield Middle, Williton St Peter’s First, and Old Cleeve First Schools.
A ‘soft governance federation’ was put in place for Minehead Middle, Porlock St Dubricius, Minehead St Michael’s, and Dunster First Schools.
Crowcombe and Stogumber Primary Schools also federated in a separate move.
Nevertheless, the county council has highlighted the fact that the cost of running its small schools is still in the top 100 of the most expensive schools per pupil in the country.
Dr Martin said the new funding proposals were finance-driven and did not take any account of need to bed in recent federations and make them work properly.
He said the council wanted to spread its education cost per pupil more evenly across all schools and one way of doing so would be to reduce the ‘small schools protection’ which currently guaranteed a minimum of two classes for schools with 60 or fewer pupils.
Dr Martin said the moves would leave schools such as Exford ‘vulnerable’ and could even lead to closure.
He said: “We think that this is a step back to Victorian times almost.
“It really does not pay any heed to the ‘Every Child Matters’ policy that has been pushed forward by the Government.
“And ‘individual learning’ just goes out of the window.
“It puts small rural schools in a very vulnerable position.”
Dr Martin said the knock-on effects could see small and middle schools unable to teach the national curriculum to the right standard, meaning pupils would move on to the West Somerset Community College still requiring to be brought up to the right level of education for their age.
There was a further risk that some West Somerset parents might move to another area in order to secure a better education for their children, or that parents would be put off moving to live in the district, thereby causing a fall in pupil numbers and making schools even more vulnerable.
Dr Martin said some pupils as young as four and five years were already making a journey of 40 minutes to reach schools on Exmoor.
If the schools closed, the only alternative would be an even longer journey to a town school.
He said: “It is not like an urban area where you may be able to close a school and still have reasonable travel times to an alternative. There is no alternative on Exmoor.
“We are making a plea that there is an exception in this area for small rural schools which serve their communities.”
Dr Martin appreciated some schools, such as Danesfield Middle, in Williton, might benefit overall from the proposed changes and it was likely that Somerset’s larger schools would support the new funding regime.
But he said: “We would hope they appreciate that they are part of a whole school system here, where we all feed through to the community college and secondary education, and would want strength in the whole system.”
Dr Martin said making teachers redundant in Dulverton Middle School would result in a loss of specialist skills and make it near-impossible to deliver the school’s highly regarded Exmoor Curriculum.

• Our photograph shows Exford Church of England First School. Photo submitted.