Shalford Parish Council Parish Clerk: Cathryn Carlisle Herkstead Green Bungalow, Cornish Hall End, Braintree, CM7 4HH Tel: 01440 731964 [email protected] Minutes of the Annual Parish Assembly Monday 20th April 2016 Welcome – Corinne Eves Parish Council Chairman Cllr Eves welcomed everyone for attending the Annual Parish Assembly. All Councillors attended the meeting plus 32 members of the public DC Peter Tattersley Apologies CC Roger Walters Peter Schwier The Vicar Minutes of the meeting held on 11th May 2015 were approved and signed Roger Hirst Conservative Candidate for Essex Police and Crime Commissioner Roger Hirst is the Conservative Candidate up for election on the 5th May 2016, prior to this Mr Hirst Was cabinet minister for ECC and Deputy Leader at Brentwood Council he led the Essex Communities Strategy and has a track record of successfully working in collaboration with the Police and local authorities to deal with inlawful gypsy and traveller issues. He has now stood down from these roles to focus on Police and Crime Commissioner, we will stand for the whole of Essex. Professionally he has work in the City of London as a financial analyst at mayor British, European, and American banks. As our Police and Crime Commissioner Mr Hirst will put needs of Essex residents first. The Police need to mend the broken elements of our society. That is why he promises to; 1. Crack down on Anti-Social Behaviour – keeping our communities safe across the whole of Essex and reducing the disruption and distress it causes people. 2. Be tough on Domestic Violence – helping those who suffer in silence and reducing its impact on children and families. 3. Reverse the trend in serious violent crime – helping the Police get a grip on knife crime and supporting early intervention to improve public safety. 4. Tackle gangs and organised crime – making sure that crime doesn’t pay, eradicating people- trafficking, and using seized funds to help affected communities. 5. Make the Police more local, visible, and accessible – ensuring that crime prevention is based in the community, that victims come first, and that you know what is happening in your neighbourhood. Mr Hirst would like to see the Police, Fire Service, Health and Social Care all working more closely together. Especially the Police and Fire Service could use the same back office staff working as one team. More than 26,000 rural crimes are reported to Essex Police a year, Mr Hirst is determined to help Page 1 of 12 farmers and rural residents stay safe. Mr Hirst will support Essex Police to focus on identifying and investigating rural crime including the work of Rural Special Constables and will strengthen Farm Watch and Farmers’ NAP which now have 2,000 farmers on board. 101 service is not good enough and needs improving. Q With a lot of speeding traffic in Country Lanes Mr Hirst agreed that deaths on rural lanes is very high. A resident said he had taken the online test for speed watch camera but has not heard anything for anyone as yet. The Parish Clerk and Chairman explained that we have speed watch in the village but only Whites Hill which is a 40 mph speed was assets by the Police. The speed watch co ordinator has spoken to the Police on numerous occasions asking for Church End Shalford to be asset. The Clerk and Chairman also reported that they Parish Council had managed to get Water Lane a Quiet Lane so hopefully this should stop some of the traffic going down there. After the last speed and volume survey at Church End Shalford the area near Poplar Cottages is being looked at for traffic calming by ECC Highways. Q A resident wanted to know how Mr Hirst was going to fund all the new technology, A Mr Hirst explained that a lot of Police Stations would be closed as they cost a lot of money to run and in the last year only 10 people or less called in to report a crime. Braintree Police Station will be remaining. Chelmsford police station costs 2 million to run the building is old so a new building would cost less, there will be other cuts across the board at some stage. FOSTAC Activities over the last year have included the Group continuing to arrange events to raise money for the restoration of the Organ in St Andrew’s Church. This work is now scheduled for the summer, and an Organ Recital has been arranged for the 11 September 2016 to celebrate the refurbishment. 2016 started with a March Spring Tea held on the 1/3/16. Other events that are planned and will be taking place during the year are: Chelmsford Cathedral Choir - 21 May 2016 Come & Sing - 25 June 2016 60’s evening with Hog Roast - 16 July 2016 Organ recital to celebrate the refurbished organ – 11 September 2016 Braintree Male Voice Choir – 11 October 2016 Christmas Fayre coach trip to Ely Cathedral 17 November 2016 Christmas Concert – 10 December 2016 Tickets for events are available from Shalford Village Stores. Page 2 of 12 After the FOSTAC AGM, in May, the committee will be made up of 8 members. We would welcome anyone wishing to join our group who is interested in helping to raise funds to help preserve St Andrew’s Church, and at the same time supporting events for our local community. Village Hall Management Committee - Colin Golding For those of you who do not know Shalford Village Hall and recreation ground are owned by a charitable trust for the benefit of village residents. It is independent of the Parish Council and is run by a Management Committee who are “Managing Trustees” of the Charity. The revenue we raise through letting the Hall, football pitch and cricket pitch currently meets our routine expenditure on maintaining the hall and recreation ground and funding to improve the facilities comes from our fund raising activities and grants. Over the last few years we have been able to refurbish the showers in the changing rooms, the toilets and most recently the kitchen thanks to grants from Essex County Council’s Communities Initiative Fund. We have also benefited from Section 106 money which most recently was used to replace the railings around the hall. Section 106 money is collected by Braintree DC from developers every time a new house is built and we are fortunate in that they pass that money down to local communities to improve open spaces in the parishes where the houses are built. We currently have 3 improvement projects on the go. The first is to buy a replacement tractor for use on the playing field because our existing one is passed its best and beyond economic repair. The new one, for which we have grant funding in place, will allow us to undertake some of the remedial work which we currently have to contract out, thereby saving us money. Hopefully it will also make life a bit easier for Lawrence Rawlings who has given his time free of charge for many years now to cut the grass on the playing field. The second is our biggest project and that is to replace the roof on the hall and remove the false ceiling and create a vaulted ceiling with integral insulation. Most of our recent fund raising has been put towards this project and it has been added to by grant money from the Parish Council. We currently have around £17k towards this project but still have a long way to go. The third project is to refurbish the basketball area which is beside the children’s playground and we are waiting for the section 106 fund to build up a bit more before going ahead with that. Looking forward we have 3 events coming up. Two are to celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday, the first tomorrow night, the day of her actual birthday when a beacon will be lit on the field at 7:30 as part of the chain of beacons across the country. So please come along, hot drinks will be served. The celebration of the Queen’s official birthday takes place on the weekend of the 10th,11th and 12th on June with a service at Westminster Abbey on the Friday, Trooping of the Colour on the Saturday and the street party in the Mall on the Sunday. So to join in we are arranging a party in this Hall on the Saturday evening . We want the Sunday to be a village celebration so we are providing a free tea for the senior citizens of Shalford at 2 O’clock and on the playing field there will be a BBQ, beer tent and fun and games for all the family. So please put the dates in your diary, watch out for the posters and flyers with more details and if you prepared to help with the organisation then come and see me later. Finally our annual cricket festival will take place on 9th July. This has become a regular event and keeps alive the spirit of cricket on the village green. It also raises around £2.5k for our funds. As a village we are lucky to have a hall like this, it is a great community asset and we would like to see it used to its full capacity. We do give discounted rates to encourage new activities. Page 3 of 12 Maintaining it and improving it take a lot of effort and hard work by what is a small management team and because of this we are limited in the number of events we can organise but when we do it is a little soul destroying when we have to cancel them do to lack of support which is what happened to our quiz night last year.