Unofficial Report from the Parish Council Meeting on 6th October

[Disclaimer - this is my personal view as an independent observer at the Parish Council meeting and is not in anyway approved by the Parish Council and may contain errors and omissions]

In an ideal world, I suppose we should all be crowding into the Community Centre every first Tuesday of the month to hold the Parish Council we elected* accountable and to find out what is going on in the village. Realistically though we are all time poor - what with kids, work commitments, cooking dinners, and Tuesday night TV, to come and sit through a two hour meeting about the running of the village. 

(* I don't believe the last elections were contested, and quite a few parish councillors have been co-opted, but the principle applies)

So here is the plan - I will try and attend most public Parish Council meetings and will post a write up here on hartwellvillage.com (this will be in addition to the official minutes, which the Parish Council will also post on the site). Any constructive feedback or burning questions from users will then be fed back to the Parish Council at the next meeting. My notes won't cover everything, just the things I find important, useful, or relevant! 

So, without further delay, here are my notes from the Parish Council meeting on 6th October 2009

Parish Surgery

This is the bit of the meeting where non-councillors can address the Parish Council. It was nice to see quite a few people in attendance (there were five of us), two of which were new to the village (I would like to think they found out about the meeting from this website, but have no evidence to back that up!).

Hartwell Church - On 20th October the Church has some volunteers coming to fix the boundary wall, and at some point there will be some people coming to look at the roof to quote for repairs.

Community Centre - After the threat of closure earlier in the year, it was great to hear that the new Community Centre Committee are working hard to improve the centre, getting potential new bookings, and planning future events. They are hoping to get funding for a part-time clean-up person to help keep the site clean and tidy.

Police & Neighbourhood Watch

Very occasionally, someone from the Police actually turns up to the meetings to give details of crime figures, updates on crime prevention etc. This was not one of these occasions, but the Chair had recently been to a Community Safety Panel (where the Police meet up with Parish Council's around the area) - there have been 20 crimes in Hartwell between April 2009 - August 2009, of which the largest type (25%) was theft and handling.

Accounts

Probably my least favourite part of the meeting (although I guess the most important) - the Council go through and approve all the payments due. These are for things like the Clerk's mobile bill, grass cutting, lighting repairs, dog poo bin emptying, etc. I won't bother listing them all!

There was a discussion about the council's public liability insurance. They currently have £5m, but have been recommended to have £10m. There was some discussion that £5m was probably enough, although personally (considering my business public liability is £5m, and I rarely leave the village for work!) £5m seems quite low.

Planning

There were notification of a few decisions - a few extensions approved etc. Planning permission for the 4 proposed houses off Forest Road (see the forum topic) was turned down.

There was a lot of discussion regarding the Interim Rural Housing Planning Policy, the likely redefinition of the official village bounds and the potential development site at the end of School Lane, which I wrote about last week.

Correspondence

The only item of note was relating to dog poo bins, something that has been discussed on the forum previously. I will do a separate news item about this later once I have finished the "Hartwell Village Dog Poo Bin Location Consultation Interactive App" on the site (yes I know it needs a snappier title!)

Group and Committee Reports

Website

I got my chance to update the Council on the changes to the website - some of them have already been given a tour, but it was good to go through it again.

I am pleased to report that the Parish Council have approved the use of this site as their primary online presence - view the Parish Council section here. This is actually very forwarding thinking of them - rather than having their own site, they have decided to be part of a larger community website, which I think will be a massive benefit to the community.

They have also agreed to contribute towards the running costs  - this is in part in return for having effectively their own website, but also in recognition of the benefits the site should bring to Hartwell.

[I should note that the Parish Council only have editorial rights on items that are clearly marked "offical item and is managed by Hartwell Parish Council", and not on any other part of the site or forum]

Pocket Park

The hay rake went really well and there are interpretation boards on their way. For some reason I have written down 5th December, but I can't remember what it relates to (the next meeting perhaps?).

Community Safety Group

This is the group which is particularly interested in speeding through the village, and is responsible for the new flashing signs and village entrance signs. Something that again has been well discussed on the forum.

There was quite a lot discussed, and to be honest I cannot remember all of it. The one thing that struck me though is that there seems to be a lack information on exactly when, in what numbers, and at what speed, people drive through the village. There was some talk about having a data capture device - these devices capture anonymous data (i.e. not number plates) on what speed people do through the village. To me this seems like a sensible option, so that you then have the hard facts to work out which times of day the police (and the community speed check team) will have the most impact.

Youth

There were 30 youth questionnaires completed - by 15 girls and 15 boys. Having a skate park was almost the unanimous favourite, but otherwise there was a mixture of preferences. Hopefully the parish council will publish this information on the website (I also seem to remember that it would appear in Hartbeat).

The Parish Council do have money to spend on youth provision, and there are some future events planned to start working with the kids to get them involved in spending it - there is a community bus (a luxury ex-tour band bus with laptops, not a school bus)  which is ideal for this, and it is due to come to Hartwell later in the year.

The Council are also working with some of the local Parish Council's who have been going through a similar process.

And that is about it really.... if you have any questions, then feel free to post them on the forum and I will try and answer them (Parish Councillors themselves cannot be involved in these discussions), otherwise I will put them to the council at the next meeting. You are welcome to also post any comments or suggestions, but please ensure any comments are constructive!

Phil (daylight_gambler)