The Kirby Muxloe

Local History Group

Article by Judith Upton

The Kirby Muxloe Local History Group generally meets 6 times a year, and membership is open to all. Visitors are always welcome to all our meetings, which usually take place in St. Bartholomew’s Church Hall, Main St., Kirby Muxloe and start at 7.30 pm.

Details of the dates of meetings, together with the topics that will be covered, are shown on the notice board in Kirby Muxloe Library and on our website, which is www. kirbymuxloelocalhistorygroup.org

We now take a break until our next meeting which will be on Tuesday 19th September, 2023 when our speaker will be John Thomas from the University of Leicester Archaeological Services. John will talk about “The Rutland Roman Villa”, the discovery and finds buried in a Rutland field. Our fees stay the same as last year with yearly membership £10 with a £2 fee for each meeting. Visitors £5 per meeting. We now have a new concessionary fee of £5 for membership plus the normal £2 per meeting for students. As always, visitors are most welcome, we are a very friendly group and open to all.

Dear Residents,

As we have moved on from the Local Elections in May , we now need to get down to business and once again, Planning dominates the Local scene. Since the Rt Hon Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Housing, Community and Levelling Up, published a letter that was sent to the Chief Executive Officer at HBBC detailing that our Council is one of 10 that his department is looking at in terms of designation which is one step away from being taken into Special Measures which means that all planning applications could go straight to the inspectorate for determination and local councillors would have no say or vote that sit on the Planning Committee at HBBC.

This letter details that 10 Councils are being looked at and right now, we are bottom of that list. Planning Authorities need to determine minor applications at a rate of 70% but we are currently at 46% . Some 453 applications are still yet to be determined as of January 2023. HBBC are denying this stating they are currently at 80% so that begs the question, why was the letter sent ? Still no mention of major applications or whether our saved policies are in date or not under our Core Strategy which is all we have right now due to a lack of a 5 year housing supply or a local plan under the continuing Libdem Administration.

On a happier note, we both want to welcome Stanley to Ratby who has opened a new hardware shop that used to be Pabari's News. This is a very welcome addition to the village and we wish him every success !

Best Regards

Chris and Ozzy