MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL PARISH MEETING
HELD ON MONDAY 9 MAY, 2005 AT 7.30PM
IN THE VILLAGE HALL, AMPNEY CRUCIS
Present: 14 electors, District Councillor Edward Horsfall.
Presiding: Councillor D C Vessey
Clerk: Mrs H E Tonks
1. Minutes of the Annual Parish Meeting held on 10 May, 2004
The Minutes of the meeting were posted in the village. There were no objections to the factual record. Councillor Hartshorne proposed, Frank Skinner seconded and the meeting agreed that the minutes be approved and signed.
2. Annual Report of Ampney Crucis Parish Council
Councillor Vessey gave the following report:
The Parish Council has had another busy year and, rather unusually, has had two departures, both John Dear and Sally Hebbs having left the village in recent months. We have welcomed Barry Dent and Tim Tremellen to our remaining team of five councillors; myself, Gerald Gaden, Adrian Grazebrook, Kim Hartshorne and Peter Kelly.
The Council is represented at District level by Edward Horsfall and, for the last four years, at County level by Ray Theodoulou. Ray has been re-elected but, due to boundary changes, has slipped from our grasp. We therefore welcome Lady Dunrossil as our new County Councillor. Two villagers who provide a regular service to the Council are Janet Campbell, our Tree Warden who comments on all tree applications and Neil Holt our Internal Auditor.
We have held eight meetings this year, six regular meetings and two extraordinary meetings to discuss the new children’s playground about which more later.
Planning
The Parish Council comments on all planning applications. We received 37 applications this year, but of these, the Council objected to only four. Copies of all letters of objection written by the Council are posted on the notice boards.
The new Local Plan (on which the Planning Inspector is due to report in the summer) will probably be adopted early next year and will last until 2009. Assuming no further major changes of direction by the incoming Government, a new planning regime will then be introduced under which most of the major structural decisions (for example, the principal locations in which new housing is to be built) will be taken by the South West Regional Assembly, which may come as a surprise to some of you. As far as local planning decisions are concerned, the rule book is to be rewritten but it is likely that the general broad range of rules governing planning applications in the Cotswolds will remain largely unchanged. One major change is that the County Council will eventually play no further part in planning policy.
For the Parish Council, 2006 onwards should see an increase in reading as all the documents governing planning law in the Cotswolds are re-written.
The grass-cutting contract for the coming year has been awarded again to a local contractor, Tony Williams.
Work started on removing and levelling the ground at the southern end of the Burial Ground to allow the creation of 23 more grave spaces. It is hoped that this work will be completed soon.
Finance
The precept for the year ending 31 March 2005 was set at £5,500 though this will rise in the coming year due to expenditure on the playground – more later. The accounts for the year have been audited by our Internal Auditor, Neil Holt (thank you Neil) and externally by Moore Stephens of Bath.
Drainage on Riding Lane and Butcher’s Arms Lane has now been largely remedied (though this does seem a bit of a Forth Bridge job), there has been repair work on Ernie Holders Lane to relieve some of the flooding, and parts of Back Lane and The Lannocks have been resurfaced.
County Council finance for highway repairs is very limited, but the Parish Council continues to lobby for further repair work when necessary. This may have paid if as I can give you advance warning that we will be under siege at the end of the month as all the major roads in the village are due to be resurfaced between 27 may and 3 June. There will be some inconvenience but we are assured that everything will be done to ensure access to properties over the period.
Footpaths
The village footpaths are walked on a reasonably regular basis by members of the Parish Council but we do depend on members of the public to alert us to any problems with the footpath network. We maintain good relations with the local farmers who can generally be relied upon to clearly mark any footpaths which have been disturbed by ploughing.
Communications
The Ampney Times is now delivered to all 416 households in the three villages. Thanks go to two of our three editors, Christine Cridford and Elisabeth Gerver. Modesty prevents me from naming the third. We now have two top quality notice boards for parish notices, one at the Dudley end of the village and one outside the Village Hall. Once again, our thanks to Harold Stevens for his efforts on our behalf.
There is also a village Website run by Frank Skinner. The Parish Council posts their agendas and minutes on the site as an additional means of notification, and all minutes, from 2000 onwards are on the site. Increasing use is being made of the site by local organisations.
The Playground
Councillor Hartshorne will provide more details on the playground in due course but I feel some words from me are appropriate. I think that all the longer standing Councillors will have learned one thing from this project and that is – never underestimate the amount of time they can take. The Playground Committee has done a sterling job but I have to single out Kim who had been relentless in chasing down the apparently endless supply of niggling problems which seem to beset projects of this nature.
All the capital costs of the playground have been met by grants, donations and fund raising activities. Some of the running costs are a Parish Council responsibility and, as explained at the public meeting in June 2003, it does mean an increase in the precept.
The Council owns all the equipment and meets the costs of insurance (which means the insurance premiums to cover any major damage plus building up a cash reserve to cover minor damage and replacements). This cost will be £600 per annum initially. We will be able to adjust this in line with our experience but it will never be less than £300.
The greater amount (£1,000) is to set up a reserve to remove the playground should it prove not to be successful. It seems odd to have to even think about this, before the playground has been fully built, but it is important. However small the risk of having to remove the playground, the responsibility for removal will be the Parish Council’s and the audit requirements oblige us to cover the risk. The cost is estimated to be £5,000 but we have a guaranteed minimum life on the licence granted by GCC of five years so we have to set aside £1,000 a year to cover the cost. In five years time, the Parish Council will decide how this reserve is to be used if the playground proves to be the success that all the hard work deserves.
The final temporary increase is to our audit costs. These are based on the total amount of money flowing through the Council’s bank accounts and this has risen sharply as a result of handling the playground finances of £40,000. The audit fee will rise by £100 for the next two years and will then return to normal.
Consequently, the rise in the precept due to the playground for the coming year will be £1,700.
On a slightly brighter note, I can announce that the official opening of the playground will be on 5 June at 5.15 p.m. Jessica Schroder has been very generous in her support for the playground through the trust set up by her husband, Richard, and she has gone further by offering to cover the cost of what we hope will be something of a village party on the day.
Sunhill
Finally, I will mention the proposed development at the mushroom compost facility at Sunhill. The proposal is that , due to the decline in the production of mushroom compost in the UK, the composting facility should be adapted to process the so-called Mixed Organic Waste which is essentially kitchen waste which may have been contaminated. This can range from direct contact with meat to tea bags about which Cardiff City Council had to warn its householders not to put in the green wheelie bins (because they might have come into contact with milk from cows that might have been infected with foot and mouth).
The process is untested and it will mean more lorries on our roads. The public reaction (including that from the CDC Planning Committee) was so strong that the County Council reversed an earlier decision and agreed to call for an environmental assessments of all aspects of the proposal. The Sunhill Action group has been formed to represent the interest of all the affected towns and parishes along the A417 including both Fairford and Lechlade.
It had been hoped that a full Environmental Impact Assessment would be called for. However, this can only be implemented if a proposed facility would be likely to have “significant effects on the environment by virtue of factors such as its nature, size or location”. GCC does not feel that this is the case and neither does the Secretary of State for the Environment. Consequently, the assessment will be a somewhat routine assessment of the impact of the new facility and it is not known what weight this will have when the application is finally determined.
For the village, the principal concerns are the volume of new lorry traffic that could be generated along the A417 and the way in which kitchen waste is to be handled as part of the household refuse collections.
One aspect which will need monitoring is the interest of the Regional Assembly in waste management. It seems likely that we may have to react to a strategy developed in Taunton on matters affecting waste in Gloucestershire. The situation is ‘ongoing’ and you will all be kept informed of progress.
Thanks
We do not always get a large turnout to our regular meetings but those people who do attend often comment on the range of items and work that the Parish Council has to cover. It is often unglamorous work but it has to be done. I recall the immortal comment of the then Chairman, Peter Bullock, at a meeting held in 1985 to discuss the possible building of a crematorium in the village – ‘until now, I had always assumed the job was all about dog mess and footpaths’. It’s different now, though we still have problems with the dog mess.
The bible for all Parish Councils is called ‘Arnold-Baker’ and he dedicates it to ‘all those knowledgeable amateurs without whom democracy would be impossible’ Knowledgeable or not, they work on your behalf and I am grateful to all of them for agreeing to do the job.
Finally, there is our professional, our Clerk, Helen Tonks. Some of you will be familiar with the work of the Clerk through your own experience though none of you may appreciate just how much the job has changed and is changing. Without Helen, the Parish Council would be impossible.
A number of questions were asked:
3. Parish Council accounts for the year ending 31 March, 2004
Copies of the summary accounts, which had been drawn up in the format required by the Accounts and Audit regulations, 1996, as amended, were distributed to those present. Detailed accounts will be found with the Annual Parish Council minutes.
These accounts will be adopted at the Annual Parish Council meeting.
4. Accounts of the Village Hall Charity and the Robert Pleydell Educational Charity.
These were presented to the meeting. There were no comments.
5. Reports, if any, from other Village organisations and District and County Councillors.
Ampney Crucis Over 60’s
Mr D Thompson reported that the Over 60’s club was moving from strength to strength. There were now 60 -70 members who enjoy up to 8 outings per year. They meet every fortnight apart from the summer. Participants pay £2 subscriptions at each meeting, and these help to pay for two free meals a year, and a subsidised Christmas lunch. There is a new Chairman who is very enthusiastic about the club.
Written report from County Councillor Raymond Theodoulou.
Although County Councillor Theodoulou was no longer County Councillor for Ampney Crucis, and could not be present at the meeting, he had sent a written report, a synopsis of which was read out to the meeting. The full report is as follows.
As you are aware, due to a boundary change Ampney Crucis no longer falls within the East Cotswold County Council Division and the village will in future be represented by my colleague Lady Mavis Dunrossil, perhaps the most experienced member of the GCC. It has been a pleasure for me to have represented Ampney Crucis and I would be glad if you would convey my thanks to the members of the Council for the considerate manner with which they have tolerated my requests to accelerate me up their agenda enabling me to hurry on down to another Parish Council meeting in a neighbouring village. Their courtesy has been unfailing.
During the year Council Tax loomed large on the GCC agenda and public alarm resulted in last minute Government support for the system. The optimum method of Local Authority finance remains undiscovered and we must now await the findings of an enquiry into this subject launched by the last Government.
Closer to home despite restricted budgets we have managed to get some work done on the village roads. Public dissatisfaction with the growth in heavy lorry movements along the A417 led to my presenting a petition to GCC for the road to be downgraded to B status as a method of exercising a higher level of traffic control. The matter remains on the table and I shall be following it up.
Latterly, residents of the neighbouring villages have been campaigning against granting planning consent for an expansion of the mushroom composting works at Sunhill in the parish of Meysey Hampton. Again growth in traffic along the A417 is a major cause of local agitation.
I am sure that your new Councillor will keep you informed of the progress of the forthcoming review of Gloucestershire schools. The review will look at the educational needs in the County against a background of falling attendance rolls. We must ensure that the review is not a mere cover under which closures of the rural schools will take place; the Government looks for more development in the urban areas at the expense of the rural areas and this implies a long term threat to rural infrastructure such as schools but also to hospitals.
My I end by saying that I will be working closely with Mavis Dunrossil and my door is always open to you and your residents if I can help in any way.
Regards and thanks,
Raymond Theodoulou
District Councillor Edward Horsfall
District Councillor Edward Horsfall reported that he is now halfway through his tenure at Cotswold District Council. At present he is portfolio holder of Health and Housing, but will shortly take over as the cabinet member for Community Services.
He is pleased that the construction of the playground has taken place and that it will shortly be open to the public. Thanks and credit should go to Councillor Hartshorne for her work.
The licensing regime is changing, meaning that the District Council is now responsible for licensing issues.
Affordable housing remains a concern for the Council.
On a County level he reported that the County Council now has Conservative control for the first time in 20 years. A new cabinet will be formed. Further discussion will take place to look at the future of schools in the County.
Reaction from the Public
Mr Thompson confirmed that the new licensing regime is causing problems for the Village Hall Management Committee.
Councillor Horsfall explained that the District Council have sympathy with Village Halls, and will help wherever possible.
Mr Thompson also reported that it was difficult to get a disabled parking sign for the Village hall. Several suggestions were offered.
Playground.
The playground is now almost complete. The RoSPA inspection will take place on 10 May, 2005. The licence has not yet arrived from the County Council. A further problem has arisen as the grant from the Countryside Agency has been transferred to the Regional Development Agency (RDA), and their systems to pay grants have not yet been set up.
The meeting closed at 8.10 pm.