Minutes of the meetings can be seen by selecting the following buttons:

NB: although certain figures (e.g., Quotations and Salaries) are not allowed to be shown in these extracts, the figures are available for inspection as a public record.

April 2007

May 2007

June 2007

July 2007

Philip Smith 

Vice Chairman (special interests: Town House, Parish Paths and Village Seating)

Jerry Carlisle 

Chairman (special interests: Planning)

Vanessa Martin

(special interests: Town House)

Tony Slater

Ian Turner

 (special interests: Plaistow, Barley Web Site, Speeding and Traffic)

Richard Elliott

You may have noticed that we have the new Speed Detection and Warning sign at the Chequers end of the village. Many of us have considered the speeds in Barley to be excessive. Cllr. Ian Turner has been particularly vigorous in pressing the Police for more speed traps in the village. However, it was realised that the North Herts Police were extremely under-staffed and that they could not spare the resources to enforce the speed limit in the village on enough occasions to make a significant difference. We looked into the possibility of buying a Speed Enforcement Camera (Gatso) but the cost was simply staggering at nearly £30,000 per camera installation. We are not allowed to have 'Speed Bumps' nor 'Chicanes' in the Village so we were getting nowhere with the problem.

Harston Village in Cambridge had a similar problem and they erected a number of Flashing Warning Signs. The speed through Harston has reduced dramatically since the installation.

District Councillor Howard Marshall (Conservative) has had similar complaints about speed from a number of 'his' villages and, together with with Ian Turner, visited Cottered who had raised the money to buy and erect 2 of these Flashing Signs in their village.  The costs of each of the signs was about £10,000 including installation. Howard Marshall proposed that we buy 1 Flashing Sign to be shared amongst the 3 villages of Barley, Barkway and Therfield and that we share it on a rotating basis with each village having use of it for 4 months of the year. Barley has two installation locations, the 'Chequers' and the 'Flint Cross' ends of the village. We will have the sign at each end for 2 months each year.

Each Parish has only paid £700 and the rest of the costs has been covered by the District Council and we felt this would be a  worthwhile experiment/investment.

At the time of writing (30/07/2002), the machine is installed but not yet activated. We wait to see the effect on the traffic. The implication is that it will 'Flash' a 'SLOW DOWN' warning to vehicles approaching at over 30mph.

If you would like more information on the Flashing Signs, please visit www.coeval-products.co.uk on the Web.

Speed Sign goes Operational.

It appears that the SLOW DOWN sign went operational on the 8th of August. I have just spent one hour (7.45pm until 8.45pm) monitoring it's effects and they are quite surprising. My methods were not 'scientific' but of the 35 cars that  approach the sign, 33 triggered the Flashing Warning. One of the remaining 2 had come from the Chequers and had not got up to speed and the other one slowed down as he saw my camera and (I suspect) thought I was a policeman! The above photo shows the effect of the lights and of the braking they initiated! Some of us may recognise the car in that photo, I think I do!

Of the 33, EVERY-SINGLE-ONE applied their brakes once the lights flashed on! On that basis, it certainly has been a success in the first few hours of operation!