Please note, this year the Garsdale Bonfire Night will be held on Saturday 4 November, NOT Friday as usual. This is because Sedbergh are not having a Bonfire on the Saturday this year.

Start 7.00 pm, cost £2.50 for adults, children free.

Refreshments incl hot soup will be available in the village hall afterwards. There is also a rumour of hot dogs this year!

Please pass the word around to any of your neighbours who don’t subscribe to the Parish website news.

Wow!

We had a great turn out yesterday evening for the first meeting of volunteers – about 25 – 30 people. With this degree of commitment HyperFast Fibre Broadband will be in Garsdale before we know it.

Formalising Wayleaves
We discussed and agreed three ‘Wayleave’ teams that will re-visit all landowners to formalise the 40 or so wayleaves we need signed (and routes agreed) to begin the digging phase.

Administrator/B4RN liaison/materials quartermaster
We asked for a volunteer to take on the role of B4RN liaison/administrator/materials ‘quartermaster’, and someone agreed to do it.

Route Info
The main ‘core’ route is very close to being finalised but it does need to be modified slightly to bypass a very small number of landowners who have not given wayleave permission to cross their land (if these landowners subsequently want B4RN internet they will be charged the full commercial cost of the diversion that had to made around their property). The main route will be dug using a professional contractor, unless a landowner wants to dig and receive shares in B4RN. The central control box or ‘cabinet’ will be sited at Garsdale Village Hall. The ‘spur’ routes to individual properties, or groups of properties, that come off the main route will have a ‘chamber’ sited approx. every 500 metres.

Route Splitting
It was agreed that we should split up the route into sections and a team of people volunteer to take responsibility for most tasks in that section, including:

• visiting all homeowners and contacting second home/holiday home owners to find out who wants to be connected (£150 gets the fibre to a property) and who wants B4RN as their Internet Service Provider (£30 per month) – this can also include advising where their router should go and getting the resident to fill in a BDUK grant form (so B4RN receive £350 towards the actual cost of providing the service to each home, from a Government fund) etc
• liaising with landowners about dig timing for both the professional contractor and resident dig teams
• coordinating resident dig teams (these teams are yet to be arranged)
• assisting the professional contractor to negotiate walls, ditches, streams etc
• manually digging the spur routes
• connecting the ducting to each property (connecting different ducts together, drilling walls, fixing plates on the inside and outside of walls etc) – this needs coordinating with residents as they need to be present or provide a key and permission
• liaising with our newly appointed B4RN liaison/administrator to source materials

Materials storage
A couple of volunteers said they could store materials – main and spur duct reels etc – at their properties, so we have material on hand and don’t have to go to B4RN HQ at Melling to collect all the time.
Next Volunteer Meeting
Most importantly, we arranged to meet again NEXT WEEK, on Wednesday 25th Oct at 7.30pm in Garsdale Village Hall to receive training from B4RN in route planning/administration/dig preparation AND to agree teams to take responsibility for a ‘section’ of the dale (most likely in the vicinity of where volunteers live). We will have a very large map of the entire dale to use for this purpose.

Once we have had the training we can then move on to get the wayleaves formalised with each landowner.

It’d be great to see as many volunteers next week as came yesterday. We can only keep the momentum going with everyone’s help!

If your property has a shared private water supply, like most of us, you may have received a letter asking for responses to a consultation about some proposed changes to the legislation for private water supplies. To summarise very briefly, the following changes are proposed:

1) To increase the things sampled for, for at least 3 years, at extra cost to us.
2) To allow the local authority to increase charges for sampling and risk assessments, as they see fit.
3) To give the local authority powers to carry out works on our water supplies if they see fit, and charge us the cost.

Garsdale Parish council has sent the attached letter objecting to these three proposals, as we do not believe the proposal takes any account of the rural householders’ interests.

If you do not agree with the above proposal, then please ensure you lodge your objection before the deadline of 24 October, either online at

https://consult.defra.gov.uk/water-quality/drinking-water-regulations-2017/

or by email to drinkingwaterquality@defra.gsi.gov.uk

or by letter to
DEFRA
Drinking Water Quality
Area 3D
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London SW1P 3JR

Water proposal letter 1

Following enquiries when no roadworks started today, it appears that the resurfacing of the Garsdale sections of the A684 has been cancelled, or at least postponed until further notice

A B4RN action group for Dentdale & Garsdale has now been set up, and fund raising is well under way. The first duct has already been dug in on the route into Dent from Barbondale, and from the other side of Barbon the B4RN trunk line has now reached Casterton!

For more information see the “Hyperfast Garsdale & Dentdale” at

Website: https://hyperfastdales.org/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hyperfastdales/

At long last some of our spectacular potholes are getting fixed!

As a result, the A684 will be closed overnight, from 8 pm to 5 am, on the following sections and dates:

16th – 18th March – A684, Black Horse Hill
29th March – A684, Dandra Garth
30th – 31st March A684, Badger Dub
1st – 2nd April A684, West of Longstone Fell

The B4RN project community broadband project is now rapidly approaching Dent, and could potentially reach Garsdale.  Hence the Parish Council would like to invites Garsdale farmers, landowners and residents to a public meeting to receive information about the B4RN community broadband project.

The meeting will be held on 1 March 2016 at 7:30 pm in Garsdale Village Hall

Agenda:

1. Presentation about the B4RN project by Barry Forde.

2. Presentation about the action group for Dent & potentially Garsdale by David Pilgrim.

3. Questions from the audience.

4. Tea/Coffee break with the opportunity to talk to presenters and B4RN guests.

The public meeting will be followed by an extraordinary meeting of Garsdale parish council, commencing at approximately 8.30 pm, with the following agenda:

1. Apologies.
2. To be considered: to support the proposed B4RN community initiative to bring superfast broadband to Garsdale.

Please pass the information to any neighbours who may not have seen this. The Agenda can also be downloaded here as a pdf: B4RN Public Meeting & Extraordinary PC Meeting