Minutes 26th April 2017 Annual Parish Meeting
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Brampford Speke Parish Council
Minutes of Annual Parish Meeting, Wednesday 26th April 2017
Present: 24 members of the parish including Cllr A. Wiles (Chair), Cllr S Luxton (Vice-Chair), Cllr E Hollingsworth, Cllr M Merrett, Cllr A Birmingham and Cllr R Tillett
Apologies were received from Cllr G Carden Cllr S Grundy (EDDC)
In attendance: Mrs C Oliphant (Clerk)
Reports made by:
Mr D. Bamford, Brampford Speke Village Hall Trust
Richard May, St Peters Church
Pam Newby & Bea Fenn, Footpath Wardens
Cllr A. Wiles, Chair of the Parish Council, Annual Report
Carole Oliphant, Community Grant Fund
Papers available at the meeting were copies of the 2016 APM minutes and the accounts from the Parish Council for 2016/17
Welcome by the Chair of the Parish Council Cllr A. Wiles who gave an explanation about the purpose of the Annual Parish Meeting. It is not a meeting of the Parish Council. Its formal purpose is a meeting of the registered electors of the parish, convened and chaired by the Parish Council, at which electors discuss parish affairs and, if they wish, pass resolutions.
The practice in Brampford Speke has been for the Parish Council – and some other village organisations – to report briefly on matters which they think are of most interest to villagers, and then open the meeting up to general discussion. People are of course free to raise other matters that are of concern to them.
Minutes of the Annual Parish Meeting held in April 2015 had been previously agreed by the Parish Council in May 2016. No comments were received from the floor.
Report from the Brampford Speke Village Hall Trust (BSVHT ). Presented by Mr D. Bamford, Chair.
The Trust’s AGM is on Thursday 15th June 2017 and people are invited to attend.
Thanks were given to Penny Wiles, Sue Satchell, Mary Greener, Mac Merrett, Richard Tillett, Hannah Freeland, Jon Matchell and Pat Brazil for their work on the BSVHT committee. Thanks were also given to Molly Luxton for managing the hall bookings, Mrs Downey for cleaning and Brampford House for grass-cutting.
Two major activities had occupied the Committee in the past 12 months were the storage extension and the ramp.
Mr Bamford explained that after some delays and issues the storage extension was now going ahead and the ramp was planned for July 2017.
Fund raising efforts to enable to two projects to go ahead were led by Penny Wiles, assisted by Mary Greener and Sue Satchell. Penny had secured monies from Costal recycling, Awards for all, The Fogle Foundation and the Bernard Sunley Charity. Sue had continued with Villages in Action and proceeds donated to the Village Hall Funds.
There was an appeal for new members to join the Committee and in particular representatives from the School and the Toddlers groups.
Richard May, St Peters Church
The Church had concentrated on a variety of repairs over the past year which included:
Electric report and survey
Resurfacing the drive
Trenching works
Vestry tank and heating
Rain water down pipes
Richard explained that the church was over 800 years old and needed the repairs. He thanked June Nicks for putting in the work to get quotes and appoint contractors.
The Church’s finances had been reduced due to the amount of work undertaken but there had been many fundraising efforts which included:
Christmas tree festival
Dog show
Harvest event
The Baptists had joined in on a joint Easter Service which had gone extremely well.
The APCM was 27th April 2017 and all were welcome. Harold Stebbins as standing down as church warden and the church was actively looking for a replacement.
Bea Fenn and Pam Newby, Footpath Wardens
Cllr A Wiles read out the Footpath report from Bea and Fenn. In summary:
During 2016/2017 work had been done to the following footpaths:
10 – Sleepers installed on the muddy section
12 – Fallen tree removed
The following footpaths have plans for improvement:
8B – Plans to raise the stile with breeze blocks
Lane from waterworks to Furze Park – Hardcore to be laid down to fill in potholes
10 – Railing on the bridge is loose and will be re-attached
After complaints about a new surface on Footpath 2, Devon County Council inspected and deemed the surface useable and not a problem.
A parishioner asked the PC if the footpath at the stile on Gypsy Lane/Red Rock could be cut. Cllr A Wiles offered to complete the works.
Community Grant Fund, Carole Oliphant (Parish Clerk).
The Clerk explained that the Parish Council’s financial reserves were healthy and the Council had decided to use some of these monies to give grants to organisations which benefitted people within the parish.
The total amount available in the financial year for 2017/2018 was £2000 and if this proved successful the grant fund could be topped up my increasing the precept in future years.
Annual report from The Chair of the Parish Council
Cllr A. Wiles read out his report, which was a look-back on 2016/17:
April 2017 APM
A look-back on the last year
2016/17 was a mixed year - with some definite achievements, some less tangible achievements, and also some issues not progressed as we would have liked.
Before going into specifics, two general observations:
- The first is that for all but small projects the Council is an influencer, not the decision-maker.
- The second is that, as discussed at last year’s meeting, the Parish Council, in the swim of almost all Parish Councils, is getting slowly drawn in to direct service delivery, either on its own or in combination with individual residents.
What were our achievements for last year?
- The big one relating to the village’s infrastructure – one which we definitely don’t own but over which we believe we had some influence - has to be the arrival of superfast broadband, or at least a-lot-faster-broadband, for most of us. It is impossible to be sure what influence we had on BT’s decision to install fibre-optic to our village, but there is at least some evidence that our, particularly Mac Merrett’s, polite engagement with the key player, ‘Connecting Devon and Somerset’, paid dividends with respect to bringing forward the installation by several years.
- Next, we successfully recast the arrangement for DIY gritting of Burridge Hill. Version 1 was a failure because the tow-behind gritter that we bought simply wasn’t up to the job. Thanks to Richard Tillett we managed to get all our money back from the supplier, and we now have Version 2 in place – thanks to Stuart Luxton, and with Philip Hill on standby too.
- Generally we have an improved relationship with Devon County Highways. Not sure whether this is going to result in a better service than when we were being hostile – one test might be whether Burridge Hill gets more work done on it during 2017/18 than merely the occasional bodge-filling of potholes.
- Turning to footpaths, the major specific achievement was the installation of a boardwalk on the muddiest section of Footpath 18 – that’s the one from Stooks Close to Upton Pyne.
- The final achievement on my list, although strictly it crept into this year, was the installation of new protection for the tree in Chapel Road. My fellow councillors are pretty clear that if this arrangement doesn’t work, we should wash our hands of it. So lets hope it survives.
So, that’s achievements. Now to topics which for good, or sometimes not-so-good, reasons are either “ongoing” or have not been progressed as we would have hoped:
- We are, I think, slowly getting drawn into the direct delivery of a verge maintenance service. Our neighbours in Upton Pyne have already started to employ a contractor to carry out some of this work. It would be great if we could discuss options with a small group of villagers – do please offer to join the discussion.
- Moving on, we have not made progress on addressing villagers’ concerns about parking congestion at school drop-off and pick-up time. This is a difficult one partly because there is not a consensus either on how serious the problem is or on what to do about it
- Nor are we forward on mitigating excessive traffic speeds through the village. We have made an in-principle decision to take what is arguably the first step, namely undertaking a Community Speed Watch exercise to establish some more facts about speeds - what & when & where & possibly by whom. Hopefully this will happen during 2017. One short-term possibility is that Devon Highways will agree to the installation of small ‘repeater’ signs, to remind people of the 20 mph speed limit
- One recurrent issue for which we know that there is no solution is dogs – the downsides of them, that is, namely dangerous dogs, roaming dogs, poo-ing dogs. By staying ‘on the case’ of these downsides we probably have a marginal effect on the problems that can occur, but that is the best that we can deliver.
- Newly-arrived in the Council’s in-tray, and definitely ongoing as an issue for us, is the proposed Greater Exeter Strategic Plan, a slightly scary title for an initiative of 4 local councils - Exeter, East Devon, Mid Devon & Teignbridge. The plan is described as providing “the overall spatial strategy and level of housing and employment land to be provided up to 2040”. We have responded to the consultation by saying that the Parish Council has previously signalled our willingness to accept a small amount of development – on an exception-site basis, with a very strong preference for brownfield, protective of the rural setting of our parish/village, and with a focus on affordable housing for local people, and that we would want the G.E.S.P to support that position.
I’ll now move on to a few words about the Council’s finances:
- our core annual income from you has remained steady at about £6500 and continues to prove sufficient to cover our routine outgoings; and
- our reserves remain healthy, at about £10,000.
- some Parish Councils have substantially increased their precept income, to accommodate actual and expected expenditure on new tasks such as gritting and verge maintenance. We may be able to avoid such increases for at least the next few years.
Heading towards the end of my report, can I pass on my thanks to
- to our Clerk, Carole, on a very successful first year
- to my fellow councillors
- to our new Footpath Wardens, Pam & Bea
- and to everyone else who I should have mentioned!
Finally, this will be my last report to an Annual Parish Meeting, because having done 6 years as Chair of the Parish Council I am about to stand down. Stuart Luxton is the hot tip to be the new Chair – enjoy it, Stuart!
That’s it.
Questions or comments on my report please, or other comments or suggestions about where the PC should, or should not, focus its resources & energies.
Before closing the meeting Cllr A.Wiles asked if there any other ‘parish affairs’ matters that people wished to raise. None were raised.
Thanks to outgoing Chair
Cllr R Tillett gave a vote of thanks to Cllr A Wiles for standing as Chair for the Parish Council for the past six years. He explained that Cllr Wiles had done a fantastic job and that the Council was very grateful for his continued support. Cllr wiles was then presented with a few leaving gifts.
The meeting was closed at 8.45 and many people stayed for informal discussions and refreshments