It won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that life has been made difficult for us all by the weather lately. For our Council, the snow and freezing temperatures have disrupted schools, sports activities, rubbish collections and roads. With some patience on the part of our residents, essential services have been maintained.
I would like to pay tribute to and express my pride in our staff. Despite sometimes having difficult journeys to work, carers have ensured that our most vulnerable people have received the necessary care, teachers have enabled exams to be taken, gritters and snow plough operators have worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week to ensure that key roads passable. Other staff have continued to keep up the information flow and answer residents’ questions and issues.
I would also like to express my gratitude and thanks to all the volunteers who helped clear the schools, walkways, playgrounds and carparks. I have also heard many stories of neighbours helping each other by clearing pathways, digging out cars and checking things are well with our neighbours.
This old fashioned ‘mucking in together’ and ‘helping each other out’ is what makes Wokingham Borough a good place to live. It is what makes us a community, not just a series of towns and villages. (See the photos below for our borough in action.)
Bulmershe School Headteacher Peter Lewis (front) shovelling snow with other volunteers.
Contractors filling the gritting lorry.
For these reasons I am deeply concerned with the implications of the warnings that have been given to those that clear snow of pavements and roads – that they may be sued if someone is injured. I am not denying that there is the ability to sue (as you can for all human activity, it seems) but what it appears to me is a triumph of litigation madness over commonsense and neighbourliness. Surely things have gone too far when we do not shovel a bit of snow for fear of being sued, or look for someone else to blame if we slip over? It would be too bad if the only interaction we have with our neighbours is when we sue them!
I fervently hope that all those who took responsibility for themselves and others and were good neighbours, do not have to suffer the indignity of a small-minded lawsuit. You would have my personal and moral support. The Wokingham Borough I want to live in is a community that cares for each other. It seems to me that keeping alive that community spirit far outweighs any potential mercenary gain from successful litigation.
I’ll be back with my next online instalment in a fortnight or so – unless, of course, something tickles my fancy or rattles my cage before then! If there’s anything you’d like me to blog on about, please shout! Please also let me know if there is anything you are concerned about in your neighbourhood or the borough as a whole.
Cllr David Lee
Leader of Wokingham Borough Council
David Hodgson said
Totally agree with all you say about good neighbourliness and your thanks to all concerned. However with regard to:
“I would also like to express my gratitude and thanks to all the volunteers who helped clear the schools, walkways, playgrounds and carparks”
Maybe schools would not have been closed for so long if public authorities had been able to get machines and staff to school sites as a priority without having to wait until weekend when ordinary parents and volunteers are available
davidleeleader said
I am extremely grateful to the volunteers and contractors who helped clear our school playgrounds and access roads.
We would have dearly liked to have cleared and gritted every school playground, road, pavement and footpath but to have done so would have cost millions of pounds, greatly increasing council tax.
But, even if we wanted to do this, we couldn’t as the government was starting to ration grit. Our priority was to keep main roads open.