Page | 1 APM 2014 Minutes of the Annual Parish Meeting of FAIRFIELD PARISH COUNCIL held in Fairfield Community Hall, Kipling Crescent, Fairfield on Thursday 27th March 2014 at 7.45 pm Present: Parish Councillors B E Dack (Chairman), P Daffarn (Vice Chairman), V C Batten, C Bidwell, P Mitchinson, N P Hanks and G H Smith. Officer present: Katrina Henshaw (Parish Clerk). Also present for the meeting: Rt Hon Alistair Burt, Member of Parliament for North East Bedfordshire, Ward Member Councillors G Clarke and B Saunders, PS Gary Kidd, PCSO Joe Passby, Reverend Neil Whitmill, Fairfield Community Church, John L Aries-Tyler, Fund Raiser/Past Chairman (On behalf of Fairfield Youth Centre), Jan Brooker, The Scout Biggleswade District Commissioner, Pamela Manfield, Volunteer Co-ordinator, Stotfold Watermill and Nature Reserve and sixty five members of the public. 1 Apologies for Absence 1.1 No apologies for absence were received. 2 Report from Councillor Barrie Dack, Chairman of FPC 2.1 Councillor Dack read the following report:- Welcome to the first annual meeting of the Fairfield Parish Council. It is worth recalling how the council came about following the discovery that hardly any of local precept tax was being spent on Fairfield. The estimate that the precept collected by Stotfold Town Council from Fairfield, had reached £90,000 per annum, has recently been confirmed by them. It went deeper than just money: Fairfield is separated from Stotfold, has a much different population mix and different needs. Fairfield needed its own governance and the ability to spend the money on local requirements. The aims of the five members of the Action Group were often criticised at the time. Events have proved that they were right in all their arguments. So, what has the parish council achieved in its first year? The honest answer is “not as much as it had hoped”. The first three months were spent in putting the foundations in place, appointing our own clerk as well as with the rules governing a local council, before we could begin to get to grips with local needs and problems. We were fortunate that among the applications for a clerk was Katrina Henshaw, who is fully qualified both as a clerk and responsible financial officer, and who has proved excellent in keeping us in order. We have been aiming to get Fairfield on the “Map” - literally. Look at any Ordnance Survey map and Fairfield is not shown, nor do any of the major road signs leading here show that we exist. Further, there are major defects in the current mapping of the streets. This frequently causes mayhem by heavy vehicles as they try to get through to Arlesey from Fairfield via Eliot Way, Kingsley Avenue or Dickens Boulevard/Hardy Way. We also know of one incident where an ambulance on emergency call out to Arlesey was forced to turn back. Needless to say all Sat Nav devices give out incorrect information. You all may be forgiven in thinking that correcting all this is a simple matter. Think again! Getting the organisations to accept that the information was incorrect in the first instance proved difficult. However, ordnance survey should soon by updating their information, the two bodies behind Sat Navs are updating their info, while Central Bedfordshire Council are, hopefully, attending to the signage in their new financial year. Fairfield Parish Council APM – 27th March 2014 Page | 2 APM 2014 Our efforts with Royal Mail to get postal addresses changed, are proving more of a problem. Formal recognition of Fairfield as a postal address is yet to happen. Shortly, parish notice boards will appear outside the Community Centre and at the junction of Hardy Way/West Drive, and on the green area in front of Tesco. We have put in place various policies. Most are routine, but one important one is a “Disaster Policy” that aims to set out what should happen in the event of a major incident occurring on Fairfield. The first draft has now been adopted but it needs fine-tuning. Hopefully, it will be left to gather dust, apart from an essential annual updating. All the elected councillors, and everyone we speak to, have a special regard for Fairfield both in its ideals and in its design. However, the original plan is now more than 10 years old and if its aims are to continue to be taken into account by planners in the future it needs confirming. There are deficiencies in Fairfield facilities and we also need to look to the future. It is for this reason that we have embarked on the production of a Parish Plan – we are actively seeking involvement and input from everyone in the Parish to help us generate the final Plan. Few roads have been formally adopted on Fairfield and community areas have yet to be handed over by developers under their agreements with purchasers and Central Bedfordshire Council. There is no doubt that developers have outstayed their welcome and are now hampering our efforts to move on. One developer, has departed, both physically and morally, and left in his wake a string of unanswered questions and problems. There is a swathe of green space that stretches from the Orchard bordering Hardy Way down to the base of Kingsley Avenue where both current and future maintenance is unknown. Certainly, planning conditions laid down by the authorities have neither been complied with nor enforced. As a result we have a so-called junior football pitch and a tennis court that are left to deteriorate and remain unusable, while the orchards, cherished by many, desperately need some tender love and care. The parish council has been exerting considerable pressure on Central Bedfordshire Council to enforce the planning conditions they and their predecessor laid down as well as try to bring the freeholder of the land to the table to discuss. We hope we are making progress! However, there is one further step we are taking. The parish plan is a merely a guide to what facilities and changes that you all consider important. It has little or no legal teeth. The parish council has, therefore, taken the first step to upgrade the parish plan to a two-pronged Neighbourhood Plan. The two parts will be a design statement to ensure the look and feel of Fairfield is maintained and to declare as local greenspace the areas I have just referred to, which will make it virtually impossible to be developed in the future. The Neighbourhood Plan has to go through many more legal hoops and will take longer than the Parish plan. Finally, there is an urgent need for both allotments and recreation space for older children and adults. We had hoped to persuade a developer, who has land in his bank, to release some for this purpose. However, this avenue proved a dead end and we are now in discussions with Central Bedfordshire Council with a request that they release a small amount of the adjacent farmland they own. Although our progress has thus far been slow we are moving forward in a way that we hope meets the approval of you all. Thank you. Fairfield Parish Council APM – 27th March 2014 Page | 3 APM 2014 3 Report from Rt Hon Alistair Burt, MP for North East Bedfordshire 3.1 Rt Hon Burt thanked FPC for inviting him and said he was delighted to be able to attend. He remembers the history of the hall and the struggles to create a new community with a new parish council. The Rt Hon Burt had prepared a flyer (appendix A) detailing his first past year and left copies for residents. He also left details of how residents can take part in the Rail Survey on line (www.alistair-burt.co.uk). The Rt Hon Burt was very impressed to see a large turn out and encouraged people to continue to take part in the future and to remember that those that represent the residents are just local people who wanted to get involved and make the area a better place. People often ask what a MP does. The Rt Hon Burt explained that part of the job was getting about and seeing people to find out what they want as the main part of the job is to listen. Monday – Thursday the Rt Hon Burt spends abroad or in Westminster and the rest of the week he tries to be in his constituency meeting people. He recently got asked by a school child what would be the most important thing he could do, to which he responded that apart from world peace it would be to solve the traffic problem by the black cat roundabout. The Rt Hon Burt advised that he was more than happy to be involved with Fairfield and if there was anything that people wanted his help on then to please get in contact with him. 4 Report from PS Gary Kidd 4.1 PS Kidd read the following report:- Fairfield Parish Crime Stats Annual Report 2013 – 2014 Long Term Trend All Recorded Crime Year on Year Financial Year Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Total Avg Current Financial Year: 2013/2014 1 4 7 6 7 3 7 3 1 5 2 46 4.18 Financial Year: 2012/2013 1 1 3 6 3 5 1 5 1 3 29 2.42 Financial Year: 2011/2012 5 1 1 2 5 3 5 2 2 6 32 2.67 Financial Year: 2010/2011 4 1 2 3 1 6 4 5 1 5 32 2.67 Financial Year: 2009/2010 1 1 4 2 3 1 2 3 2 1 20 1.67 Financial Year: 2008/2009 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 12 1.00 Financial Year: 2007/2008 4 1 2 3 1 11 0.92 Financial Year: 2006/2007 1 2 4 1 3 2 2 4 19 1.58 Financial Year: 2005/2006 3 3 0.25 Fairfield Parish Council APM – 27th March 2014 Page | 4 APM 2014 Serious Acquisitive Crime (SAC) Force Priority Offences Financial Year Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Total Avg Current Financial Year: 2013/2014 1 2 1 1 2 1 8 0.73 Financial Year: 2012/2013 1 1 0.08 Financial Year: 2011/2012 1 1 1 3 0.25 Financial Year: 2010/2011 1 1 1 3 0.25 Financial Year: 2009/2010 2 1 1 1 5 0.42