Cookham

10:20am Thursday 17th January 2002

COOKHAM Parish Council does not agree with a publicity claim by the local police that Cookham village is safer as police levels reach to their highest level. The claim was made in a local newspaper (the Maidenhead Advertiser last Friday) along with a picture showing the local beat officer Constable Leslie Bullion with three helpers. They are Mick Farrow and Roger Aisladie who are civilian volunteers. In addition there are two special constables, Ron Sodera and Simon Richardson.

With four helpers Constable Bullion said crime figures in Cookham should decrease now there is adequate manpower policing the streets. The chairman of Cookham Parish Council Tony Pritchard and the clerk to the parish council David Armstrong are writing to the Chief Constable expressing dissatisfaction with the present police levels in the village as crime is on the increase.

"This publicity claim suggests that we are satisfied with the present police presence in the Cookhams but this is not the case at all" David Armstrong told the BFP. "Vandalism in the Cookhams is on the increase. Nearly every weekend broken glass is strewn around the Alfred Major Recreation Ground at Cookham Rise. There have also been some very nasty burglaries in the Cookham Dean area recently. We want to express our disappointment at the present police system in the Cookhams and we want to know just what is being done to improve this poor state of affairs."

He went on to say that Cookham Dean has always been a mecca for burglars and there is always the fear of an aggravated burglary. Indeed there have been armed robberies in Cookham village and Cookham Rise involving money taken from local shops. People want to see the bobby on the beat walking or cycling around every day. While volunteers may help in some cases it is the professional highly trained police officer the parish council would prefer to see.

PARISH Communion at 9.30am on Sunday and the preacher will be Mike Vining who is a lay sacramental minister at St Joseph's Catholic church in Maidenhead. The Vicar of Cookham Dean, the Reverend John Copping, will leave after the sermon as he has been invited to officiate at the service at Cookham Methodist Church at 10.30am.

FRIENDSHIP lunch on Sunday at 12.45pm will welcome those who generally eat alone. It will be a chance to meet new people and make new friends.

A new church electoral roll has to be prepared and it will begin next Monday to be completed by March 2. It is planned to hold the annual parochial meeting in church after evensong on Palm Sunday March 24. Any baptised parishioner aged l6 years or over is entitled to be on a church electoral roll although membership should reflect active church membership and attendance as well as financial support.

NEXT meeting of the Cookham and Cookham Dean Horticultural Society will be on Wednesday January 30 at 7.45pm in the Cookham Dean Village Hall when Carolyn Foster will give a talk on One Hundred Years of Herbaceous Planting. She is a professional gardener and designer.

IT is hoped that Dave Walker, the first full time youth leader to be appointed at Holy Trinity Church in Cookham, will move to the area at the beginning of February. He has been working as a full time youth worker in Eastbourne for the past four years and he is an artist and cartoonist with his own website.

By Judy Baylis

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