Annual Report
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ANNUAL REPORT OF MARESFIELD PARISH YEAR 2019-20 AS WE HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO HOLD THE ANNUAL PARISH ASSEMBLY THIS YEAR THE PARISH COUNCIL CONSIDERED IT APPROPRIATE TO CIRCULATE THE PARISH ANNUAL REPORT TO ALL PARISHIONERS AS A MEANS OF KEEPING YOU ABREAST OF SOME OF THE ACTIVITIES IN THE PARISH OVER THE LAST YEAR. WE HOPE THAT YOU FIND THE REPORT INTERESTING. INDEX PAGE Parish Council Reports:- Councillors 3 Chairman’s Review 4-7 District Councillor’s Report 8-9 Unaudited Accounts y/e 31 March 2020 10 Marjory Pegg Community Awards 11 Reports from Parish Groups: Age Concern 12 Ashdown Evergreens 12 Fairwarp QE11 Field 13 Fairwarp Sunday Juniors Training Group 13 Fairwarp Football Club Under 8s 14 Fairwarp Stoolball Club 14 Fairwarp Village Hall 15 Maresfield Conservation Group 16 Maresfield and Nutley Churches 17-18 Maresfield Stoolball Club 19 Maresfield Village Football Club 19 Maresfield Village Hall 20 Maresfield Village Lunch 21 Maresfield Village Meadows Trust 21-22 Nutley Bowling Club 23 Nutley Pre-School 24 Nutley War Memorial Hall Trust 25 St Peter & St James’ Hospice 26 Wealden Citizens Advice 26 Fairwarp Community Society 27 Maresfield Parish Annual Report 2019/20 Page 2 of 27 COUNCILLORS 2020 FAIRWARP COUNCILLORS 2017 Penelope Handley 01825 733342 Lolita Reeves 01825 713630 MARESFIELD Sheila Cumming 01825 767484 Alan Strevens 01825 508702 Laura Stevens-Smith 07443 857254 NUTLEY Martin Craddock 01825 713879 Trevor Lewin 01825 713346 Birgit Smith 01825 714555 David Watson 01825 509028 Les Wilcox 01825 714519 COUNTY COUNCIL Roy Galley 01825 713018 DISTRICT COUNCIL Peter Roundell 01825 722030 Maresfield Parish Annual Report 2019/20 Page 3 of 27 Maresfield Parish Council – 2019/20 Annual Report Chairman’s Review Throughout 2019/20 we have been short of our quota of fourteen Councillors. Sadly, Cllr Ken Ogden died in June and is greatly missed for his wise and experienced contributions to our affairs but also for his knowledge of Maresfield and its people. Regretfully Cllr Robert Taylor resigned in June and Cllr Guido Pellizzaro resigned in October both due to changed work commitments. We were pleased to be able to co-opt to the Council Mrs Birgit Smith in June and Mrs Sheila Cummings in July. We would like to fill our current four vacancies so if you are community minded and wish to contribute please volunteer for co-option. Our monthly Parish Council meetings have also been attended by Cllr Peter Roundell of Wealden District Council, who is the sole District Councillor representing our Parish, and Cllr Roy Galley who is our East Sussex County Councillor (and also a District Councillor). We are very fortunate to have Claire Goossens as our Parish Clerk and she was joined in the Parish Office by Nancy O’Hanlon who was appointed Assistant Parish Clerk in September and is proving to be a valuable part of our team. The efforts of Claire and Nancy continue to ensure that the Council’s records and affairs are in excellent order. The Parish Office (adjacent to the Nutley Social Club) will welcome visitors during its morning opening hours (when the crisis is over) but can still be contacted on 714555 or [email protected] Communications The main means of communication by the Parish Council remains the monthly Newsletter contained in the three villages’ monthly magazines which go to all households in the Parish. Please read it. We want to hear your views on all and any local issues; please phone, e-mail or visit the Parish Office. As I write this the Country remains in partial lockdown with restrictions on face to face contact and meetings necessitating electronic communications and the use of “Zoom” meetings software. As all Parish Council meetings and its Committee meetings are open to the public, attendance by members of the public using Zoom can be facilitated by the Parish Clerk. Dates and times of our meetings are in the magazines, are displayed on our notice boards around the Parish and are on the Parish Web site. The MPC website is constantly being updated to improve the user experience and engagement and contains useful and relevant information for its audience - the parishioners of our three villages. Please do access the site regularly and let us have feedback. We will be re-launching the web site later this year with the intention of making it more attractive, more informative and conforming to the new accessibility regulations. We persevere with trying to engage parishioners through our use of social media channels by improving our profile pages on Twitter and Facebook, increasing the frequency of posting and the quality of posts (what do we want to tell our readers?) and by following other users and forwarding other users relevant content. Please engage with us by “following” or “be-friending” Maresfield Parish Council online. Planning The Planning Committee, under Councillor David Watson’s chairmanship, continues to meet every three weeks on a Monday evening and makes recommendations to Wealden District Council on each of the seventy or so planning applications submitted each year involving a property in the Parish. This time consuming but interesting work involves a diligent and critical examination of plans submitted and in some cases site visits. Parishioners will be aware that Wealden District Council’s draft Local Plan was withdrawn earlier this year following substantial criticism by the Planning Inspector appointed to review Maresfield Parish Annual Report 2019/20 Page 4 of 27 it. Consequently, Wealden’s existing planning policies, including those restricting development in order to protect the Ashdown Forest, are somewhat out of date. With less than a five-year land supply, no up to date Local Plan and Government policy favouring sustainable development Wealden will find it difficult to repel some developers’ ambitions. The situation in Maresfield is that the current (2013) Wealden Local Plan allocated fifty new greenfield homes to Maresfield village and to date applications have been approved for at least this number though fewer than half have been completed or are currently under construction. Recent applications, recommended for refusal by the Parish Council, for a further thirty or so have not yet been decided by Wealden. Good progress continues at the Ashdown Business Park in Maresfield where only two sites remain uncommitted. Notably, the Costa Coffee drive through café on the north of the site adjacent to the A272 has been open for some months and the Premier Inn is expecting to open in the Autumn. The hotel, at least, is a useful additional amenity for our neighbourhood. We have a list of persons interested in being allotment holders and we expect there to be the opportunity for the Parish Council to provide some new allotments in Maresfield in due course on land to be gifted to the Parish Council north east of Wellington Gate. If you would like to be added to our list, please notify the Parish Office. There have not been any particularly controversial planning issues over the past year but the period ahead until Wealden can get a new Local Plan in place (eighteen months?) looks less straightforward. We, and the whole community, also need to be vigilant and promptly report any situation which could be a breach of planning regulations to Wealden and to the Parish Office. Due to Wealden having to withdraw its draft Local Plan our Neighbourhood Development Plan Steering Group was advised to revise its latest draft Neighbourhood Development Plan to reflect the new situation. We have been in discussions with Wealden about this but the lockdown restrictions have delayed matters further. The delays in finalising this Plan and submitting it to the community for consultation have been frustrating but a new final draft is virtually complete. The work put into this exercise has been very considerable over a number of years and our thanks are due to all those involved with the NDP project. Environment and Road Safety We rationalised our Committees by merging Road Safety into the Environment Committee chaired by Councillor Penny Handley which meets quarterly and continues to be busy particularly with the upkeep of play areas in Maresfield, Nutley and Fairwarp. Following last year’s Parklands Play Area refurbishment, this year the swings at Fairwarp were replaced and the ground surface of the play area at Fords Green Nutley was replaced. We have a programme of regular inspection of the play areas and the equipment at Fords Green is next in line for refurbishing so a reserve of £5,000 has been created to be put towards this future expenditure. Grass cutting continues as last year with the Parish Council part funding jointly with ESCC. Additional servicing of public areas in the Parish is now being carried out for us by the maintenance team of Forest Row Parish Council and this additional resource promises to be very useful and we are grateful to Forest Row for their cooperation. As in previous years teams in the Parish took part in another “Great British Spring Clean” and collected large amounts of litter from road verges and other public spaces; we are grateful to all who took part. However fly tipping is still a problem particularly since (or because) ESCC started to charge for the disposal of some categories of household waste at their Disposal Sites. Should you witness illegal fly tipping or come across such waste please advise Wealden District Council (who will clear it from public land) or notify the Parish Office. Maresfield Parish Annual Report 2019/20 Page 5 of 27 On behalf of the Council, Councillor Lolita Reeves attends a quarterly liaison panel with the Ashdown Forest Conservators to discuss matters of mutual interest.