Reports

Chedworth Parish Council

Chairman’s Report to the Annual Parish Meeting

Monday 17th  March 2014

Another 12 months has passed since I last sat here and gave you my report from the Parish Council.

I went back over the last years’ minutes and agendas just to remind me what we have topics we have considered, commented on and have actioned.  Several topics seem to appear month on month.

The state of some of our footpaths, muddy in winter, overgrown in summer.

The issue of dog fouling

Planning applications – 18 in the past 12 months – all carefully considered despite on being available on line and visible on a monitor. As we have said in our plan, if there was any objection the applicant would be informed by us.

Playing Field and its’ ongoing maintenance and its’ use by various local organisations.

The three defibrillators thankfully still remain unused and thanks to Adrian Bell and Pete Heaps for being monitors and carrying out weekly checks on the equipment.

The eXbox – the home of our first defibrillator also continues to serve the village with a good library and lost property point, thanks again to Juliette Stainforth for keeping it clean and tidy.

We have continued to support the residents of Fields Road in their efforts to reduce speeding and their setting up of the Local Traffic Group who now have additional members trained in the use of the speed monitoring equipment. The group will soon be monitoring the speed of traffic on Fields Road in conjunction with Gloucestershire Constabulary and will be able to report any related incidents to them.

John King, along with David Musgrave Peter Milne and Peter Seymoure, has worked tirelessly on the production and implementation of the Chedworth Winter Emergency Plan. John King will say a few words after I have finished but I would like to say many thanks to all those of you that have volunteered and have been involved.

A recent addition to our agenda has been that of provision of play and exercise equipment to complement the current 9year and under play area. Graeme Brister volunteered to take this on and is making good progress on which he will give a brief update.

In January we set our Precept, the amount of money we ask for from the Council Tax set by CDC. Our budget for 2014-2015 increased slightly as we have included for some additional items that we feel would benefit the community, such as lids on grit bins, replacement defib pads and battery, refurbishment of notice boards. In addition to this some increased expenses on maintenance of fencing around the playing field.

We have also been pursuing Affordable Housing. Our champion, Graeme Brister who has been on this will give us an update after I finish my bit.

In 2012 The Parish Council set itself some new targets and rolled out a plan which we asked for comments on and has been striving to uphold.

One of our main objectives was to encourage the members of the Parish to engage with us at meetings, we changed our meeting format so that we would deal with the issues that concerned attendees first so that if the wished not to sit through the rest of the meeting they did not have to. The feedback that we have had from those ------- who attended in the past 12 months has been positive.

Another of our aims was better communication between the PC and the community. It has recently become apparent that there is a certain section of our community who think that we are not informing them of our discussions. We hold monthly meetings to which you are all invited, our minutes and agendas are published on our website, the agendas are posted on the notice boards, we publish a monthly article in Hill and Valley, we use the village notice boards and we have the two PC email alert system for emergencies and important news. Our website has good viewing figures and we have set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account both of which are underused. A village page has been set up and whilst the PC supports this form of forum we cannot see a way for the PC to effectively interface with it as we only meet once a month, we are not full time, we are strategic not day to day “operational” and this does not really fit with any thought that we can engage with it on a day to day basis as the whole point of this form of social media is response after response, the content posted is not monitored for accuracy and the PC is unfortunately not in a position to comment on an ad hoc basis. Councillors can however comment but they may not necessarily be the views of the whole council.

If there are any other forms of communication that the “chosen few” could use please let us know.

And for the next 12 months?

Affordable housing will remain centre stage, Playground and exercise equipment will form a new and exciting discussion, and whatever issues the parish decides to bring to us. And I am certain that planning footpaths and dog fouling will remain as topics on our agenda.

And finally......

Thank you to our team of councillors for freely giving their time, commitment, hard work and support to the Parish Council and to our Clerk and Responsible Financial Officer, Elizabeth Broad.

Paul Sibbald, Chedworth Parish Council Chairman