VILLAGE concert: A very successful concert was held in Amport church on18 March.

It was held to raise funds for a new heating system for the church and raised over £2,000. Performers included a male voice choir and a female choir, solo singers from both choirs, an accordionist and a short play based on ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by children in the junior church choir. Extremely good refreshments were provided by the female choir and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Matters discussed at the March Parish Council meeting included:

New Amport website: This has now been rebuilt from scratch and will include a slideshow on the home page and a user-friendly method of inputting matters of interest. The two editors are Angela Rickett and Jill MacAvoy but it will still be administered by David Preston. It is expected to go live within the next few weeks.

The Green and Fen: The Green has had its first cut recently and it is planned for more trees to be planted along beside the stream where a number of elderly or dangerous trees were taken down earlier in the year.

There is a plan to build a bridge across the stream to connect The Green to The Fen to enable that area to be more widely used.

Highways: Despite a number of requests from the counci, the Hampshire Highways department has so far done nothing to improve the dire state of Wiremead Lane, apart from erecting ‘slippery road’ signs which have only had the effect of further narrowing this one-lane road. This is the designated route from the A303 to the village, meaning that it gets a lot of through traffic. Councillors felt strongly that the road should be kept to a reasonable standard rather than left in its present totally neglected state.

The road across The Green has had temporary repairs to the largest of the dangerous potholes alongside the ditch.

School: The problems with the road across The Green are mainly caused by the fact that parents’ large cars, when parked while children are delivered or collected, mean that when the bus attempts to drive along this section of the road it is obliged to drive onto the bank beside the ditch. This has so eroded the edge that there is now, in places, barely two feet between the road and the ditch. The council discussed the Australian ‘drive through’ system whereby the children are dropped off at the school entrance and the vehicle moves on without the need to park as being a possible solution. Alternatively, the ‘walking bus’ system could be revived, with parents parking in the pub car park and taking it in turns to walk the children the few hundred yards to the school and back.

Lengthsman: This “village handyman” will be starting work soon in the local villages, doing mainly jobs to do with clearing vegetation from paths and roadways. Amport will be entitled to ten hours work per year, but this may be increased if other villages in the scheme do not take up their full entitlement.

Noticeboard: A new noticeboard has been erected on the land opposite the end of Wiremead Lane. It has a perspex cover and is available for anyone to put up their own notices.

Next meeting: April’s council meeting will be the annual parish meeting to which all parishioners are invited and will be given an opportunity to ask questions or express opinions. It will be held in Monxton and Amport Village Hall on 25 April starting at 7.30pm.

Caroline Unwin