East Hampshire sees highest General Election turnout in 20 years

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East Hampshire voters turned out in the highest numbers for 20 years as they backed Conservative candidate Damian Hinds in Thursday’s General Election.
A total of 55,567 votes were cast, meaning a turnout of 75.3 per cent – the highest in the district since 1997.
The national turnout this year is up by two per cent to 69 per cent.
Damian Hinds MP received 35,263 votes to win the seat, increasing his share by three per cent. Behind him was Labour candidate Rohit Dasgupta who polled 9,411 votes.
The full results were:
Conservative, Damian Hinds: 35,263
Labour, Rohit Dasgupta: 9,411
Liberal Democrat, Richard Robinson: 8,403
Green, Richard Knight: 1,760
Justice and Anti-Corruption Party, Susan Jerrard: 571
The election, run in this area by East Hampshire District Council, saw 72 polling stations manned around the district in schools, village halls and pubs.
For those who couldn’t make it to the polling stations more than 13,000 postal votes were issued.
Teams of counters, around 60 in all, worked through the night at Petersfield Festival Hall to verify and count the votes, with the declaration being made by Returning Officer Sandy Hopkins at 3.30am.
She said: “The turnout for this election has been really good and that’s what it’s all about – getting residents to have their say about how their country is run.
“When the election was announced the team at East Hampshire District Council sprung into action and pulled out all the stops to ensure the day ran smoothly. This has taken a tremendous amount of work and I am really proud of everyone involved.
“We always do everything we can to encourage residents to vote and this year we’ve run several social media campaigns to boost numbers so I’m really pleased that the turnout was so high.”
In the Meon Valley constituency, including areas such as Horndean, Rowlands Castle and Clanfield, Conservative candidate George Hollingbery was returned to parliament with 35,624 votes.
The election there was managed by Winchester City Council and the full results are below:
Conservative, George Hollingbery: 35,624
Labour, Sheena King: 9,932
Liberal Democrats, Martin Tod: 5,900
UKIP, Paul Bailey: 1,435
Green, Andrew Hayward: 1,301
Turnout: 73.14% 

An Evening with Mike d’Abo

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Friday 16th June 2017 @ 7.30pm
Grayshott Village Hall;
An Evening with Mike d’Abo
Give MIKE d’ABO a piano and microphone and he’ll keep his audience enthralled for hours on end!
Calling upon a wealth of musical memories, sensational stories, and perhaps the odd revelation, he takes his audience on a fascinating musical journey recalling his early musical influences…The Everly Brothers, The Beatles, Fats Waller, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis and, not forgetting, his triumphant years as ‘front man’ with the 60’s hit makers, MANFRED MANN
No evening with Mike d’Abo would be complete without him performing his two best known compositions, HANDBAGS & GLADRAGS and BUILD ME UP BUTTERCUP, songs which, even today, figure prominently in the soundtrack of our lives. Expect him also to recall some of his award winning TV jingles from the 70s, such as Cadbury’s Finger Of Fudge, along with the huge hits of Manfred Mann…MIGHTY QUINN, JUST LIKE A WOMAN, SEMI-DETACHED SUBURBAN…the list goes on and on…. 

Grayshott Today June edition

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Grayshott Today June edition has been distributed and all homes in Grayshott should have received a copy. It can also be read on Grayshott.com from Monday at
http://www.grayshott.com/wordpress/groups/grayshott-today/
Lots of interesting articles (as always) and something for everyone in this packed edition including details of the Barn Dance, Details of Summer Events including Cricket Coaching, Young Families Summer Get Together, Holiday Club, The Kingsmen on 12 July (not to be missed), Grayshott Gardening Week, a Bobble Hat Pattern, Grayshott Primary Prayer Space as well as details of the forthcoming Grayshott Concert, Folk Club plus details of all Clubs and Societies plus a Bridge Column.
If you do not regularly get a copy delivered to you and you live in Grayshott, please advise the Church Office and we will aim to rectify in future.
There are pick up copies in many shops and surgeries including The Post Office,Business Connections, Tanchoux, Frankies,, Village Hall as well as most surgeries and estate agents. We print and distribute 1800 copies each month to the whole of Grayshott.
Good Reading

Everything is ready – don’t waste your chance to vote

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Don’t waste your chance to vote in the General Election – that’s the message from East Hampshire District Council as the final preparations are made.
EHDC’s Elections Team delivers elections, providing the infrastructure support staff and organisation to allow residents to cast their vote.
EHDC Chief Executive Sandy Hopkins is also the Returning Officer for the area and oversees the process.
She said: “Managing an election is a lot of work and responsibility for a small team of people – especially a snap election which doesn’t give us much time to prepare.
“We consider it an honour for us to provide the democratic machinery that allows our residents to have their say on how our country is run.
“A much larger team from many walks of life across East Hampshire have offered their services for duties such as opening postal votes, running the polling stations on the day and the count through the night after the polls close at 10pm.
“Everything will be ready on 8 June – all that’s left is for the voters to turn out and cast their vote.
“Make sure you don’t waste your chance to vote.”
Across the district are 72 manned polling stations in schools, village halls, pubs and shops, ready to receive East Hampshire’s electorate of more than 74,000 registered voters.
For those who can’t make it to the polling stations more than 15,000 postal votes have been requested.
On the night of the election, teams of counters, around 60 in all, will be totting up the votes in time to announce the official results in the early hours of the morning.
Find out the results on EHDC’s website http://www.easthants.gov.uk or you can follow events during the night on the council’s Twitter account @EastHantsDC
Photo Caption: Sandy Hopkins, EHDC Chief Executive and Returning Officer for East Hampshire, preparing ballot boxes for the UK General Election on 8 June.

New home for Grayshott

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Grayshott and District Housing Association is delighted to share some exciting news ….we are about to welcome new tenants to our first new build in thirty five years. Through legacies and generosity the Grayshott and District Housing Association has blossomed, but this is the first time in 35 years the Association has built a new home. A time for celebration indeed! G&DHA is
a much treasured part of the Grayshott Village which itself was chosen in 2016 as the ‘Champion of Champion Villages’ by EHDC. Now raising the total number of homes to support those in need, committed and connected to the village, to thirty one properties, the Board of the Association has every reason to celebrate this part of the continuity started over eighty years ago.
Mrs Jan Gale, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of G&DHA was joined by Councillor Ferris Cowper and other members of the Board, to officially take over this new build on Monday 3rd April 2017.
In 2015 G&DHA celebrated the 80th Anniversary of its formation acknowledging that Charlotte Lyndon had galvanised the village to buy the first twelve houses that started G&DHA. Sadly she died suddenly a year later and the Board has decided to call this new property ‘Lyndon’ in her memory. Her vision was to maintain a true rural community embracing all comers to share and live in our splendid village. The Board of the Association still endeavours to uphold these values.
The building of this new property is now complete and we hope to welcome its new tenants this month. It is a two bed roomed detached house set in its own compact and manageable garden and is in an enviable position near to the recreation ground.
There are plans in the pipeline for the Association to build some more houses in the future The Board has recently recruited expertise to help support this and has joined with English Rural Housing Association as a development partner.
For further information please contact Board member, Cheryl Jackson, 07838 248626 or jackson.cheryl.bowes@gmail.com

Christmas Opening hours

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On Christmas Eve we are open from 7am to 4pm – pop in and place your order now, and collect it from the shop any time right up to Christmas eve. See the web site our opening hours over the whole Christmas period.

November Meeting

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Grayshott Flower Club faces an uncertain future so this meeting will give an opportunity for members to decide if the Club is to continue after 2018. The Chairman will present a report, the members will then have time to discuss the details before a decision will be made.

Ferris Cowper’s District Council Newsletter

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Dear villagers,

First of all may I wish you all a very successful 2017. 2016 had its ups and downs for the village but the Hampshire Association of Local Councils, (HALC), awards reminded everyone just what an amazing place this is. Because we all want the best for our community we are quite a self critical village at times and (speaking as a self critical person), it can be very refreshing to hear an outsider sing your praises as HALC did about Grayshott.

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas. As ever, St. Luke’s played a key role with the beautifully candle lit Nine Lessons and Carols, the annual Carols in The Square on Christmas Eve led by Moray, (thanks to The Square Group) and the Christmas Day morning service when we learned just how many words you can make out of “Christmas”.

My last newsletter was bumped off the front page of the website by the small ads and wasn’t seen by many people, (less than 25% of the usual number), so if you missed it, much of it is still relevant and you can read it here.

Things are never boring in Grayshott and we have much to anticipate in 2017. I hope that before the Annual Parish Assembly I will be able to make an announcement about a trial of a new car parking system in the village. As I’ve said many times before, the easy bit is how to manage casual and shopping parking and we will be doing that by a system of time limited waiting on and off street. The problem has always been where to locate the 80 to 100 cars that need to park all day long because the drivers work in the village. I’ve been hoping to be able to persuade the District Council to buy land for extra parking spaces but despite a great deal of effort there seems to be no suitable land forthcoming. The willingness and ability of the Council to buy land is there but landowners are not making their land available, sometimes through the device of overpricing their land. Nobody bid for the NatWest site for example

Applegarth Vale should start its development in 2017 and I’m very excited at the prospect of finally, after 17 years as Grayshott’s District Councillor, having enough affordable dwellings, (by which I mean a subsidised social rent), to meet the demand of those with a proven and close, Grayshott connection. I set out to provide a home for every Grayshott citizen who needs one, way back in my first year as your District Councillor, in 1999, when I stopped Philips House from being closed. I’m not proud that it took me 17 years but in the countryside it’s generally accepted that providing affordable housing, (as defined), is challenging because affordable housing is usually built as a % of a market development. Without that the income and expenditure doesn’t balance out. It’s a rare, (possibly unique), situation to find a large village like ours in a position to satisfy the local demand for affordable housing.

I fear for our shops. The big threat in Grayshott is increasingly less about the internet and more about the propensity of landlords to seek planning permission to turn shops into offices or other non retail uses to secure higher rental income. The EHDC Local Plan of 2006 allows every other premises in Grayshott to be non retail throughout the shopping centre. In other words half of the shopping centre could be non retail. In my opinion that would so damage “footfall” in the village shops, that only big outlets like Sainsbury, Co-op and Lloyds Chemists would survive comfortably. I’m doing all I can to resist this loss of retail but until we can amend the Local Plan, (which I am actively lobbying for in the LP3 stage as I mentioned in my previous newsletter), there isn’t much we can do other than challenge the landlords’ logic at every step of the way.

May sees the elections for the County Council. Regardless of your voting preferences please ensure you are registered to vote and that you cast your vote. These days many people apply for a postal vote which makes voting very simple and straightforward. I think in 2015 when I was last elected about a quarter of the electors in Grayshott voted postally. Don’t forget I’m no longer your County Councillor; Cllr. Floss Mitchell was elected in a by election earlier this May.

I’m looking forward to another year as your District councillor, my 18th so please keep in touch in the usual way. My email is; ferris.cowper@easthants.gov.uk and my ‘phone is; 01428-609858.

Happy New Year,

Cllr. Ferris Cowper

Leader of East Hampshire District Council and ward member for Grayshott.