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Images of Chedzoy Parish

2017/01/12
Minutes of the Parish Council Meeting held on Wednesday 11th January 2017.

Minutes of the Meeting of the Parish Council held on Wednesday 11th January 2017 in the Village Hall at 7.30 pm.

1. Apologies: Cllrs. Pat Lennard, Katrina Maxwell and Terry Oxman. Cllr. David Hall (SCC)

2. Present: Cllrs. Martin Allen (Chairman), Martin Baker, Brian Gale, and Ray Triggol.

Also: Cllr. Derek Alder (SDC) and Matt Barrow (Connecting Devon and Somerset).

Members of the public: Lynne Allen, Peter Dodge, Maria Harwood and Richard Woodward.

3. Minutes of the previous meeting of 6th December 2016 were taken as read, approved and signed.

4. Matters arising from the minutes.
  • Broadband Phase 2 Rollout. In the absence of David Hall (unavoidably absent), Matt Barrow of the Connection Devon and Somerset team outlined the outcome of the Phase 2 Rollout. Announced on 20/12/2016, contracts have been awarded with four going to GiggaClear who are undertaking to lay out an entirely new network connecting each property to fibre lines which should give broadband speeds of between 50 megabytes/sec to 1 gigabyte/sec. Chedzoy is scheduled for connection in July 2018, and there may be some unavoidable slippage so realistically we are looking at a 2 year “delay” from now.

    Matt advised that 97 applications had been received for the £500 vouchers, all of which would be successful. Some will “go it alone” but a joint approach involving the pooling of vouchers was possible.

    Martin Allen (Chairman) thought there could be some difficulty in organising a joint approach, but he said that if Matt could email the numbers of unused vouchers he would organise another flyer to each house in the village advising the up to date position and possibly calling a meeting to coordinate the joint way forward.

  • Sedgemoor Battlefield Display Case. The Clerk reported he had been advised by Victoria Banham of SDC that  Sedgemoor would give consideration to meeting the cost of repairs. The Clerk is to obtain an estimate from Messrs. Arien of Cheddar for the work and submit it to SDC with a suitable request.

  • Telephone Box Adoption. The Clerk reported the request for the Parish Council to adopt the telephone box has been made by Sedgemoor to BT, who will make contact direct to him in due course.

  • Allotment Tap Frost Damage. Cllr. Martin Baker reported that he was delaying repairs to the tap at the allotment site until the spring.
5. Somerset County Council report. None

6. Sedgemoor District Council report.
  • Cllr Derek Alder reported on further funding which appeared to be available for housing development in the district. In addition to the £44 million already advised by Central Government, a further sum of close to £20.00 million could be made available for development on non-LDF (Local Development Framework) land.

  • EDF are looking to obtain consent for extending the working hours for connection of the supply line to Hinkley Point.

  • The old British Cellophane site is being prepared for development.
7. Planning.

The two recent applications at Fernside Ward Lane (reference 18/16/00007/LP) and Stoneleigh Front Street (reference 18/16/00008/DT) had both been granted permission, on a delegated basis.

8. Correspondence.
  • Avon and Somerset PCC – 4 year Policing Plan. The Clerk has received a copy of this.

  • Code of Conduct Training for Clerks and Councillors. These sessions are to be held in March.
9. Matters arising from the correspondence. None.

10. Finance. Balances after allowing for all payments made:

Lloyds Bank current account £2724.56
Lloyds Bank Deposit account £2.48
Cambridge Building Society Easy Access account £12252.99

One cheque was issued between meetings as follows:

Number Payee Amount For
537 Don Johnson £122.40 Repairs to the village notice board

Three cheques issued, signed by 2 councillors as follows:

Number Payee Amount For
538 C.N Fry £152.47 December net salary
539 C.N Fry £84.39 Expenses
540 HMRC £ 114.40 PAYE Oct/Nov/Dec


10. Any Other Business including the date of the next meeting.
  • Buzzard shooting. Jo Smolden of Ward Lane had reported the shooting of three buzzards in Somerset. These birds of prey are a protected species and although two survived, a third one was shot dead in Chedzoy. The Councillors were disappointed and it is hoped that no repeat incident of this kind occurs in the future.
  • New External Auditors. The Clerk reported new Auditors had been appointed for the 5 year period 2017/22.
  • Police attendance at Parish Council meetings. The Clerk read extracts from an email received by a parish clerk in Somerset from the police which stated that the production of police reports and attendance at parish council meetings took scarce resources away from front line policing. If a specific problem arose, then attendance of the police would be afforded, but not as a matter of course.
  • SID location. The Clerk read an email from Dave Grabham of SCC apologising for the incorrect siting of the SID outside the Village Hall rather than outside Fisher’s Cottages and saying it would be correctly sited on the 30 mph repeater sign outside Fishers Cottages in future.
  • South West Local Council Association Regional Conference on 16/03/2017 in Taunton. The Clerk read an email giving advance notification of this with further details to follow.
Date of next meeting: Monday 13th February 2017.

There being no other business the Chairman declared the meeting closed at 8.35 pm
 





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