Nuneham Courtenay Parish Council News

 

You did it!

From Sunday 3rd August you have got back your bus service up the Abingdon Road and at 20 minute intervals during the daytime.

To be honest, I have been at a bus stop when I have heard a few people grumbling they didn’t know they could no longer catch the X40 from places like Queen’s Lane in Oxford, but the change is what you said you wanted and it was the way you pressed your case at the parish meeting with the County Council officer that convinced him to restore the route – although it has taken rather a long time for it to happen.

 

Playing Field

I hope some of you have been able to make some use of the Playing Field over the summer.

The parish council has paid for monthly cutting of the grass, but I know the Playing Field Association is frustrated that the company chosen to install the first big piece of play equipment is not planning to do the work before October.

 

Future of the Parish Council

At the next Council meeting on 11th September, the Council will discuss whether to request any changes to the parish in the district council’s latest Community Governance Review.

Nuneham Courtenay only become a separate parish from The Baldons just over 50 years ago and the parish council seems to have thrived for about 30 years.

In the past 20 years, it seems to have become a struggle to find residents willing to become parish councillors.

Many of the younger people who have come onto the parish council and done some very good work, have soon found the pressure of being a councillor when you have a full-time job and a young family is too much and they have resigned after a year or so.

There has hardly been a time in many years when the parish council didn’t have at least one vacancy.

And it feels as if the Village Hall Committee and the Playing Field Association have also found it harder in recent years to find enough residents prepared to keep giving their time to run these vital parish assets.

Should Nuneham Courtenay stop trying to run a parish council of its own?

There would appear to be two options: to look at putting Nuneham Courtenay back in with The Baldons; or to turn Nuneham Courtenay into what’s called a Parish Meeting, rather than a parish council.

If Nuneham Courtenay became a parish meeting, it would still get an income via your Council Tax which you would vote to spend at parish meetings on your Village Hall and your Playing Field, but you would not have all the hassle that requires a parish clerk.

About half of what you pay from your Council Tax is the cost of employing me, but the burden of running a parish council without a paid clerk is too much for volunteers – as was obvious a few years ago when the council tried to run without a clerk and failed to keep any records of where your money went.

A Parish Meeting doesn’t have a paid clerk, but it needs one resident each year willing to be the Chair for the next 12 months and it’s the Chair who has to call parish meetings and keep simple accounts.

Could Nuneham Courtenay find residents willing to take it in turns to do this for a year?

If not, the only option would be to throw in the towel and ask another parish council, such as The Baldons, to take over.

You can express your views by coming along on 11th September, by writing to me or by contacting one of the existing parish councillors.

 

Former Cockadoo/Harcourt Arms

Someone wrote to the parish council in July to say they had called round to inspect the building and reported all the doors and windows seemed to be securely barred.

But the amount of foliage growing up around the building seems to be leading to problems with overgrown gutters particularly on the north side which must be affecting the rainwater disposal.

There are also slipped tiles on some of the roof slopes.

On their visit they say they came across a security guard who was taking photographs of the doors and windows so the owners, the Wellington Pub Company, are at least taking security seriously.

 

Next parish council meeting

The parish council meets again on Thursday 11th September: not its usual date, but at the usual time of 7.30pm in the usual place, your Village Hall.

There are some important discussions needed such as the one about the future of the parish council, but there will also be some dull but important stuff to get through like last year’s audit, which we should have completed by 30th June, but didn’t.