Page 1179 - Reading Mercury

how it spent its money and to come up with a more “open ended” arrangement to help
get shopmobility off the ground.
The Town Council’s finance committee agreed to grant the volunteer centre £2,500
for the first six months running of the scheme, and a further £4,810 to fund it up until
September. It was also decided a meeting should take place between representatives
of the town council, Wokingham Volunteer Centre and the district access group to get
Wokingham Town Mobility on to a ‘business footing’.
The committee felt the mobility scheme should work towards being self-financing.

EMMBROOK POST OFFICE
The people of Emmbrook will not have to trek all the way into Wokingham to visit
the Post Office thanks to a revamped one-stop shop. Emmbrook Post Office and
Store, run by Sanjay Odedra and his wife Rekha, was officially reopened on Saturday
by the Mayor Cllr. Phil Harding and his wife, Mavis. The store had been undergoing
renovation since December.

MOTORISTS LEFT CROSS BY BARRIER
Frustrated drivers have been left fuming again over stuck down barriers at the
Starlane crossing in Wokingham. There have been long delays at the crossing in
Easthamptead Road, since the automatic half-barriers were replaced by manual full
barriers for safety reasons.
But last Tuesday the frustrations of several motorists reached boiling point.
Motorists said the crossing remained shut for more than 20 minutes and drivers
performed u-turns and sought alternative routes.
Railtrack said the delay was not due to a fault on the line but may have been the
result of “an unusual frequency of trains”. A petition has been organised by staff at
Holme Grange School in Heathlands Road, signed by 158 people expressing their
frustration at the delays.
Wokingham MP John Redwood called on the district council and Railtrack to sort
the problem out after he received 150 letters of complaint from constituents.
Railtrack spokesman Jane Terry confirmed the company was aware of the
motorists’ frustrations. “I know the level crossing manager is going to look into it to
see if there’s any way round the problem.” The difficulty under the new arrangements
was the crossing was operated from a signal box using CCTV. For safety reasons a
train could not be allowed to progress towards the crossing without the barriers
already being down. This lead to longer delays for motorists than under the previous
system.

ROW OVER DE VITRE HALL’S £50,000 COSTS
The saga of the De Vitre Hall has taken a new twist with the district council
threatening to slap a £50,000 bill on the town council to cover costs. The Norreys Hall
project was effectively killed off before Christmas when Wokingham Town Council,
one of the partners in the project, voted to withdraw its £100,000 of funding because
the hall no longer represented value for money.
But the district council’s education and cultural services committee last week voted
to reconvene the De Vitre Hall working party, with a view to making the town council
pay for the fees incurred on the project.
In what has been termed the “Millennium Bridge effect” after the Wargrave foot
and cycle bridge suffered the same fate. Tenders received by the district council for

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