Annual Parish Meeting Minutes 24th April 2019

Brampford Speke Parish Council Minutes of Annual Parish Meeting, Wednesday 24th April 2019

Present: 57 members of the parish including Cllr S Luxton (Chair), Cllr E Hollingsworth, Cllr M Merrett, Cllr A Birmingham (Vice-Chair), Cllr E Johns and Cllr R Tillett

Apologies were received from Cllr J Gibson and Cllr S Grundy (EDDC)

In attendance: Mrs C Oliphant (Clerk), Sarah Holmes (Mid Devon Mobility) & Cllrs S Randall-Johnson & R Bloxham (DCC)

Papers available at the meeting were Community Grant Application forms and Councillor Nomination Forms.

Welcome by the Chair of the Parish Council Cllr S Luxton who gave an explanation about the purpose of the Annual Parish Meeting. It was not a meeting of the Parish Council. It's formal purpose was a meeting of the registered electors of the parish, convened and chaired by the Parish Council, at which electors discussed parish affairs and, if they wish, pass resolutions.

Annual report from The Chair of the Parish Council
Cllr Luxton explained that it had been a busy year for the Parish Council and that it faced the same recurring problems in the village including:-
• Dog waste and dog behaviour
• Unsocial behaviour by the river
• Potholes

He explained that the Parish Council seemed to be in an uphill battle with DCC Highways about road repairs and the flooding issue at the top of Burridge Hill and that the they would have to take on more repairs themselves in the future.

He informed the meeting that the Parish Council had arranged the cutting of verges and had gritted the village during the winter months. The footpaths had some works completed including the steps on the bridge, a new kissing gate behind Stooks Close and soon a new handrail on Station Hill. The grass around the WW1 trees had been cut to enable them to flourish.

He explained that the project for the replacement of the tree in Chapel Road was being lead by Gregg Dawe and his neighbours.

He informed the meeting that the first Parish Council Newsletter had been produced and distributed to Villagers in 2018 and he thanked Cllr Gibson for arranging it.

He stated that he hoped that villagers appreciated the amount of work and effort that the members of the Parish Council had completed for the village.

Cllr Randall-Johnson expressed thanks on behalf of villagers to the Chair for his work on the Council.

Report form Sarah Holmes (Mid Devon Mobility)
Sarah Holmes gave an overview of the services that Mid Devon Mobility offered and stated that they provided transport for people who were unable to move around. She described the services that they provided. She confirmed that lots of elderly and disabled people found public transport very difficult. Mid Devon Mobility had volunteers who helped people to ensure they were ready and able to leave their home on a trip. Mid Devon Mobility had car users who were able to take people to hospital appointments.

Report from Cllrs S Randall-Johnson and R Bloxham (DCC)
Cllr Bloxham explained that he had provided a report for Villagers on the area’s in which they had been involved in. He explained that they serviced over 17 parishes and the main issues were highways, drains and speeding but the big issues were adult social care and children’s services.

In response to a question about introducing tolls on roads, Cllr S Randall Johnson explained that in context we have the equivalent number of roads in Devon that they have in Belgium. She felt that people were being taxed enough with fuel tax and road tax. She explained that there were two divisions for roads infrastructure; Highways England who took care of the main road networks and the A roads, while Devon County Council (DCC) Highways had very little to do with the national road network. She stated that the majority of roads were broken down and split between Highways England and DCC Highways. She stated that the challenge was to try to encourage the Highways Department not to think about the statistics that 80% of drivers used 20% of the roads and that a majority of drivers saw that local roads weren’t being maintained. She encouraged people to report any faults on the roads to the DCC Highways portal and that she was actively trying to get community involvement to get people to report problems.

In response to a question that if road building and infrastructure was dependent on housing development then why had the road to Crediton not been improved, Cllr R Bloxham replied that the Government had dictated that EDDC had to build 17000 new homes and the infrastructure that this entailed.

There was then a general discussion about Highways and the road infrastructure.

Cllr R Bloxham then gave an update on the monies that had been spent in local parishes, via the Locality Fund and that £40k had been spent in 2018/2019 including the new rails outside the village hall.

Report from Penny Wiles – Brampford Speke Village Hall Trust
Penny Wiles explained that Brampford Speke Village Hall Trust was a registered charity in 2010. They currently had 9 trustees with a mixture of people including appointees from local organisations and that the Trust valued the links with the Parish Council. She stated that the building is what it is and that while it had not reached a critical point yet, she confirmed that the Parish Council had agreed to obtain a survey for the floor and roof. She explained that the Trust was grateful to DCC councillors for securing the funding to have the railings installed. She gave a thank you to Tim Holdway who provided free maintenance of the grounds. She explained that the Trust was happy to have more people join and encouraged villagers to use the hall for bookings.

Parish Affairs
The meeting was then opened to the public to raise any issues that they had or wanted to bring to the attention of the Parish Council.

Village Pub
The Chair provided some background context and recent statistics on pubs across the UK.

Dammo Cross addressed the meeting and also stated that 1000 local pubs had closed in 2018 but the number was slowing.

He explained that since the pub had been put on the market for sale, there were lots of individual conversations happening around the village as people were concerned about the future of the pub. Recently, a small number of residents had decided to conduct a survey to find out what villagers thought should happen to the pub.

The focus of the survey was to discover: -
• How important it is for villagers to have a pub in the village
• In principle, what appetite villagers had to commit time or financial support to running the pub as a community venture
• What features of a local pub would be valued if it were to operate as a community run pub

He explained that it was an ongoing survey so more results may come in but to date they had received 60 responses which represented a 30% response rate. Initial results showed that 65% of respondents said it was very important to have a pub in the village and that 63.6% wanted to be involved with contributing either time or financial investment. He stated they were looking to set up a working group of villagers to decide a way forward.

The responses received indicated that the top 5 ideas for the pub included:

• Good value food and drink
• A cafe
• Games room
• Family friendly environment
• Events- pub quizzes etc

He also discussed the opportunity to explore the process of nominating the pub as a community asset of value via East Devon Council's process

Mary Greener then addressed the meeting. She assumed that people were keenly interested in the future of the pub evidenced by the numbers who had turned up to the meeting (57 in total). To take any action forward, she explained that it was very clear that 2 or 3 people couldn’t do this on their own and that there were registration forms available at the meeting for people to sign up to a proposed working group, and that at this stage it was just showing an interest and not making a commitment . She also stated that the working group would explore different operating and funding scenarios and bring them back to the village. She asked for people with skills and talents to sign up to the working group and that it would look at all the models, including specifically a pub plus model.

Maggy Clark then addressed the meeting explaining that she was a representative from the Stoke Canon Community Pub. She explained that the Stoke Cannon Inn was sold 12 years ago, with the upstairs flat being rented out but the downstairs was left empty. The community took over the running of the pub 8 years ago and rented it out for £1k per month. They had registered the pub as a community asset of value which meant that they had first refusal on the purchase. She explained that it was not a short process and there were many meetings in deciding on how to finance the project.

There was then a general discussion with members of the community asking questions of the Stoke Cannon Community Pub representatives on how many volunteers were on the rota and what hours the volunteers worked, how the financing model had worked and if the project was financially viable. They explained that the Community Pub had run very successfully for the past 8 years and had turned a small profit which was ploughed back into the pub and that they currently had about 25 volunteers including gardeners, cleaners as well as bar staff. The kitchen and food offering were franchised out, this enabled the pub to offer a good value, local village type range of food.

There was an open discussion and questions and comments were raised by villagers around: -
• The current asking price and valuation of the pub, particularly in light of the recent reduction in opening hours and food offering
• The relative valuation of the Lazy Toad compared with other local pubs recently sold and still available for sale on the market
• Concerns about the lack of financial information provided by the owners in the agent's sales particulars available to prospective buyers

Addressing concerns that the Lazy Toad could be sold and turned into a private dwelling, Cllr R Bloxham explained that a change of use would not be possible as since the introduction of the 2018 parish plan (EDDC), it would not be possible to change the pub to a residential dwelling. The Chair indicated that he would also not support a change of use application.

Final updates

The Chairman explained that there were S106 funds available and that the Parish Council welcomed ideas from villagers on what this money could be spent on.

He explained the success of the 2018 Community Grant Fund and reminded parishioners that the 2019 scheme was now open for applications and that there was currently £2600 available to fund local groups and organisations.

Cllr Luxton explained that there were currently 2 vacancies on the Parish Council and encouraged people to apply and to speak to Councillors informally after the meeting to see what was involved.

A villager highlighted the need for larger ‘keep dogs on leads’ signs around the village.

A villager highlighted that the BT Telephone box needed painting.

Cllr Hollingsworth informed the group that she had contacted EDDC about the pile of rubbish at the top of Station Hill.

The Vice Chair highlighted the use of the village email distribution list and encouraged villagers to sign up for important updates, including road closures.

The Chair then thanked Cllr S Grundy (EDDC) and Cllrs S Randall-Johnson and R Bloxham (DCC) for their support. He thanked Cllr M Merrett and J Gibson for who had stepped down from the Council for the next term for all the work they had put into the Council. He thanked the Clerk who was leaving her role at the end of May. He also expressed thanks to all Councillors for their contributions throughout the year.

The meeting was closed at 8.50pm and many people stayed for informal discussions and refreshments.