Wiveton Parish Council.
Chairman’s Report. 24. 05. 2006.
The Parish Council has met on 9 occasions throughout the past year, we do not meet in August or December and we had to cancel our meeting in March because our clerk was in hospital. My report last year which poor John had to read was 8 pages long this year you’ll be glad to hear its much shorter.
Cley Hill.
Perennial concerns were raised regarding pedestrian safety at both the bottom and top of Cley Hill. The path by Elizabeth Foster’s wall on the coast road was thought to be very narrow thus forcing people out into traffic. When Steve and I met there with the highways inspector [Mr Orde] we unanimously concluded that it was only narrow because vegetation had been allowed to creep out across the path. Mr. Orde said this would be taken care of clearing the tarmac back to the wall. At the top of the hill there were further concerns about pedestrians crossing the road, there does seem to be an implicit assumption these days that everyone is either very short sighted, blind, or stupid. However, while Mr Orde did not think a dedicated crossing was either feasible or likely, he did say that we ought to have more signs to indicate to motorists that pedestrians were crossing and two further signs to indicate the Hall Lane and Leatherpool Lane turnings. So yet more signs, these are all now in place, although I don’t think the path has been cleared yet, I guess Trish another letter may be required to remind them of this.
Traffic Calming.
As you can see from last years minutes we have not made much
progress with this, it has been discussed at the last two meetings and it was
decided to put Derek Baxter
[Our County Councillor] on to it. He has made some progress
as the following note that I received from him last week suggests.
Godfrey,
Attached is reply finally received
from Paul Sellick. Incidentally, I will be leaving for France shortly - back on
23rd June.
Derek Baxter.
-----Original Message-----
From: Sellick, Paul
Sent: 10 May 2006 10:13 AM
To: Baxter, Derek
Subject: RE: Village signs, Wiveton
Dear Mr Baxter
The file has now come back from
archive, sorry for not responding sooner.
Looking through the file, as I
mentioned in the previous email, the village ship emblem provided by Wiveton
could not be used on the road sign (our sign manufacturer said it was too
detailed an item to reproduce).
This would have left the only
change to the sign the message underneath the Wiveton name reading 'please
drive carefully', which is one of the prescribed messages we can use.
At the time of originally looking
at this - we were using a capital budget for a speed limit (which as you are
aware, the parish did not want due to proliferation of signs). This budget has
now closed.
If the parish are still supportive
of new signs i.e. Wiveton -with the message 'please dive carefully' - and no
ship logo, then I will seek an alternative source of funding for this.
I hope this helps clarify the
situation and I apologise at the lack of closure of this scheme.
I have to say I dislike the present village gateway signs
more and more as time goes by. We still have one of the original village signs
in Hall Lane, its is simple, black and white, easy to read and quite nice to
look at, perhaps we should be less ambitious and get them to make something
like that with the extra lettering on it.
Glaven Re-Alignment.
Work began last summer to re-aligned the course of the
Glaven, this second ‘New –Cut’, set approx two hundred metres back from
the first has been dug for the same reason. The original New- Cut was dug in the early years of the last
century when the original channel through to Salthouse disappeared under the
landward retreating shingle bank, since then the bank has continued its
landward progress until it has became necessary to do it all again.
As your chairman I was involved, in the initial consultation
for this work. The plans the Environment Agency first brought to us were very
basic and unimaginative, showing what to all intents and purposes was a fenland
drain with straight stretches of channel and sharp angular bends. However, unlike so many I have
experienced this was a genuine consultation, and when we pointed out how
inappropriate such a structure would be in a natural landscape they
listened. As a consequently they
have created a channel of natural curves and varying width and have done it so
well that when it becomes naturalised with vegetation it will actually enhance
the landscape. The pictures on the
board show this how it stands at present a little stark but I think you can see
how it will look in quite a short time. .
This channel is part of a bigger scheme to deal with
flooding at Salthouse. Shortly after the 53 Floods the Environment Agency began
[ in spite of much local protest] to bulldoze the single bank, and went on to
called it a sea defence, which of course it no longer was. As a natural shingle ridge it had
offered some protection to the land behind but once they began shoving it
around it lost that function and breached with every storm surge that came
along. Now after fifty years and
hundreds of thousands of pounds, having taken scientific advice, -advice that
told them exactly what we had - they have decided to stop doing that.
The hope is that what is left of the ridge will re-form a
natural structure that will offer more defence and it is expected, maybe hoped
would be better that this will over-top rather than breach, in conjunction with
this they are building new bigger outlet sluices in the west bank of Cley marsh
to evacuate this extra over-topping water. That work is coming to completion
now. I suspect this new system will work fine if nature gives the shingle bank
time adopt a more robust form, however, I believe that one major storm surge in
the near future will defeat this idea, probably permanently.
2005 Environment Award.
Wiveton Parish Council won the 2005 Environment Award which all of you will know because the prize of £250.00 was spent on our village street party, and from the responses we received this would seem to have been much enjoyed by everyone it was certainly very well attended which was very gratifying for us and the Parish Room Committee who worked hard to get everything ready. We have been asked if we might make it an annual event but think that to do it every year might be a bit too much. Therefore, we have decided to try and stage one every other year with a smaller fund raising event in between to raise the necessary money.
Web Site.
As you will know there is a requirement these days for
Parish councils to be ever more transparent, Richard Kelham and the Clerk to
Blakeney Parish Council have a lots to say each month on the Glaven Magazine,
trying to emulate them has taxed me more than a little, for the simple reason
that not enough happens here for me to write something every month. However, as
I said in this month’s magazine, that should not mean that the record of what
happens through the parish council year should not be freely available to
everyone, toward that end we have put together a web site, this contains all
Parish Council business anything and everything Parishioners could want to know
about it is there.
It is my
hope that as IT gradually evolves to become the main point of contact for these
types of things the site will function interactively, allowing the council and
villagers to post forthcoming events to a wide audience, to get that audience
we have to make it an interesting site, one that people will want to visit and
this we are trying to do. For the present I hope it can act as a village notice
board, so for example, people who are proposing to let off fireworks to
celebrate something other than Guy Fawkes, which seems now to be happening on a
regular basis, can post it on this notice board [hopefully well in advance] so
others are forewarned and can take whatever measures are necessary to protect
their animals.
Email Contacts
The Parish Council hoped that a directory of email addresses could be compiled of everyone in the village who had this facility available to them, which will enable them to receive either reports for interest, agendas and minutes of meetings and notification of forthcoming village events.
Quality
Parish Council Status.
Would seem to follow on from the last item. Your council has discussed whether we should become
accredited as a QPC; this is the situation as we see it. The QPC scheme began in 2003; so far
out of the 10.000 parish and village councils in England and Wales, just 250
have become accredited with QPC status. This would seem to indicate that either
Parish Council’s ‘being rural’ see this as unnecessary government intervention,
or probably more likely that the accreditation process is so overburdening
bureaucratic that it takes a long time to actually qualify.
Tests have been devised to measure a council’s suitability. A parish council must pass each test to
be awarded Quality status.
The Tests cover the following:
1. Electoral Mandate Ö
2. Qualifications of the ClerkÖ
3. Council MeetingsÖ
4. CommunicationÖ
5. Annual ReportsÖ
6. AccountsÖ
7. Ethical Framework?
I guess the last one is ambiguous enough
to create months of investigation.
With the web site up and running we now tick all these boxes, although
I may be making a big assumption about the ethical framework. Being elected we
have an electoral mandate but QPC status only runs for four years, [the period
of an elected council] we have been in office for two years now so if it takes
us another 2 or more to become accredited we could well not complete our
accreditation before our term of office runs out. We have decided therefore, to wait and do all we can to
force an expensive election in two years time and decide what we do after that.
1.1
The Rural White Paper, ‘Our Countryside: The Future. A Fair Deal For Rural
England’,
published
in November 2000, set out a number of measures to give local people the
opportunity
to become more involved in the development of their communities. The
Government
believes that parish and town councils, as the tier of government that is
closest
to local communities, have a central role to play in improving local quality of
life.
1.2
Parish and town councils are the democratic bodies with the closest direct
links to their communities and as such are ideally placed to contribute to the
long-term vision and thepriorities contained in the community strategies which
principal local authorities are responsible for preparing.
1
The Government expects principal local authorities and parish and town councils
to work together to provide an effective local government for local people.
1.3
The White Paper proposed a number of initiatives designed to enhance the role
of parish and town councils; to develop a framework for partnership working;
and to equip parish and town councils to take on a stronger role for the
benefit of the local community.
2
A central proposal was the introduction of the new concept of a Quality Parish
Council.
1.4
Quality status will equip parish councils to take on a stronger role in their
communities and should be achievable by any parish council, regardless of its
size, location or current activities. It is part of the Government’s drive to
modernise local government and ensure that all local authorities are more in
touch with the people whom they serve.
1.5
Through this scheme the Government wants to encourage all parish councils to
reach the standards of the best and, in doing so, to demonstrate their status
as the local
representatives
of their communities. This should help them to work more closely with partners
in the delivery of local services.
1.6
Achieving quality parish status demonstrates that a council has met certain
minimum standards expected from an effective, representative and active parish
council. The scheme is voluntary and is open to all parish councils in England
and it is hoped that a large proportion of parish councils will apply for
accreditation.
What
is a Quality Parish Council?
2.1
A Quality Parish Council:
•
is representative of, and actively engages, all parts of its community,
providing vision, identity and a sense of belonging;
•
is effectively and properly managed;
•
articulates the needs and wishes of its community;
•
upholds high standards of conduct;
•
is committed to work in partnership with principal local authorities and other
public
service
agencies;
•
in proportion to its size and skills, delivers local services on behalf of
principal local
authorities
when this represents the best deal for the local community;
•
works closely with voluntary groups in its community;
•
provides leadership to the community through its work on parish plans; and
•
working with its partners, acts as an information point for local services.
2.2
A Quality Parish Council will provide leadership in promoting an inclusive
community through, regular village parties. for example, supporting community transport schemes
and childcare provision and helping to develop youth activities and services
for the elderly.
2.3
A Quality Parish Council will work with others, including the voluntary and
community sector, to undertake services funded from its own resources to look
after the parish environment and provide public facilities such as playgrounds.
Quality Parish Councils, with the agreement of their principal local
authorities, may take on the delivery of some services on their behalf, where
this gives the local community the best deal.
2.4
Many parishes have or are considering developing Parish or Town Plans. A
Quality Parish Council will wish to develop a Parish Plan in partnership with
its local community. These plans, the preparation of which can be grant aided
by the Countryside Agency, are designed to help rural communities have a
greater say in their own affairs. They articulate the vision which local people
have for the future of their village or town and can cover anything that is
relevant to the people who live and work there, from social housing to places
for children to play. They include an action plan with details of how to
realise the objectives within the plan and are designed to address the needs of
the entire community, including local businesses. Everyone in the community
will have had an opportunity to contribute to the plan.
2.5
Ideally, Parish Plans should inform and feed into the Community Strategies
developed by Local Strategic Partnerships as well as into the policies of the
local planning authority’s local development plan.
2.6 Clearly, Quality Parish Councils
will be in a better position than other parish councils to help realise the
ambitions and goals contained within their parish and town plans. They will be
in a better position to represent the views of local people and to ensure that
principal local authorities and other service providers listen to and respond
to the needs of local people. They may also be in a better position to take
action and decisions more directly, including the delivery of some local
services.
2.7
Finally, through being wired up through Information and Communications
Technology (ICT), we would expect that many Quality Parish Councils will become
the local access point for information about parish council and principal local
authority services and further advice on these services.
Action Taken: The Council has been in contact with the appropriate department at County Hall. The responded with the following:
Minimal emergency barriers were erected by the Bridge
Maintenance Department at County Hall the contact is Patrick Donah and we have
been informed that the bridge is an ancient monument [ which of course we did
not know] and consent has
been submitted to the Department of Sports, Media and Culture for permission to
carry out the repairs. Perhaps they will install a high jump? This was done in December, the NCC are
waiting for approval before the commencement of the work. English Heritage are the Consultants
and meetings have taken place on site to agree what can and cannot be
done. It is anticipated that the
work will be carried out during May and June time will be the optimum time due
to weather constraints.
We might conclude that the delay has proved to be an economy
measure as I’m sure it would have been knocked down at least once more during
the time we have been waiting.
Excessive Hedge Cutting
Concerns were raised regarding excessive hedge cutting carried out by
the Highways Department along Chapel Lane during the summer. It was felt the work carried out was extremely
destructive not only to the hedge and any nesting birds in it but also damaged
the flint wall.
Action
Taken: The Council had contacted Mr. Orde at the Highways
Department to convey the concerns raised and to confirm that the Parish Council
was happy with Leatherpool Lane the way it is and requested that the further
hedge cutting which is due to take place in September should not be carried
out.
Seats on the Green
We are intending to put another seat on the Green possibly
the other side of that beautiful cherry tree. Steve, Gary and myself have all
looked at seats at Emcy’s but at present they only have three seater garden
seats and we really need a four-seater park bench. They are getting some of
these in shortly so we will look again.
However, last week I spotted that Morston PC have put a very nice
looking bench on their village green and so made some enquiries They got theirs
from Fakenham Garden Centre and they were also able get some lettering carving
along the back rail of the bench, in their case it said ‘Morston’ we could
presumably have what ever we wanted as long as it did not run to an entire
sonnet.
That’s the Chairman’s Report for 2006, all that remains is
for me to thank our clerk for doing a great job, and I mean that, she really
does, and to thank all the councillors for their continuing support.
Godfrey Sayers
Chairman
Wiveton Parish Council