Cross country training will be much easier for children in the Spooners and West Dartmoor Hunt branch of the Pony Club, thanks to a £1,500 grant.
The club was established in 1967 and currently has 70 members covering an area around Plymouth and Tavistock as far north as Postbridge.
The grant, which has come from West Devon Borough Council, will be used to buy some portable cross country fences.
The Tavistock Cards for Good Causes shop in Tavistock has received a ‘thank you’ card from the group who first founded the charity 50 years ago.
In 1959, a group of medical charities got together to talk about co-ordinating publicity for selling charity cards at Christmas. They formed ‘The 1959 Group of Charities’ and, in 1964, began selling Christmas cards from empty shops in town centres.
http://www.cardsforcharity.co.uk/about.htm
Okehampton’s prize-winning Business Centre is an example of what can be done when local councils have the will to think environmentally.
Developed and managed by West Devon Borough Council, the Centre, which provides 16 starter business units for new firms, won the Project of the Year for a building over £3-million in the Michelmores and Western Morning News Commercial Property Awards.
The Centre is the first development on the 26-acre Opportunity Okehampton site, alongside Exeter Road. It’s green credentials are key to its success as it’s one of the most sustainable and eco friendly buildings of its type in the region. The development is expected to save up to 50 tonnes of carbon emissions each year – about 80 per cent less than using conventional energy sources – through the unique way it has been designed.
Twelve photographs showing the country’s most stunning scenes have been chosen to appear in an exclusive calendar to raise awareness of one of Cumbria’s vital emergency services.
Cumbria and the Lakes’ mountain rescue teams, which cover various parts of the region, are to benefit from the Mountain Rescue 2010 calendar which features snapshots from across England and Wales, as seen through the eyes of outdoor enthusiasts.
The mountain rescue calendar features landscape scenes ranging from the Lake District and Snowdonia through to views of lowland areas such as Dartmoor.
http://www.mountain.rescue.org.uk/publications/mountain-rescue-calendar-2010
The calendar will be sold in aid of the charity which relies entirely on a network of volunteers and donated funds.
West Devon Borough Council will receive an extra £74,000 in government grant towards funding its services for the next financial year.
Council leaders said today that whilst they were relieved that the government had kept their funding promise, the grant increase of just 1.7% goes nowhere near meeting the authority’s unavoidable cost pressures of more than £700,000 for 2010/11. The money forms just a slice of the Council’s annual income and will have a bearing on council tax levels to be set in February 2010 for the next financial year.
As the recession continues to bite, the demand on Council services has increased dramatically, whilst income from investments has dropped significantly. For example, housing benefit and council tax benefit claims to the Council have doubled over the last year. In the first six months of the last financial year, the Council dealt with 797 new claims. For the same period this year, the number of claims has increased to 1,433.
The Council’s investments have been badly affected by historically low interest rates. Previously in 2007/08, income from Council investments realised just over £700,000 whilst this year it will be only around £100,000. The Council has still found savings and extra income of more than £400,000 from its current £8.6 million net budget but is left with a shortfall of just under £300,000.
The Council has a package of measures to help small firms through these uncertain times with, for example, hardship relief assistance, rural rate relief and small business rates relief. The authority is also striving towards paying small businesses for goods and services within 10 days of receiving their invoice.
Hundreds of emergency services staff are due to take part in a massive mock search and rescue mission on Dartmoor.
Police, the Army, fire crews, the Dartmoor Rescue Group and Exmoor and Cornwall mountain rescue groups will be involved in the exercise.
A team of cadets will play the roles of casualties.
The ‘live’ exercise is due to run from about 10am until 4pm.
The day is designed to test each agency’s expertise during search and rescue operations, and the exercise is based on a Ten Tors training weekend.
The countdown to Christmas begins this evening in Tavistock when the Trees of Light will be turned on in Bedford Square at 7pm
The countdown to Christmas in Tavistock begins tonight (Friday) with the switching on of the festive lights throughout the town centre.
At 7pm the Trees of Light in Bedford Square will be switched on.
A training agency is looking for employers and young people in the Tavistock area.
Plymouth-based PSC Training and Development, which is funded by the Learning and Skills Council, is trying to create vocational training placements with local businesses in the area and give young people further options and direction when choosing their career path.
A £94,000 survey to locate centuries-old mine workings in Horrabridge has given the village renewed confidence and brought previously empty properties back onto the market, boosting the local economy.
Extensive mining activity in the area during the 18th and 19th centuries led to fears that parts of the village were unsafe particularly as old mining maps contained insufficient detail.
As part of the West Devon Borough Council-led project, extensive surveys have been carried out in the area since 2004. The findings indicate that the majority of the village has not been affected by the mine workings and that there are no areas at high or medium risk of instability.
Now the Council is holding a special information day for villagers on Wednesday December 9 to share the final report along with maps and photos detailing the investigations.
The borough council put around £50,000 into the project to investigate the problem and secured a similar amount of funding from the Government’s Homes and Communities Agency.
The survey has led to more than 70 former MoD properties in the village, which were sitting empty due to the land stability concerns, now being available to buy. Some are already occupied as family homes.
The survey work was supervised by Tavistock-based consultant engineers Frederick Sherrell Ltd and the council worked in partnership with Dartmoor National Park Authority, Annington Homes Ltd, Horrabridge Parish Council, Copperfields Residents Association, West Devon Homes, the Environment Agency and Devon County Council to complete the project.
