CARLTON AND CHELLINGTON

PARISH COUNCIL

MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL PARISH MEETING HELD AT CARLTON VILLAGE HALL ON THURSDAY 27th APRIL 2017

Present: J Julyan (chair) Parish Councillors D Jenkins, T Sivills, S Owen, N Yeo, R Simpson and L Dixon Clerk M Wilson, BCllr A Field-Foster 35 Members of the public,

1. TO CONFIRM THE MINUTES OF THE MEETING of 28th April 2016 It was resolved that the Minutes were an accurate record and were signed by the Chairman.

2. TO RECEIVE CHAIRMAN’S REPORT – As given by the Chair- Cllr Julyan On behalf of myself and my fellow councillors, thank you very much for taking the time to come out tonight. Firstly, our thanks should go to our excellent clerk Mandy Wilson for all the hard work she does on our behalf, and to our borough councillor Alison Field-Foster for the unstinting support she has again given to the council and the village. Amongst the tasks undertaken by the council this year are:  We formed a Neighbourhood Plan Steering Committee, clerked by Mandy, and appointed planning consultant(s). Developing a NP is both complex and very costly but, as we will hear later, is a vitally important process for us as a community.  After the disappointment of the borough council ceasing its roll-out of Average Speed Cameras, for which we were high up the priority list, we had to go back to considering options that BBC had previously explained to us were ineffectual (vs ASC’s). We didn’t give up on ASC’s, and worked with Alistair Burt MP to liase the Secretary of State for Transport to consider allowing monies raised from fines to be used to pay off the capital expense of the ASC’s (around £50K/pair). Today fines go straight to the Treasury and we were told that isn’t going to change. With all other options exhausted, we have purchased a Vehicle Activated Sign (with a very generous contribution from Alison and her ward fund). The VAS gathers speed data on all vehicles that go past, and we can share this data with the police to enable them to target offenders at the worst times of day. We remain high up the list for ASC’s and BBC also continue to look for ways to resume their roll-out.  We have had to appoint a new contractor for grass cutting in the village as Mr Horne is cutting back his workload. Unfortunately even the cheapest quote was considerably more expensive than we have paid in the past.  We worked with BBC Highways and Resilience departments to address issues around blocked ditches, surface flooding and blocked drains.  We placed a plaque on the war memorial to recognise all the work that the late Stan Smith did in getting the memorial in place.  We gave consideration 18 planning applications, and continued a dialogue with BPHA on their plans for 55 The Causeway.  We gave grants to The Bridge Magazine and MAGPAS Air Ambulance.  Various smaller items such as a new bin for Harrold Road and a new parish noticeboard outside The Royal Oak. Finally I would like to thank my fellow councillors for all the time and effort that they voluntarily contribute to the parish and playing field charity and I would like to highlight that we have vacant positions on the council and would encourage everyone here to consider putting themselves forwards. That concludes my report for this year and once again thank you for coming.

3. TO RECEIVE FINANCIAL REPORT – Given by Cllr Jenkins

Good evening. The Parish Council has a single subcommittee called the Finance and General Purposes Committee. Its purpose is, as the name suggests keeping an eye on the budget, to make sure that all is properly and correctly accounted for. We review the policies of the Council and make recommendations to the full council and should someone allege that a councillor has misbehaved in their office we would act as a complaints committee. The committee comprises Anne Geerts, Jason Julyan and me. I am David Jenkins and I’m the chair of the committee.

What I’m going to do this evening is just take you through the balance sheet. It’s been an interesting year and the final outturn was somewhat different from what we budgeted for. This was because we had not set up the Neighbourhood plan group, ably led by Natalie Yeo who, when we planned the budget back in December 2015 so had not budgeted for it. However, when we began the group we received a grant of £5300 towards its activities from Locality. We also moved a considerable amount of our reserves to a much higher yielding account and so our interest received is much higher than might have been expected. We also received money as a grant, again from the Government, to enable us to comply with the Transparency Code. This code is for Council’s with a turnover of less than £25000 ( albeit this year ours it higher its normally much less than £25000) who will no longer be subject to a formal external audit from 2017/2018 onwards, instead they are required to publish information on their website and this grant has helped cover those costs. We also received what is called CIL money from the development of the two houses at The Royal Oak. This is to fund purchase of resources, and has been put into the traffic calming fund. Finally, we received money from Alison Foster’s ward fund. So, we began with an expectation that we would receive £18,000 but it has come in at nearly £29000.

Of course, we got that money to use and so our expenditure is higher too. This is all laid out for you in the attached balance sheet.

Some of the big items were: Our clerk’s salary was higher than expected as we needed Mandy to put in overtime for the Neighbourhood Plan. We overspent on the neighbourhood plan by nearly £1200. We have bought and installed a new noticeboard largely using the money given to us by Alison Foster, which is placed outside The Royal Oak and is for villagers use. The Vehicle Activated Speeding sign cost us £2170 but it’s effect is noticeable and may make the village safer. Finally, the Parish Council has always kept money in reserve for the Playing Field, historically this money included the funds from the rent of the Barn, however the Parish Council is unable to hold the charities money, so money was spent on the swings and the rest returned to the charity The Parish Council will however continue this year to place money into a restricted account to help support the Playing Field charity from parish funds. As a consequence, we have spent £5683 more than we budgeted although £3032 of that is simply moving money from our bank account to the playing field bank account and most of the rest is the VAS sign.

You will also notice that some items were not as expensive as we expected. So money was put aside for maintenance and repairs, for looking after the Baptist Chapel Cemetery and for looking after open spaces and we spent much less than intended under those headings. Overall we received nearly £29000 and spent about £29500 and we returned just over £3000 to the Children’s Playing Field Charity. As a consequence we have begun an all-important neighbourhood plan and we have started to work on controlling speeds in the village as the Police and Borough Council haven’t really got the resources to do this.

4. TO RECEIVE THE PLAYING FIELD REPORT – Report deliver by Cllr Julyan as chair of the committee.

Since the Parish Council took over responsiblity as sole trustee of the playing field charity negotiations have been taking place with the tenant of the Stone Barn with a view to him becoming responsible for the

maintenance of the building. We continue to look at new play equipment and are looking to remove the slide which does not conform to today’s standards and will replace it with a small toddler unit and make a toddler area. We are also looking at the large expanse where the wooden framed equipment was ( which had to be removed as it was rotting). Regular maintenance is undertaken

5. UPDATE ON THE NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN- Given by Cllr Yeo

Cllr Yeo stated that she would give an update on how we got to where we are, what we are currently doing and what we had to do going forward. The 2 things she wanted everyone to go away with are. 1. To complete the BC consultation and if they did not have access to the internet to phone and see how they could complete the questionnaire by paper. 2. To stress point of how important engagement from the community was to make the NP a success.

 The current Plan runs to 2021 – The Borough requires a new plan.  The new plan will determine the quantity and location of any new development  The Localism Act of 2011 turned the planning process upside down. Instead of central government setting development targets and mandating Local Authorities to deliver them. The new approach requires the local authority and communities to identify their own targets and plan accordingly  This process started with an Initial consultation completed over 3 years ago in February 2014 and was scheduled to deliver a signed off plan out to 2032 by Autumn 2016  The initial borough strategy was to direct most development to the Urban area, Marston Vale and . Development in the remainder of the borough is restricted to the larger villages with open countryside being protected from development.  During the consultation the borough was asked to comment on a range(5) of options o (1)Continue the existing development strategy – Marston Vale etc o (5)Abandon original approach and distribute new growth across the borough including rural communities and open countryside.  As a result of the feedback Option 5 was favoured.  The Borough then undertook 2 separate calls for sites in 2014 and again December 2015. During which Landowners were asked to submit sites for consideration.  As a result of the feedback from the consultation indicating growth was desired in the rural communities an exercise to categorise the villages was undertaken based on existing facilities and amenities. Based on this category the additional development growth was then divided between the villages. We were asked to provision for between 100-150 dwellings.  The majority of this work had already been completed before the village was aware. Your PC responded by setting up the Neighbourhood planning committee in May 2016. We have had to cover a lot of ground very quickly to catch up with the process to date. What we have done o Set up an open event at the village hall in September to raise awareness and engagement with the planning process o Produced a survey to consult in more detail o Engaged a consultant who had experience of helping other parishes put their plans together o Appointment a planner to ensure we produce a credible plan o Actively engaged with the borough council planning department to ensure what we are doing is aligned.  We had already made some really good process when the council was directed to accommodate additional growth  In parallel with this a number of additional sites offering significant development capacity were offered up. , Twinwoods, Airfield and Garden Village.

 The council Put a stop to the current process to reconsider the new options in order to redirect the planning committees accordingly. This additional work has required the planning horizon to be extended from 2032 to 2035.  The result of this has meant our new allocation of housing is now 25-50  The borough has also gone back out to consultation. This will end on June 9 2017. This is your opportunity to get involved. You will find the information here.  Once the borough has finished this consultation we will be asked to adjust our plans accordingly.  Until then and from the conversations I have had with the borough planning department. They are very pleased with our approach and the progress we have made to date. We are not on the critical path. And we can take time to review our project plan and ensure we have time to consult rather than meeting date of October 2017 we can deliver the plan in March next year. But our preference is to do it sooner. I just feel with Summer holidays etc we need to review the reality of delivering a draft plan by October 2017.  Our intention then is to raise awareness of the opportunity to engage with the borough through the consultation.  What I have shared with you tonight is very quick canter through the extensive process and documentation published by the borough to date.  If you are interested there is a wealth of information on the borough website I would encourage you to read it.  We would welcome any additional thoughts you have had as a result of our update and also the published information on the borough website. She finished by re-iterating the importance of engagement from the community in supporting the Neighbourhood plan and asked that they go out and spread the word. Especially if they had friends/neighbours/families of young children in the village as that was demographic we needed to hear from.

Questions raised:

Q: How does the Local Plan and Neighbourhood plan fit together and the bpha site seems to have been excluded due to highway constraints A: Cllr Yeo advised we have had our own assessment of sites done, and the Neighbourhood Plan can say where we want to develop, we have not had a decision made on sites yet. Clerk advised that the original site for bpha had only put in 55 The Causeway. Since putting that land in they have also purchased 51 The Causeway so access will now be easier. Cllr Julyan advised that the houses built by bpha would count towards the 25-50

Q: What are the timescales for the Neighbourhood Plan A: Cllr Yeo advised that at the moment the draft plan was envisaged October 2017, however this is likely to slip and we are looking at the project plan at the next meeting to agree formal timescales

Q: Why is the land at the bottom of New Barns Lane not included? A: Cllr Julyan advised this is a designated open view and the Borough Council have confirmed that they are not changing the Allocations and Designations policy. AD40 would still apply, so we may be able to build say 2 houses, but we cannot build on the whole land. The Clerk is talking to the owner about cutting the hedge which can’t be done until August due to nesting birds.

Q: Is there general resistance or not A: Cllr Yeo advised feedback from survey supports 25-50, very few said no houses at all, and that they want to keep it as a village.

6. GUEST SPEAKER- Pauline Curl from Emmaus was unable to attend

7 GENERAL VILLAGE MATTERS Questions raised:

Q: The rubbish bin by The Gannick is full- now the bins are only emptied every fortnight does this apply to waste bins A; Clerk will confirm with the Borough Council. Cllr Julyan confirmed that Emmaus still does a fortnightly litter pick

Q: Please could Edens Lane be remembered in the grass cutting season A: This is the Borough Council responsibility and Clerk will remind them

Q: Local green spaces:- why have the Council requested the land between the church and the entrance to the village? A: Clerk advised this was done as there is the possibility of archaeological interest for an old village, and to maintain the open views. One resident advised there is also a ransom strip round the area which is held by the Borough Council

Q: Does the Parish Council ever consider the provision of a further burial site A: Cllr Yeo advised this was something being considered within the Neighbourhood Plan

A resident spoke on behalf of Harrold Playing Field who advised he believed Carlton had a good site for a playing field and community centre which had car parking etc. on the right hand side of , Road, leaving the village, site 478/578 on the call for sites. Cllr Yeo advised she would consider this within the context of the neighbourhood plan

Q: Does the Parish Council have the opportunity to monitor bus services, there has been some improvement but there are still odd things such as ramps only available on one side of the road A: Cllr Julyan stated we had asked Grant Palmer if they could go the same way round the village for both ways to utilise the ramps and was advised no. They did consider bus stops at the other side of the road but it was difficult in places.

John Tusting said a word of thanks to the Chair and Councillors and Clerk for looking after the village so well

The meeting closed at 8.45pm.