 Bus users in West Berkshire will have even more reason to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee this June with free bus travel across the district.
Following on from the successful free bus travel offered last year for Christmas and the recent Easter weekend, most bus journeys starting in West Berkshire over Jubilee weekend (2-5 June 2022) will be completely free!
Travellers can take advantage of this to celebrate this very special milestone to attend Jubilee events across West Berkshire, meet up with friends and family, or attend events in towns and villages across the district.
This initiative has been developed by West Berkshire Council in partnership with Reading Buses and Thames Travel, and will be valid on any Reading Buses, Newbury & District, and Thames Travel services within West Berkshire. The full list of valid routes can be found here.
As the countdown to the Platinum Jubilee weekend approaches, communities across the district have been busy organising events and street parties to come together to celebrate the historic milestone of Her Majesty The Queen marking 70 years of service to the people of the United Kingdom, the Realms and the Commonwealth.
With numerous events taking place over the special 4-day weekend, including the Big Jubilee Lunch on Sunday 5 June encouraging neighbourhoods to get together to celebrate, we wanted to give a special thanks to the teams who've been involved in ensuring we can hold our street parties.
A big shout out to our Traffic and Road Safety team who have been busy behind the scenes processing applications and arranging all the necessary signage with our contractor Volker Highways. The road closure signs are being organised in advance and will be supplied free of charge for event organisers to collect and return as part of their application.
We also need to thank our Insurance Team, who have arranged public liability insurance for the street parties at no cost to the organisers.
Over the weekend there will be 64 events taking place on the highway, and Volker Highways will be providing road signs to 55 of these, a total of 180 road signs.
You can find out more about where the road closures will take place on our interactive map.
More information on Council events taking place over the Platinum Jubilee weekend can be found on our dedicated Jubilee page.
Our newsletter next week will also have a Jubilee theme with more information on how The Queen’s reign is being celebrated here in West Berkshire.
We hope everyone has a great time!
- Avoid single use items like plates, cutlery, and utensils. Everyone could bring their own or you can hire items.
- Swap cling film for storage containers
- Plan who is bringing what food to avoid duplicates and wastage. Make food last longer on the day by covering it and making sure it isn’t in direct sunlight. Share leftovers and freeze what you can
- Reuse or borrow decorations or make your own. Find great ideas online here:
- Make sure you pick up all your litter and recycle what you can. You can find information on recycling here:
 Congratulations to Curridge Primary School in Thatcham who are celebrating their Eco-Schools Green Flag award with merit! To achieve this accolade, Year 6 children made a huge effort in continuing the 'green' work featured in the curriculum, and collected evidence over an eighteen month period to submit to the Eco-School team.
This included taking part in lessons and projects featuring art inspired by Wangari Maathai and Jadav Payeng; drawing up an environmental review & action plan; designing a sustainable housing development of 150 homes, and building bug hotels and gardens to attract more wildlife.
Everyone at Curridge is delighted by the award, and are particularly pleased with the feedback from the Eco-Schools Team, some of which can be seen below:
“It was great to see how you utilised your school’s website to highlight and promote the Eco-Schools activity. This is a great way to inspire others – we certainly felt inspired!”
“The Eco-Schools Team have been saying how we wished we’d been pupils at your school when we were growing up!”
“Overall, this has been an excellent application to review. I (Adam, Eco-Schools Manager) have flagged it for the rest of the team to read. It’s been incredibly heartening and inspiring to see how fully your pupils have engaged with the programme and the work that they’ve done has simply been astonishing – so creative, wide-spread and embedded in curriculum studies. Great work everyone!”
Earlier this year, West Berkshire amongst other Berkshire councils sponsored a Rebel Business Course for any budding entrepreneurs who has a business idea to start up their business. The course provided essential skills and knowledge behind how to set up a business and we’re delighted to say that 168 people attended across Berkshire with 32% of those now trading.
One of West Berkshire’s priorities on economic development is to focus on upskilling people to reach their full potential and we believe this course was a great demonstration of that as we had attendees from a huge variety of backgrounds.
The success of this course means we are now holding an in-person event to celebrate the attendees achievements and also network with external parties and the public. This event will be a chance for the attendees to learn more about business information as well as have the chance to pitch their ideas to the public.
Please show your support to these new start-ups and join us on Friday 27 May from 1pm to 3pm at The Globe, Newbury, to chat to the businesses.
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