Agenda for April 2023 meeting
Newton St Cyres Parish Council
Notice of Meeting of Parish Council
Dear Councillors
I hereby give notice that a Meeting of the above-named Parish Council will be held Council will be held in the Club Room, Parish Hall on Thursday 1 June 2023 at 7.00pm
All members of the Council are hereby summoned to attend for the purpose of considering and resolving upon the Business to be transacted at the meeting set out hereunder.
Dated this 26 May 2023
Signed Jane Hole
Clerk to the Parish Council parishclerk@newtonstcyres-pc.gov.uk 01392 851148
Public Participation
Public Question Time. Members of the public are invited to give their views and ask questions on issues on this agenda or to raise issues for future consideration by the Parish Council.
Formal Business
(Members of the public may not take part in the formal business of the Parish Council except under special circumstances)
01/06/23 Apologies - To receive apologies
02/06/23 Declaration of Interest
2.1 Register of Interests. Councillors to update as required
2.2 Personal Interests. Councillors must declare any personal interest in items on the agenda and their nature.
2.3 Prejudicial Interests. Councillors must declare any prejudicial interest in items on the agenda and their nature and they must leave the meeting for that agenda item.
03/06/23 Minutes of the last meeting held on Thursday 18 May 2023 (previously circulated)
To be agreed and signed as a true record
04/06/23 Mid Devon District Council
4.1 Planning Applications:
23/00431/FULL - Variation of Condition 2 of Planning Permission 21/01501/FULL - Demolition of existing school buildings, including adjacent detached classroom buildings and erection of 8 dwellings with garages - for a substitution of plot 5 design with detached garage at Former Primary School Site
4.2 Planning Decisions:
23/00045/FULL - Installation of 340 ground mounted solar panels (144.5kw) at (Home Farm), Newton St Cyres – grant permission
23/00022/HOUSE - Extension to porch, alterations to doors on South elevation, installation of flue and solar panels at Elmhurst, Church Lane, Newton St Cyres, EX5 5BN – grant permission
4.3 To note date of MDDC Housing Walkabout for Tytheing Close, Court Orchard, Shuttern Close and New Estate – 3 May 2023
4.4 District Councillor, Cllr G Barnell, to report on MDDC business relevant to the parish
05/06/23 Devon County Council
5.1 Outstanding Highways issues (see below)
5.2 New Highway issues
5.3 County Councillor, Cllr M Squires, to report on DCC business relevant to the parish, including any report from SCARF
06/06/23 Finance
6.1 Parish Council Receipts Current Account: Allotment rent: £80.00
6.2 To agree Parish Council Payments and note Receipts:
|
Expenditure – current account |
£ |
Receipts – current account |
£ |
|
CPRE – Annual membership (DD) |
36.00 |
Allotment rents |
400.00 |
|
ICO – Data Protection Registration (DD) |
35.00 |
Parish Hall – resurfacing contribution |
750.00 |
|
Ian Salter – bus shelter cleaning |
32.00 |
Raddon Hills admin payment |
200.00 |
|
Nick Gillon – LED beacon for car for RWS |
25.99 |
|
|
|
Reserve Account – car park resurfacing fund |
1,500.00 |
|
|
|
Rec Ground – grant plus rent £500.00 |
1,000.00 |
Resurfacing Account interest 31.3.23 |
4.88 |
|
Parish Hall – grant plus wifi £200.00 |
700.00 |
|
|
|
Parish Hall – hire of hall (£50 is NHP) |
89.00 |
|
|
|
BHIB – Insurance |
443.89 |
|
|
|
S Saunders grass cutting £150 churchyard/£80 green |
230.00 |
|
|
|
J Hole – Salary and expenses |
390.60 |
|
|
|
HMRC - PAYE |
49.80 |
|
|
6.3 To approve signatures for this month’s payments – online
6.4 Balances (after above transactions)
6.4.1 Parish Council Current Account balance: £11,091.00
6.4.2 Footpath Account: £268.02
6.4.3 Car Park resurfacing fund balance: £5,742.22
6.4.4 NHP: £0.00
6.5 Financial Statement and Budget Monitor (attached)
07/06/23 Matters raised by the Chair
7.1 To agree presentation of Coronation mementos to school children
08/06/23 Councillor’s Reports
8.1 Areas of Responsibility reports
8.1.1 Allotments – update on entrance works
8.1.2 Surgery - Report from March surgery. Next 8 April – Cllr J Enright to attend
8.1.3 Notes from A377 Action Group meeting – circulated separately
09/06/23 Clerk’s Report
9.1 None
10/06/23 Parish Council
10.1 Climate – Report from Climate Officer – see below
10.2 Neighbourhood Plan – update from Steering Group members
10.3 Road Warden Scheme – update
10.4 To consider correspondence re maintenance of permissive paths – see below
10.5 To consider “hustings” for upcoming elections
10.6 To note update on installation of mast on church – see below
11/06/23 Miscellaneous Correspondence
Various newsletters/correspondence circulated.
Consultation proposal for re-federation of Exe Valley Federation and Whimple School – details circulated
12/06/23 Minor Matters and Items for Future Agenda
Each Councillor is requested to use this opportunity to report minor matters of information not included elsewhere on the agenda and to raise items for future agendas. Councillors are respectfully reminded that this is not an opportunity for debate or decision making.
13/06/23 Date of next PC meeting: 6 July 2023 – Annual Meeting at 7pm in the Club Room
End of Formal Business - Public Participation
Agenda Item 6.5
Agenda Item 9.1
Report for Newton St Cyres Parish Council April 2023 – Sue Rowell Climate Officer
Newton Environment Group
- A small orchard in Court Orchard has now been planted with fruit trees and signage for the scheme has been provided by MDDC. NEW intend to plant some more wildflowers between the trees to further enhance the plot and bring in pollinators.
- Further work preparing beds and planting is continuing at the Community Allotment and a greenhouse has been acquired. All welcome to get involved.
- Discussions are ongoing as to the formal set up of the group with a constitution.
- Seed obtained from the RHS Big seed sow has been donated to the school to encourage children to get involved with growing
River Creedy Catchment project
A very successful public meeting was held at the Boniface Centre in March with over 70 people attending. Presentations were given by the Project Leader, James Maben, Westcountry Rivers Trust and a crayfish research expert. A rather distressing map showed how the population has declined from when surveys started in 2003, where they were present from the headwaters in Tedburn St Mary down to Cowley. Twenty years later a fragment of the population remains from Fordton to NSC. So they are in imminent danger of becoming extinct locally, having lost 90% of the population. This is due to competition from the invasive non-native red clawed crayfish and pollution.
A project plan has been created and a captive breeding programme is being planned using expertise from Bristol Zoo and facilities at Wildwood Escot. Ark sites for the safe release of individuals is also being sought. Wider work on pollution in the Catchment will depend on funding and a Heritage Lottery Bid is being prepared. Some 30 people signed up to be informed or become volunteers going forward.
Strategic Water Resources Planning
I attended a meeting by the Westcountry Water Resources Group. This is one of five regional bodies across England and Wales tasked by the government with preparing plans for Water supplies over the next 25 years. This group comprises water companies (Southwest water, Bristol water and Wessex water) and Environment Agency as its core members. Their draft report for the South west makes for very sobering reading. To summarise: climate change is likely to have a significant impact and taken together with increased demand they forecast a water deficit, if no actions are taken, of approx. 180 Mega Litres per day by 2050. This could lead to major environmental issues of very low flows in some rivers including the River Creedy (and this is on top of the pollution issues already being faced) and major challenges in maintaining public water supplies for domestic and commercial users including farmers.
Their plan proposes a number of actions to take forward of varying costs and complexity to reduce demand and increase supply. The final report is due in November 2023. (NB the draft report prepared for the South East by Thames Water has been found inadequate by the Environment Agency – at the time of writing an assessment of Westcountry plan is not yet available)
Water companies are now required to prepare plans for a 1 in 500 year drought by 2039. The current state of our reservoirs after the drought last year and a very dry February this year show that despite what we might suppose, even the west could be short of water. For further details see www.WCWRG.org.
Friends of the Churchyard
A local Moth expert has agreed to undertake some moth trapping in the Churchyard and Arboretum on several occasions through the year. This will greatly add to our lists of species that are found and may also suggest additional management measures to assist their lifecycles. This initiative is welcomed by the church and Arboretum committee.
Agenda Item 9.4
Email to land owner
Following the PC meeting on Thursday, Councillors are keen to work with you to keep permissive paths open as these are recognised as being valuable to the parish. If the Parish Council were able to provide funds for paths maintenance we would need to have a agreement set up detailing the maintenance that would be undertaken for each path. Would you like the PC to draft an agreement for consideration and discussion?
Email from land owner
For clarification, we are talking about 2 potentially separate matters here.
(1): Payment for permission to access our land.
(2). Maintenance of the paths.
These could be separate:
We get a payment from the PC for (1) only, (and we would need to decide which paths we would allow public access to), and the PC carry out (or get carried out) the maintenance.
Or we might agree to do (2) as well as (1) and we would need to consider this carefully considering our labour and machinery availability, but would obviously cost the PC more.
Agenda Item 9.6 – update on phone mast on church tower
I can confirm that yes the delay at Newton St Cyres is mainly down to BT Openreach taking their sweet time to run the necessary fibre from their nearest switch to the church. There could be several reasons this delay such as tricky road closures or intermediate landlords objecting, but as we are not party to that side of the process we can only guess. It could of course just be par for the course with BT Openreach!
Regarding a potential "go live" date, unfortunately I couldn't say. Alongside the delay we are experiencing with BT there is also a minor software issue being experienced by Vodafone meaning their equipment is not working exactly as intended. Again, and I hate to seem like I'm passing the buck here, this is an internal issue within Vodafone's kit and not something NET have any input on, so we just have to wait and see.
Rest-assured we are pushing both companies for progression, not least because having the sites on air is where we derive our revenue!
Once we hear any news we will let you know immediately, fingers-crossed it will be sooner rather than later.
Church of England Project Co-ordinator
Agenda Item 10.1 - Outstanding Highways issues
- Speed restrictions in Station Road – SCARF re test requested – with Cllr M Squires/NHO to action
- Request for a School sign in Station Road and possible zig-zag lines outside the school. With NHM to consider a sign and or a SCARF retest
- New grit bin for Kingfisher Close – grant requested. Chased October 2022. Location agreed Dec 2022
- Scarf update
- Vehicle Activated Signs for A377 (February 2023)
Reply from DCC Highways “This would have to be done in conjunction of the SCARF process proving that there is an issue at the location requiring some intervention.
Having just checked the system a speed survey was carried out last year near to Pump street shows that speeds are within tolerance so the sites would not be considered”
- Bank wall on River bridge over Creedy Station Road (February 2023)
- Blocked drains at Rewe Cross (February 2023)
- MDDC - Broken light in Parish Hall Car Park (February 2023)