Open Safety Forum

Bottisham held its inaugural Open Safety Forum on Wednesday 8th March 2022. This meeting was relatively well attended by around 40 residents however considering our village population we are sure a lot more would benefit from attendance.

We followed this up with the second meeting on 17th October 2023.

This open forum is for all residents including those who hold concerns about any aspect of community safety in Bottisham, whether anti-social behaviour, road safety and various other topics. It was a chance to meet and ask questions of representatives of some of the key groups and authorities impacting on life in Bottisham and working to keep us safe.

The meetings are hosted by your Parish Council, with support from East Cambs Community Safety Partnership. The responsible authorities work together to protect their local communities from crime and to help people feel safer. They work out how to deal with local issues like antisocial behaviour, drug or alcohol misuse and reoffending. They annually assess local crime priorities and consult partners and the local community about how to deal with them.

Representatives are there to answer a lot of questions.

At the previous events these were, but not limited to; road safety on the A1303 along with our main roads in the village including Lode Road and the High Street including speed and whether we should be looking at speed reductions from 30 to 20, discussions around the dreaded pot holes that we face throughout the village, anti-social behaviour activity from graffiti, nitrous oxide cannisters around the Triangle and the fires that have been started in nearby fields, refuse collection where black bin collections have been missed causing rubbish to be strewn around paths and roads due to rogue cats, deer, foxes etc and then there is the parking around School time and challenges day in day out around the Triangle.

One key result of these two meetings was an overwhelming demand for making Bottisham a safer village to drive, walk and cycle.  This has resulted in Bottisham Parish Council submitting a Local Highways Initiative to the Cambridge County Council to request 20mph speed limit consideration throughout the village.  

So as you can see lots of varied topics. Lots of questions were answered but the panel, made up of Neighbourhood Police, Village College, District and County Councillors, took many questions away guaranteeing responses will be given along with 3-month plan created. A community update will follow in the forthcoming months.