A final reminder for our AGM being held in the Wantage Methodist Hall off Newbury Street on 15 May. Our speaker will be Quintin Bradley, Senior Lecturer in Planning & Housing at Leeds Beckett University. Quintin is carrying out national research with groups objecting to housing development and will explain more about the project. I've seen his presentation and it looks very interesting.

In our last email we mentioned the closure of the A417 on 12 June. We have managed to get more details from the County Highways. Around 100 elite women cyclists will be making their way through our region as part of the OVO Womens Cycling Tour.  Starting at 10.30am from Henley, the race will enter our district just after midday in Harwell and leave via Faringdon on their way to the finish line at Blenheim Palace.  There will be rolling road closures on the A417 at these approximate times prior to the race cyclists coming through:

• 12.17pm at Harwell
• 12.23pm at the Hendreds
• 12.32pm at Wantage (Reading Road, Charlton Road, Wallingford Street, Market Place, Mill Street, Challow Road)
• 12.57pm at Faringdon

Roads are likely to be closed for between 20mins and an hour or so, depending on the gap between the front riders and the last riders. For the full route and more details please see the OVO Energy Women's Tour website. The race will be featured live on ITV4, with daily highlights shown every hour. There could be up to 100,000 spectators spread from Henley to Blenheim Palace.

My columns in the Herald for the last few weeks have been focused on advice to our new Councillors on planning issues that they may face including parking problems and the phantom Neighbourhood Plan so if you don't get the paper and want to read them please go to https://www.heraldseries.co.uk/search/?search=wag%2Bpen most but not all columns are online.

The new Mayor for Wantage for 2019/20 is Major Jim Sibbald, he was Mayor in 2010/2011 and gave the Scots Guards the honorary freedom of Wantage so perhaps we will see more of them in the next 12 months.

June Stock remains Chairman of Grove Parish Council.

Other road news:

• You will have seen traffic lights are still on Charlton Road (A417) - they could be there until 17 May.
• There could also be traffic lights tomorrow (15-16 May) for patching the A417 at West Hendred.
• The traffic lights on the A417 could then move to near the Silver Band Hall for 18-22 May and then to East Hendred also on 22 May
• A417 Reading Road (from the Lains Barn/Ardington cross roads to Rowstock roundabout) will be closed on the first weekend in June (1-2nd) from 9.30 - 15.30 (no reason given) and
• Challow Road (A417) will be closed 1-5 June near KA West Site
• Hanney Road in Steventon will be closed on 10-11 June
• A338 near the Volunteer will be resurfaced starting today (14-16 May) but road closures will be overnight only - the buses (S8 and S9) Services will be on diversion, from East Hanney, running via Steventon and Rowstock Corner in both directions, to Wantage Market Place. There will be operating a shuttle bus service between Grove and Wantage Market Place during these night closures. This Shuttle Bus will run operate from Wantage Market Place, commencing at 20:00 and will run every half hour until 23:00, after which it will run at 23:52, 00:11 and 00:45 each night.
• I know we're all really pleased to see the back of the traffic lights on the A338 near Bellengers but they could be back for a couple of days from 28-30 May
• Naldertown will have road closures again from 28 May to 3 June
• High Street Ardington (from the Loyd Lindsay Rooms to the Grocer Chef) will be closed from 28 May until 11 June
• Wantage Market Place will be closed for the Carnival on 9th June
• A417 closures on 12 June are explained above.

If you want to look at road news yourself then go to www.roadworks.org

Thanks for reading.

Best wishes
Julie Mabberley

Campaign Manager
Wantage and Grove Campaign Group
www.wantageandgrove.org