December 2008
Like all Loughtonians, I was very saddened to learn of the death in Afghanistan of 19-year old Marine George Sparks, who lived in Theydon Mount, but who as a boy attended Debden Park High School here in Loughton.
My father served in the Marines, who are often the forgotten service, whose work is much less well known that that of the Navy, Army, and Air Force, but who for 300 years have served their country faithfully, often in the most difficult of circumstances. My mind goes back to another Marine, with the same surname, Bill Sparks, one of the cockleshell heroes, whose house in Loughton is marked by one of our blue plaques.
George Sparks died in the service of us all in a faraway country. We are proud that he grew up among us, and immensely sad that he died bravely doing his country's work in the most dangerous of circumstances.
Our thoughts and prayers will be with his family and comrades during the funeral service on 13 December.
l
A week before Christmas, and most of the pleasant duties a mayor has to perform before the season are over. I was pleased to switch on the lights in both the High Road and the Broadway, to judge and then present the prizes for the Christmas Card design competition, to help judge and then take round the cups for the Best Dressed Window contest, and to attend various other events, such as Light up a Life. Despite the recession, the Christmas spirit seems alive and well in Loughton.

One of our important Loughton facilities is the E15 Acting School, University of Essex, as I have mentioned in these notes before. Their performance base in our town is the Corbett theatre, which is also, by a strange quirk, Loughton's oldest building, but it has been on its site in Rectory Lane only since 1966. For the previous 500 years, it stood on a farm at Ditchling, near Lewes in Sussex. Today, I met a group from Ditchling, who told me how in the 60s, what was to become a building site was rescued by the community to form a village green, but the barn on it had to be disassembled and sold to defray the land purchase cost. That barn was bought by the Acting School, with the help of Harry H Corbett, and re-erected 65 miles away in Loughton, to become the Corbett Theatre. A most interesting story, especially as we in Loughton are trying to create five village greens to prevent any possibility of their being covered with houses! The timbers of the old barn that for centuries resounded with the sound of flail and hay cart now resonate with the comedy or pathos of the production. I wondered what the Sussex yeoman who had the barn built would have made of the remnants of the pantomime giant that adorned the old place today?

I was then able to take the group on a walk round one of the three Loughton conservation areas, to point out something of the architecture, historical interest, and the views, both over the Forest and over London, that our hills afford. I think we were a good antidote to the "flat, boring, Essex" fable.

May I take this opportunity of wishing everyone a very happy Christmas? I'd also like to thank the town council staff for their hard work, support, and general cheerfulness in what has been a year of great change for them. Public servants, generally, are often criticised, but our staff at LTC are really first rate.

November 2008
November is always a busy month, and November 2008 was no exception.
The month started with the twice-yearly parishes' public transport meeting, held this time for Harlow and Epping Forest in our own council chamber. In 2007, the bus operators decided, without any consultation, to move the long established main bus stops by Sainsbury's at Debden to a remote location a quarter mile away, and 500 yards from the station. This has been the worse decision in a decade for the travelling public, especially the aged or infirm, but it has taken an age and literally tens of meetings and phone calls to get it all reversed. The District Council has now given permission for the bus shelters in Torrington Drive to be moved, and with any luck, this will be the linchpin of getting the situation righted. But things move so slowly, especially when 6 different organisations are involved.

I was proud to lay the Town Council's wreath at the War Memorial on Remembrance Sunday, and to be present also at 1100 on Armistice Day itself. By next year, I hope we shall have re-laid the pavement by the Memorial, and cleaned and renovated the column itself in time for its 90th birthday. It was designed by the Loughton architect, Thomas Weatherall, and unveiled in the summer of 1920. A few years ago, we added the names of the WW2 dead, and of course, in 2005, we inaugurated a civilian war memorial too, on the site of one of the worst incidents, at Loughton Police Station.

This year, we have instituted citizenship awards, and I would like to encourage anyone who knows, for instance, of a dedicated volunteer who has benefited the people of Loughton over the years, or one who has, by a single act of bravery, helped Loughton people, to make a nomination. You can download a simple form here.

November ended with the switch-on of the High Road Christmas lights. Last year various factors combined to make the High Road "dark". This year, the newly re-elected Town Council decided it would not suffer the dozens of complaints received in 2007, and quadrupled the grant to the Town Centre Partnership, who erect and organise the lights. A good job we did, considering the difficulties some traders are in, and their consequent inability to fund much of the display themselves. It was a great pleasure, therefore, to switch them on, after a spirited performance of carols by Staples Road School, and a drama by Roding Valley High School. This coming month I will also be switching on the Broadway lights on Friday 5th December at 4.30pm and leading the Light up a Life ceremony on Saturday 6th December at 4.30pm at Kings Green.

Our Christmas card competition attracted many more entries than usual this year, and a striking computer-assisted design based on our landmark, the Lopping Hall, by Jason Walton was the overall winner. But all the entries were excellent, and you can see the class winners and a selection of the entries on display at the Loughton Library until 8th December.

I was glad to read that government support for Citizens' Advice is to be increased. I hope some of the extra cash will come to Loughton, where the Town Council has supported our local CAB markedly over the years. That brings me on to LTC grants for all voluntary groups and local charities, for which the deadline for applications is 31 December. So fill in your forms now! They can be downloaded here.

October 2008
October has seen the issue of Debden's green spaces rumble on - now the District Council has apparently decided not to consider specific suggestions for development sites just yet, but instead, first to develop a wider brief on where in the District, and how much development might be expected. Strange they didn't do this before the August decision to put forward our green spaces! When I attended the play devised by the E15 Acting School on 18 October about the saving of Epping Forest, I was rather forcibly reminded that the fight to save green spaces, started in 1865, still goes on today! Meanwhile, the Town Council is collecting evidence for the registration of some of them as village greens -- this request for information will feature prominently in the next Think Loughton. The more evidence we can bring the better, and I was heartened to meet a lady the other day who took children to play on two of the greens at least 40 years ago, with no notices even then prohibiting games of any kind!

Talking of games, it is well known I cannot tell one end of a football from another, but I was very pleased the other day to meet Sir Trevor Brooking, who kindly came to Loughton to unveil the blue plaque to Ron Greenwood on 22 Brooklyn Avenue, Ron's first house in the town. Sir Trevor and I were near contemporaries in two different Essex grammar schools, he at Ilford County High, and me at the Monoux. Now I know why we generally lost at soccer to Ilford CHS.

We have decided to mark those who give special service to the local community - and acts of bravery as well, by making new citizenship awards. The details of these, to be awarded in March at the Civic Service, will also be in Think Loughton.

In November, we mark the fallen of conflicts by two commemorations at the Kings Green War memorial, and I shall be honoured to lay the Town's wreath. These are always moving occasions, made more poignant by the fact that Loughton people are still serving their country and facing great danger at the present time; I was pleased to come across at a recent reception for returning troops a constituent who had served in Afghanistan, with all the perils that entails.

September 2008
The quick reaction by Town and District Councillors to the attempt I described in August to designate open spaces on the Debden Estate for possible future development proved positive. Five of the District Councillors who also sit on the Town Council called in the decision, and the call-in was upheld by the EFDC Overview and Scrutiny Committee at a well-attended meeting held on 28th August 2008 with over 120 concerned residents in the public gallery. The webcast of the meeting can be viewed here.
This does not mean the battle has been won, but the concerted action meant that the attempt to get the decision out during the holiday month failed, and the cabinet member will have to reconsider.
September is the month when local council activity recommences in earnest, and our Environment and Heritage Committee decided to back up the actions of its District Council members by starting the process to register most of the open spaces that were threatened, and a couple of others, as village greens. This is a long and tortuous process, and success is not guaranteed, but it does demonstrate the strong support that exits in Loughton for the retention of these greens.
l
Long-serving town councillors were saddened to hear on 22 September of the death of former Labour councillor, Mike Sellears. Mike was elected for the old Debden Green ward in 2000 and served until 2004.
He was a life long amateur football enthusiast, particularly interested in youth football; and one of his main concerns on the council's former Environment Heritage and Leisure Committee was sporting facilities.
Mike was liked and respected by councillors of all parties. We knew he had been in poor health, but were shocked to hear of his untimely death. Our sincere condolences go to his family.
I shall represent the Town at his funeral at 1400 on Friday 26th at St Mary's Church.
l
I attended two very different appointments on 26 September.
The first was the funeral of Mike Sellears, at which the Town Clerk and several other councillors and former councillors were present also. It was a moving occasion and was attended by over a hundred people, a big component of which was former players from Border Rangers, the team "The Gaffer" had been associated with for over 30 years and to which he gave such time and effort.

The other event was an open-air lecture in the Forest to University of Essex E15 Acting School students, about the events leading up to the saving of Loughton's forest as an open space, and the many and varied attempts the landowners made to enclose and build on it. The very lively and intelligent students were researching and writing a play on this theme, to be performed in the Forest on the afternoon of 18 October. ( http://www.east15.ac.uk/ ) Do come along! Though I could answer many, I was stumped by a few of their questions, and they were most intrigued by my trusty billhook, which I took along as a prop. The billhook was the principal tool used by the loppers, which has almost entirely fallen out of use. If there is a symbol of Loughton, the billhook is surely it!
The defence of open spaces is of course a very current issue, as my earlier entries in these notes will show. I hope the District Council cabinet member, who has now to reconsider his decision to list the Loughton greens for possible building, will do the honourable thing and withdraw them from consideration entirely, in the face of the Town Council's and local residents' implacable opposition to this idea. For just as in the 19th century, Loughtonians were determined to save their open spaces, so they are now.

August 2008
August is a quiet month in local council circles, but there have been a few planning applications and decisions which have caused some concern, plus a proposal slipped in from the District Council to put forward in the "call for sites" for development some of the open spaces on the ex-LCC Debden Estate. This does not mean they will be built over immediately, but it does mean, if the decision is unchallenged, they will go on a list and may be regarded as fair game.
The open spaces in the north of our town are greatly prized, for informal sports and recreation, walking the dog, and generally allowing the 650 acres of Debden to breathe. They were deliberately designed in to make the estate a "garden city" in the best mid-20th century architectural tradition.
The Town Council has been discussing whether to attempt to designate some of these greens as "village greens", and has taken a decision in principle to do so. Land in Loughton is under great pressure, particularly when development land can change hands for in excess of £2m an acre, so the Town Council, as the only truly Loughton representatives, will defend the greens staunchly.

July 2008
We have recently taken delivery of the new silver chain made for the Town Mayor to wear by Vaughtons of Birmingham. Some councillors have said spending £1000 on the chain is a waste of money, but the importance to me of the chain is the dignity it gives to the Mayor's office and the town; not, of course, to the person.
I well remember, when Mayor before, giving a centenarian a present from the Town on her 100th birthday. The very astute lady, having been warned over the years of deceptions and scams of all sorts, immediately replied "If he's the mayor -- where's his chain?". The chain and office of town mayor is central to my desire to make our council relevant in all possible ways to our town, and to restore something of the civic pride of Loughton, which has been so lacking in the past.

In similar vein, I attended last week the AGM of one of Loughton's less prominent, but very worthy charities, Rider House in the High Road. Affiliated to the Abbeyfield Society, this is a house adapted to provide homes for 9 less able, but still independent living, elderly people. They provide living accommodation, plus well refurbished and comfortable shared areas, cooked lunch, and service, all for less than £250 a week, and within a couple of minutes of Loughton's excellent shops and facilities. A small paid staff is aided by a dedicated group of trustees and volunteers.
For information about Rider House, vacancies, and facilities, call 020 8418 0482