1st August 2025
Please see the below update from Thame Wombles:
Thame Wombles are going through a period of change with Joe Chapman, who founded the group and has been Head Womble since, giving up his positin. Joe says " Many Thame residents have embraced the task of litter picking and have supported our group over the past four and a half years. We are in a strong position as a town and there is no doubt that people are generally keeping the communal areas clean and tidy.
My job has become much easier than it was in the first three years but we cannot be complacent. The danger is that we will default to just a Thame Tidy Day once a year and the historic waste will build up again.
Thame Wombles still has over 900 members and yet we struggle to get more than 4 volunteers to cover local events. However, it is clear that litter is being picked up regularly as there are no reports of any of the previous " grot spots" which blighted our town. We had only one small fly tipping incident along the A418 ring road in May of this year which was cleared within a few days by SODC. This month there has only been 8 tyres reported dumped in almost the same spot which has been reported for clearance.
There remains one area of concern at the end of Ormond Road on the Lea Park Estate which is a large amount of fly tipping which has been there for the past 3 years and gets added to occasionally. Local residents have no interest in clearing this mess up and the SODC will not collect it as it is on private land. The Wombles would have traditionally cleaned up and transported it to the local waste and recycling centre but this is something they no longer do or were authorised to do as it is illegal.
A regular small group of 6 volunteers covered Music in The Park and 2 covered Thame Carnival and the Thame Pride event. It was very encouraging to see that the Thame Pride organisers arranged a team who specifically covered litter picking to ensure that the town was as clean, if not cleaner, than it was at the start of the event.
Both ASM and KUBOTA completed litter picking events in June and it is hoped that other businesses will follow suit throughout the year.
Hopefully somebody will volunteer to lead the group into its next phase, to introduce new ideas or at least to sustain the progress made so far. If that someone could be you, then please get in touch.
