Ropley Parish Council
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ROPLEY PARISH COUNCIL You are summoned to attend the Annual Parish Assembly and Annual General Meeting of Ropley Parish Council as detailed below: Tuesday 1st May 2018 at 7.30pm in Ropley Parish Hall AGENDAS Annual Parish Assembly 1 Apologies for absence None given. 2 Minutes of the Annual Parish Assembly held on 2nd May 2017 - to approve the minutes as a true record. Council unanimously resolved that the Minutes of the meeting held on 2nd May 2017 were signed off at the June 2017 Ordinary meeting of the Parish Council. 3 Reports from the Parish a. Chairman’s report – Councillor George Brown Thank you everybody for attending tonight. For those who have not been here before, the format is that we hold the APM, where we review the past year. We then hold the AGM where we elect officials for the coming year. We then hold a regular PC meeting . Councillor Oppenheimer from Hampshire County Council has kindly agreed to come and say a few words. As we have the opportunity, I will not be averse to a few questions from the floor. We are also joined by Councillor Louisson who will be making a report. As Councillor Louisson is kindly here every month, I will not be proposing to have a q and a session after his talk, but there will be another opportunity in the ordinary parish meeting at the end. I repeat myself from last year in thanking all the Councillors on behalf of myself and the village for continuing to serve. Each representative will be giving an update on activities in their responsibility, and of course don’t forget their roles are defined on myropley.org. I shall try and resist singling everyone out as we will get their individual reports shortly. I will draw your attention to the fact that this group of volunteers continue to take on whatever is thrown at them, and deal with it in a timely fashion. The financial position of the Parish Council is good. We have a precept that is adequate for our expenses and allows some contingency funding, and we also have CiL payments that are available for certain projects. Highlights: the MUGA has been built and is in use. It was a lot of teamwork that allowed it all to happen and Drew, Giles and Becky from the PC side put in a lot of effort to get it completed. Planning permission has been granted for the church rebuild, and notwithstanding the short term issues with access, it will be a remarkable achievement to get it rebuilt. More funds are required and we can all expect to see some fundraising initiatives in the months to come. I think we will be hearing about the cleaning of the village pond later, and there has been major work done on footpaths in the village. We have conducted some investigation into the feasibility of a skate park following approached from villagers. The current status is that we are pursuing possible funding streams, whilst simultaneously asking the villagers to form a fund-raising committee to demonstrate the community support. There has been extensive work on putting up some netting on the cricket pitch facing the houses opposite following request from some villagers. Drew will be updating this further in the ordinary parish meeting later. The neighbourhood plan has finished the consultation period and the results are now being analysed. This is such a vital piece of work as the pressure on housing numbers continue, and the EHDC plan is already in danger of being out of date. It is remarkable to me, that fifteen years ago the whole mantra was that housing should be sustainable. This meant minimising traffic movements and encouraging locations that have mains services, good public transport, and local amenities and employment. What ever happened to that? Ropley has no mains gas, no mains drainage, only a bus service along the A 31, the one village shop. And yet the housing numbers keep coming. Planning has been frustrating this year. Several developments to which we objected have been approved, and most recently the Chequers development that we supported has been refused. Having a neighbourhood plan is no guarantee of a managed plan of development, unfortunately, but it will certainly help and I hope it can be completed soon. My thanks go to all the volunteers working on it, we will be hearing more from Simon on its current status later. We will be hearing from Derrick later on Highways. It all appears to be a bit random, as new yet wider tarmac appeared outside my house last week, and it was one of the best bits of road in the parish. Some of the potholes elsewhere are positively dangerous. The C18 junction signage continues to be ignored, and speed limits often appear optional. For my part, I remain in favour of further action on speed, and I will be trying to garner support this year. Sadly, penalties are the only real proven deterrent, but we can only work with what we are allowed. I would like to mention that Norma Day was recognised with a Lifetime Achievement award by EHDC, well-deserved and I would like to add my congratulations. Our District Councillor, Charles Louisson, deserves a mention for his hard work on the neighbourhood plan as well as all the planning issues in the village. Not all the decisions have gone the way we would like, but it is not for want of trying. The new ward boundaries mean that Charles will be spread further, but we hope we can still rely on his active support. I thank our clerk, Becky, for her hard work, even from the winter Olympics in Seoul. It is hard to credit that Becky has only been doing this for less than 18 months, given how efficient she is making us. Mine is the easiest job on the council, and is it thanks to the hard work of the Councillors and Becky. I now introduce Councillor Oppenheimer, who has kindly agreed to join us. b. Russell Oppenheimer County Councillor, Petersfield Hangers Division County finances As has been well publicised, County Councils across the UK are facing financial challenges. Due to a reduction in the Revenue Support Grant, as well as cost inflation and demand pressures, Hampshire has had to find £140m of annual savings by 2019. In this context a rise in Council Tax was difficult to avoid. Council Tax rose by 3% from April 2018 whilst a social care levy of a further 3% has also been charged. It was a difficult decision to raise Council Tax but I believe we have done the right thing. The increase will help to ensure that we can continue to look after vulnerable people who need care, both elderly and young, whilst also preserving local services that are important to residents such as: • Housewold Waste & Recycling Centres • School Crossing Patrols • Community Transport buses Relative to many other Councils, Hampshire County Council is in a strong position. We are balancing the books. We have good technology which does not just enable us to reduce costs – we also get an income stream by licensing our proprietary software to other Councils. Hampshire County Council has reserves of over £500m which enables us to make capital investments in improving the County, such as new roads and schools. 92% of pupils are getting their first choice school. And our pupils are still outperforming national averages at GCSEs and A levels. The population of Hampshire is ageing and this is a challenge we have to face. The proportion of the population aged 85 years and over is expected to increase by almost 30%, to 54,600 people by 2023. We await the Government’s Green Paper on Adult Social Care with interest. Highways contract Following several years of planning, on 1 August 2017 Hampshire County Council moved to a new 7-year highways contract with Skanska. The contract is worth a minimum £30m per year and there is an option to extend it for a further 5 years from 2024-2029. Skanska replaced Amey who had been the contractor for the previous 7 years. The handover was well-handled and everything went smoothly. Skanska have invested in high-tech new gritting machines and also in new pothole repair vehicles called “Dragons”. We are optimistic that we will see benefits from this new contract in terms of speed and quality of service. Hampshire’s roads are in very good shape compared to other counties but there is always room for improvement! We have a project called Operation Resilience which invests around £10m per annum in road resurfacing and improvement. You can report any potholes or obstructions online at www.hants.gov.uk/roads and I also recommend following @hantshighways for those on Twitter. Future Skills Centre opens in Whitehill and Bordon The Future Skills Centre is the latest in a series of new, world-class technical training facilities which we at HCC are delivering across the County with a view to transforming the skills infrastructure in Hampshire. This facility has the potential to be a great resource for people in East Hampshire. The innovative new building, built by Hampshire County Council and substantially funded by the Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), was officially handed over, on 13 October 2017, to Basingstoke College of Technology, which is operating the centre, and providing its comprehensive range of vocational training courses in the construction sector, including apprenticeships. The Home and Communities Agency secured an award of £3.8 million to fund the project, through the Local Growth Fund Grant from the Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership, and then selected the County Council to build the new facility and identify an operator.