Carlton and Chellington Parish Council
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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 Bedford 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 Kempston.