A car has severely damaged Cemetery bridge again. The authorities have been informed and Worcestershire Highways department have been requested to make the site safe and ensure that the flow of the Merry Brook into the river Avon is maintained ASAP. Residents are advised to take care when approaching the site.

Footpaths numbered 520C and 579C were originally closed in February 2024 due to an unsafe bridge. This closure order has now been extended to July 2025, or sooner if the repair work is completed earlier. Alternative routes are shown in the map below.

The full text of the closure order can be seen below and downloaded as a .pdf file:

Worcestershire County Council contractors have now completed much needed repairs to the footpath along The Strand. The pictures below show examples of the work opposite to the Gardeners Arms and further along The Strand, towards the cemetery:

Nigel Huddleston, MP for mid-Worcestershire visited Charlton yesterday, Tuesday 13th February, in the company of County Councillor Marc Bayliss, member responsible for the economy, infrastructure and skills and senior managers and staff from Openreach following the completion of the project to bring full fibre broadband to the village. Members of the Village Broadband Team were also in attendance.

During the event, the visitors were shown how the delicate fibre optic cables are spliced together during the installation process.

You can read the full press release relating to this visit here:

https://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/news/mp-welcomes-completion-latest-rural-broadband-voucher-scheme

Worcestershire County Council have advised that because of the likelihood of danger to the
public as a result of an unsafe bridge, there is an urgent need to close the highway (footpath) CN-520 & CN579 between Charlton and Evesham immediately.

Details of the closure order together with an advisory alternative route can be downloaded below:

https://charlton-worcestershire.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Footpath-CN-520-Charlton-and-EV-579-Evesham-Emergency.pdf

You will no doubt have seen many BT Openreach employees and vans around the village recently who have been installing further parts of the fibre cable system for our Fibre to the Property Scheme. Openreach have confirmed to us that they are now aiming to complete the scheme by the end of November 2023 but this is still subject to them not having any unforeseen problems. Once the build is completed Worcestershire County Council will advise us of the next steps. We hope they might even complete the scheme earlier!

You may have noticed that over the last two months Openreach and their contractors have been in the village planning for the installation of the fibre cables to our houses.

As previously advised  the project is unfortunately running behind schedule mainly due to the popularity of the scheme and the pressure this is putting on Openreach’s resources. However it has been good to 
see some action on the ground.

Unfortunately the voucher scheme that we all signed up to with DCMS has expired as they were time limited. We are all about to receive fresh emails which we expect to come from either BDUK, (Building Digital UK), or Gigabit Vouchers <gigabit.vouchers@notifications.service.gov.uk> or Funding Platform 
<funding.platform@notifications.service.gov.uk> and will be headed up “UK Gigabit Voucher Scheme – action required”.

These emails should arrive early this week and as before it is important for us all to sign up to these again. If you previously signed up as a business then you should do this again.

Please rest assured that we are not the only community having to undertake this action again. Openreach tell us that plenty of other communities have recently had to repeat this exercise however  the wording of the document has been slightly altered to avoid the need for this to be repeated again.

The project is apparently still on target to be completed around the end of August so your help in promptly responding to the emails in a timely manner would be appreciated.