Staveley-in-Cartmel Parish Council Community Plan 2016 Produced by Staveley-in-Cartmel Parish Council. WWW.staveleyincartmelparishcouncil.co.uk Staveley-in-Cartmel Parish Council Community Plan Foreword I would like to thank all those who have contributed towards the preparation of this first Community Plan for the Parish of Staveley-in-Cartmel. Particular mention must go to you, residents of the Parish, because over 40% of households completed and returned the recent questionnaire seeking your input. This level of response means that the Plan truly reflects local views on local issues. It gives the Parish Council real backing when spending your money on projects or arguing for other authorities to deal with identified problems. The Plan will change over time as issues are dealt with and new ones emerge. However, I hope that the process of planning begun here will form the basis for all our efforts in keeping the Parish as a special place in which to live and work. Steve Lawler Chairman Staveley-in-Cartmel Parish Council September 2016 1 Staveley-in-Cartmel Parish Council Community Plan Introduction With encouragement from the various tiers of local government and in the spirit of “localism”, all parish councils have been asked to produce a statement of the issues of most importance to their area and how these may be addressed. Larger parishes with greater income will be able to use their resources to provide improvements directly. Smaller parishes, such as Staveley-in-Cartmel, have insufficient funds for much service provision; in this case the Council will use its status to influence the service- providing authorities in their resource allocation. An earlier version of this Plan was prepared in 2008 and the following is an update of that Statement. Location Staveley-in-Cartmel Civil Parish lies in the south of Cumbria at the southern end of Lake Windermere and upper Cartmel Valley. The Parish includes a number of small and scattered communities: Staveley-in-Cartmel, most of Newby Bridge, Canny Hill and Fell Foot in the centre; Barber Green, Ayside, Seatle and High Cark in the south. Boundaries are with Windermere, Cartmel Fell, Upper Allithwaite, Broughton East, Haverthwaite and Colton Civil Parishes. 2 Staveley-in-Cartmel Parish Council Community Plan Administration Once part of Lancashire, Staveley-in-Cartmel and the Furness area became part of Cumbria in 1974. Services including education, social services and highways are provided by Cumbria County Council (Highways England for the A590) and housing and waste collection by South Lakeland District Council. Health services are provided in the main by the NHS. As the Parish is located entirely within the Lake District National Park, planning and development control is the responsibility of the Lake District National Park Authority. The Parish Council comprises elected members and interested residents co-opted on to the Council as vacancies arise. One of its main responsibilities is to comment on planning applications. These and other matters are dealt with as they arise at meetings every second month. In between meetings, day-to-day running of Council business is undertaken by the Parish Clerk in liaison with the Chair. Being a collection of small and scattered settlements, the main communication with the public is via the Parish notice boards, although the Council is required to operate a website by April 2016. The boards display Council information and meeting details and are located at: • Newby Bridge – junction of the A590 and Canny Hill Road • Staveley-in-Cartmel – village centre by the Old Vicarage • Barber Green – opposite Yew Tree Farm • Ayside – east of village centre by Belman Beck Social Staveley-in-Cartmel village is at the heart of the dispersed community and social activity is largely centred on St Mary’s Church and the Church Hall. St Peter’s Church and the Parish Rooms in Field Broughton are also foci for both religious services and community events in the south of the Parish. 3 Staveley-in-Cartmel Parish Council Community Plan The small size of each settlement means that there are limited facilities within the Parish. Fell Foot Park, Gummers How and Millerbeck Light Railway do offer some outdoor activities for both locals and visitors and there are also many footpaths and other rights-of-way. The local schools at Cartmel and Leven Valley provide centres for those families with children and for community activities. The public bars and restaurants at the Swan and Newby Bridge Hotels provide some other Cartmel Priory C of E School leisure facilities. As well as fuel and other provisions for motorists, Newby Bridge Service Station now includes an extended convenience store and café. 4 Staveley-in-Cartmel Parish Council Community Plan History The Ecclesiastical Parish of Staveley was constituted as a separate Parish from the huge Cartmel Parish in 1877. The civil parish would have been created at around the same time. The church of St Mary’s (ded icated to St Mary as is Cartmel) , was originally a chapel of ease for the Cartmel Parish. It was on one of a number of routes to Cartmel and close to other important trade routes and the chapel is sometimes described as a stopping or resting point. The church has been restored and rebuilt many times since at least 1618, the last restoration being in 1907. The derivation of Staveley would suggest it owes its origins to old English and is likely to have been principally a farming community with considerable woodland working. In fact the name means a place where staves are made, principally for charcoal production, swill baskets, chairs, hurdles etc. Walking around Staveley or Ayside today it is very clear that the older buildings were all farms and associated cottages. These farms will have been served by the Newby Bridge corn mill, which operated into the 1950’s (parts of the machinery still remain). Newby Bridge was an important crossing point for routes to Hawkshead. It is suggested that there has been a bridge there for hundreds of years. The post office (which serv ed the parish for many years) was situated at Newby Bridge and run by members of the Wren family who still live there. The village of Staveley lies close to the former Kendal to Kirkby Ireleth Turnpike, which goes over Gummers How and crossed Lake Windermere (today the route is recognised by roadside Inns, former toll-houses and the inclines on the hills being lessened by hairpin bends) at Landing How. This was originally a ford but dredged in the 1800’s to allow the steam-boats to navigate further up the river. Prior to becoming a turnpike it was a pack-horse path for many hundreds of years providing a major east west trade route. There was also a ferry point at Lakeside (in use until more recent times). The history of schools in Staveley is worth mentioning as it reflects some of the changes that took place in education during the 1800’s. Not uncommon in this area, a girl’s school was founded in 1801 for the poor by Mary Dixon called The Mary Dixon School of Piety and Industry. The church school was originally based at the chapel and the payment of a school master was supported by The Thomas Barwick Charity. Later a separate school [mixed] was built in 1875 and was joined to the National Schools movement. The former school is now used as the church hall. 5 Staveley-in-Cartmel Parish Council Community Plan Demographics The 2011 census recorded a population of 405 in 200 households. Recent years have seen many pressures on rural communities and this Parish is no exception. The decline in agriculture, reduced employment opportunities, increased leisure time and a generally more affluent society have brought about an increase in retirement and holiday homes within the Parish. Those people reporting a “second address” in the 2011 census represented 7.6% of the Parish population, compared with 5.9% in South Lakeland District (SLD) and 5.1% nationally (England). Younger, less affluent households struggle to afford local houses. There is a strong correlation between price and council tax band and an analysis of this shows the lack of lower priced housing. In the 2011 census, only 15.5% of houses were valued in bands A-C. (52.4% in South Lakeland District Council (SLDC)) Adding to their difficulty is the fact that, if they want to live in the Parish, there is no shared equity housing available and, until the recent development at Mill Farm, no social rented stock compared with the SLDC total of 11%. There are disproportionately more elderly people in the Parish and, as they are more likely to require access to social and health care, increased pressure on those services is inevitable. This skewing of the age structure is shown in the 2011 census population data. 11.6% of Parishioners were aged 17 or under (17.7% in SLDC). In the ‘economically active’ age range 18-64, percentages were similar - 55.6% (57.9% in SLDC). However, 31% were over 65 (24.2% in SLDC and 16.4% nationally) There is further evidence of the need to maintain local health and social services at a high level because of the numbers of Parishioners reporting health or disability problems. 2011 Census data shows 20% of the Parish’s population reported a “limiting health problem or disability” (19% in SLDC and 17.6% nationally) Car ownership data is not yet available from the census but intuitively it is known to be high in rural areas. Although there have been some modest improvements to public transport in the Parish, use of cars will remain predominant.