What’s in a name? Quite a lot, it would seem, if the goings-on at the boundary between Blackwell and Burcot are anything to go by.
We’ve been here before, of course, but usually on the other side of Lickey & Blackwell Parish where, for reasons we’ve never fully grasped, some people would rather claim to live in Barnt Green than Lickey.
But this spat at the bottom of Greenhill seems to be getting a little more entrenched and there is no sign of a clear path out of it.
If Lickey and Blackwell Parish Council want to review and mark out their legitimate boundary with signs that they pay to have installed in the right place, surely that is fair enough.
After all, as you arrive at Bromsgrove from Birmingham, for example, there are signs saying you’re entering Bromsgrove District Council territory, and likewise for Worcestershire County Council.
The problem here, rightly identified by the county councillor for Blackwell and Burcot, Emma Moffett, is that parish council boundaries do not necessarily, or even often, align with historic ideas of where village borders begin and end.
So, naturally, people who have lived south of the “Blackwell” sign for decades in what they have always thought of as Burcot are going to be more than a little bemused to find they are effectively now living in a different village. You can hardly blame the people of the shrinking village of Burcot for going to Coun Moffett and asking her to get the sign removed.
Neither side appears ready to budge just yet, so a solution is needed to avoid Greenhill becoming the Golan Heights of village life.
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