February 2021

Brampford Speke Parish Council

Happy New Year! Following the round-up of last year's news in the Christmas edition of Speke Up, we are continuing to meet (virtually) every other month at present (January, March, May and so on) and will keep this under review as the year unfolds.

We've been delighted by the reponse to our suggestion of a new community email list; we have almost a hundred names so far representing about half the adult poulation. The new list will be used to send out important information, including alerts from Neighbourhood Watch. If you want to be included please email either richard.tillett.bspc@gmail.com or nichola.vickers.bspc@gmail.com. If you have already done so, you should have started receiving messages. We also publish information on our parish council website https://www.middevonparish.co.uk/brampfordspeke/.

The Council has set its budget for 2021-22 without needing to increase the precept (this is the village component of Council Tax and currently amounts to £47.42 annually for a Band D property). We aim to keep sufficient reserves to meet unexpected costs, without keeping large amounts unnecessarily.

Community Grant Fund: we set this up a few years ago to support community projects and have made various grants since then. At our January meeting we agreed to make a grant of £100 to Mid-Devon Mobility to support their work in facilitating access to people in our village. If you (or your organisation) want to apply for a grant, please contact the Parish Clerk at clerkbspc@gmail.com

Various people work behind the scenes to keep things going in the community. We're very grateful to Mark Short and Stuart Luxton for providing gritting services to supplement the very limited service from the county council, and to Wynn Stait for his tireless work on our network of footpaths.

Last autumn we planted several hundred daffodil bulbs in the grass verge by the bus shelter, opposite Stooks Close. At the time of writing (mid-January) they're just beginning to poke through the grass. We hope they will cheer us all up while we wait for winter (and the pandemic) to pass.

Our next parish council meeting will be on Wednesday 3rd March at 7.30 via video.
If you want to attend the meeting please contact the Parish Clerk, Carole Oliphant by email at clerkbspc@gmail.com

If you have any issue that you want to raise with the PC, please feel free to contact any of the councillors, or the clerk (names and contact details in Speke Up or on the website).