Wiveton Parish Council.

Chairman’s Report.  19. 05. 2009

The Parish Council has met on 8 occasions during the past year, we do not meet in July & August, we then unfortunately missed September due to the clerk being in hospital, however we did meet as soon as she was available in early October. We do not meet in December. It might seems that we miss quite a few meetings but for many years bi-monthly meetings were sufficient to cope with all Parish business and frankly if it were not for the mountains of bureaucratic junk mail that we now receive they still would be.

You will note as we go along that the written report you each have is longer than the one you are hearing. This is because I have included some relevant correspondence and also the flood plan.

Bus Stops.

Late on a Friday afternoon in June last year a large ‘workshop’ container arrived on the ‘Green’, Richard Allen noted this and contacted me and it seemed certain that this meant that work would begin on the Monday constructing new bus stops of the same design as those already under construction in Glandford and Letheringsett. I then spoke to John Ramm and we made the decision to blockade the Green first thing Monday morning to prevent this from happening. To my surprise almost the whole Parish Council turned up to do this. After making our position clear to the workmen they left to get on with something else.

This stand-off was followed by some back and forth correspondence between County Hall and myself. Our main concern apart from the fact that we did not want bus stops of that type/design, was that there had been no consultation, they were just going to come and do it. They did write and apologise for this but still wanted to go ahead with construction, which as well as the two stops either side of the road included a tarmac footway across the Green. There is no doubt that they meant well and we had their assurance that they would do nothing further without consultation.

The culmination of the correspondence was the letter included here. Suffice to say they have held off, and as the ‘Disabilities Discrimination Act’ that prompted their action does not come into force until 2018 there should be time to negotiate something more suitable for a Conservation Area should they approach us again. Although, I have to say there is now quite a gulf between what we in the countryside want and think appropriate and what at County Hall favour.

Thank you for your letter of the 3rd July, Wiveton Parish Council are now aware that they were perhaps the only village to have slipped out of the consultation process and understand that these things can easily happen, so apologies accepted. However we would like to take a further opportunity to make our position clear with regard to these stops. We fully understand NCC’s responsibilities in respect of the Disability Discrimination Act but we do think a more common sense approach to its implementation is required.

In a city a blind person is fully able to make their way around town unaccompanied and have every right to expect the infrastructure to enable them to do this to be in place, they can cross a road, catch a bus, go into shops, in fact go anywhere on their own. In a rural area like ours with narrow lanes and winding roads without pavements or footways this is not possible, a blind person cannot safely make their way around in this environment unless they are accompanied, and a fact that surely makes tactile paving superfluous.

Wheelchair users are presented with exactly the same difficulties, they are just not safe on our roads. One of our new concerns here is for elderly people who venture out of town in small electric mobility carriages; it is only a matter of time before there is a fatality. To install any infrastructure that might encourage wheelchair use in the countryside is inviting disabled people to put their lives at risk.

We are not an uncaring Council and if we thought for one moment that the need for these stops was real we would give you our whole hearted support, but they are not, they represent an unnecessary intrusion into our rural village-scape that we find quite unacceptable. Particularly as it would appear that they do not become a legal requirement for another nine years, a period during which NCC could in partnership with the Parish Council and NNDC’s Conservation Department develop policies and designs that would fully respect the importance of Conservation Areas.

In their last correspondence to the Parish Council the NCC stated that if we wished to object to these bus stops we should make those objections clear to them in writing so they could demonstrate why they are unable to comply with the Disabilities Act in this instance. If that letter was not clear enough for that purpose we hope that this one will be.

The Green.

We are aware that there are mixed views on the present use of the ‘Green’ and the numbers of cars that are sometimes parked there. However, we believe the majority, even among those who have these concerns, accept that we need the pub and that their customers along with Churchgoers and others should be accommodated. The task therefore would seem to be to try achieve this while at the same time retaining an area that has grass and looks like a village green.

At first glance these two goals might seem to be mutually exclusive, so it’s perhaps no surprise that we have taken awhile to come up with what we think is a sustainable solution. We are fairly confident that we have done this by employing a tried and tested method used by the National Trust. The exposed and most used areas are to be taken up and a firm level base of hardcore put down, a layer of soil will be laid over this onto which a plastic mesh membrane will be laid, a further thin layer of soil will then cover this and be seeded. This method seems to be quite effective in places where intense wear and tear by vehicles is a problem. The two entrances will have concrete sets, which employ the same principal, having spaces in them for grass to grow. The hope is that this system will give us a ‘Green’ that will be able to cope with all the traffic it now gets and still be green.

The work is being undertaken in two stages, the first which is underway, will, when completed be left fenced off all summer for the grass to become established, the remainder will be completed in the autumn. Any over-spill car parking necessary will be accommodated on our land by the Langham Road junction, hopefully it will withstand such usage but in any case it will be put right by the contractor as things progress, or if necessary at the end of the work. You will have seen the temporary entrances that have been made; these along with some small notices will hopefully direct people safely from their cars to the pub without them having to walk along the road.

We would have preferred not to use this area but to expect the ‘Bell’ to pay over 5K for this work while at the same time taking a 50% cut in takings due to reduced parking seemed unreasonable. They in return have said that they will make the situation clear to their customers in order to try and keep car numbers down.

Finally on the Green, some news that probably won’t actually be news to most of you. Wrong footed by a nearby ex Lord-of–the- Manor the council has spent quite a bit of time discussing how we might clarify our ownership of ‘The Green’, because of the uncertainty we felt we should get our ownership ratified with the Land Registry. We were sure we had a good case for what is called ‘Adverse Possession’ in other words that by managing and maintained the Green for so many years it would automatically be assigned to us. This proved not to be the case, so recently and very belatedly we decided to get our parish records out of store and check. Gail did this and quickly discovered that we had been wasting our time and that ownership of the Green had been registered to the Parish Council back in 1974, so it was ours all along.

Traffic Calming Signs.

Also at this time we erected our ‘Slow You Down’ signs, these resulted in an unexpected rash of publicity, picked up by FOND = Friends of the Norfolk Dialect, it got us onto the TV, the radio and into many of the National papers and of course it also got us noticed by NCC who quickly told us that we must take them down. However, we thought it very unlikely that they would be prepared to brave the sort of publicity that would follow if we didn’t and they did, so we dug our heels in. With much help from Derek Baxter (who also supported our position regarding the bus stops) we eventually got an informal communication that said that of we shut about them they could stay. I have to say that I am very pleased that so far they have, I fully expected them to be stolen after so much publicity.

A149 Footway.

Toward the end of last year we received correspondence from NCC Highways informing us that they wanted to replace the footway alongside the A149 from Friary Farm entrance in Blakeney down to Wiveton Hall entrance. For footway read ‘pavement of tarmac and concrete curbing’, we therefore asked to meet with them to discuss how it might be constructed in a more sympathetic and rural style. They were quite willing to do this. In the 1990s when I was still on Blakeney PC we had a confrontation with Highways over the pavementation of this path which resulted in a change of ‘Highway Policy’ for these types of footway. Fortunately we have a copy of this policy document called ‘The Environment and the Highway Corridor’ and were able to use it to persuade them to keep as much of the grass verge between the road and the path as possible, and although it would have been good to have kept all the grass verge we are very happy with what they did and think that in a year or two it will look fine. We have written to thank them for a job well done.

Planning.

We almost got through the year without any contentious planning applications then at the very last moment one popped up just across the road. The application for a large (for the plot) house and two-storey garage is, if judged by the amount of correspondence we have received, contentious. The application is seriously at variance with several fundamental policies in the new LDF and also with our Village Design Statement.

We have objected to the application and have pointed out how the application fails to comply with the relevant policies in these two documents. This along with the considerable response they will have received from Parishioners ought to be enough to get this application rejected, hopefully in favour of something more suitable for this part of Wiveton. However, trying to predict NNDCs Planning Sub-Committee decisions is not something you would ever want to put money on.

Affordable Housing.

We have made some progress with this. It appeared that BNHS were actively looking at Wiveton with a view to building, so heading them off at the pass so to speak; Mary contacted John Seymour (Chairman of BNHS) and arranged a meeting. George Harcourt who we have discussed this with before also attended, as did I. This was a very productive meeting and identified a suitable area and was quickly followed by a site meeting to examine what might be possible in more detail. BNHS need to get into partnership with another housing association in order to make a project like this work but John Seymour is quite confident that this can be accomplished. We are awaiting his reply.

In the new LDF Wiveton is designated as ‘Countryside’ where no new building is allowed, however, it is possible to get around this for affordable housing with what is described as an ‘Exemption Order’, the draw back with this is that there is no allowance within such an order for any private housing and most affordable housing is facilitated on the back of private development. Whether there will be any opportunity to create the capital needed for such a build without it remains to be seen.

Care Line system.

Our Care-Line system continues to operate successfully, Pat Galton has been using it for about a year and is very reassured by having it, and we are also in the process of setting it up for Mrs Doris Smith in Sandy Lane. This is paid for by the Raulf Greenaway Trust, for which we are most grateful. I would add that we are also very grateful to all those people who are willing to be on the call list. This is an excellent scheme but would not be possible without them.

Village Party.

We agreed when we decided to have Street Parties that they would be a bi-annual events, so as we missed last year this must be a party year, I take it everyone supports us organising another, at approx the same date, on the cusp of August and September?

That concludes my report for 2009, except for me to thank the council for their support, and their loyalty and hard work, also our clerk for the same. I must also thank our District and County Councillors, particularly Mr Derek Baxter who has been an excellent councillor for us and who sadly is stepping down at the coming election.