Minutes of the Stanton on the Wolds Annual Parish Meeting

held at the parish church on Wednesday May 12th 2010 at 7.00pm

 

There were seventeen parishioners present. Coun. John Cottee  (Nottinghamshire County Council) gave his apologies.

1] Introduction by the chairman

The chairman, Coun. Jim Goodman, opened the meeting and welcomed those  attending. 

2] Minutes of the meeting held on May 13, 2009, for approval

The minutes were accepted and signed by the chairman as presented.

3] Report of the Chairman

As my first year in office we have had a relatively quiet time. I thank all those who have assisted me and the PC during the year.

Planning Applications have been relatively small in number (thirteen) and generally non controversial.

Speeding   Motorists   still continue to concern us and we continue to operate the SPEEDWATCH activity where the main deterrent is not so much the letters that the police send out, but our presence on the road in high visibility clothing.  (Over eighty speeders reported).

Of very recent concern is the removal of the traffic calming islands on the Melton Road by the County Council.

The number of crimes particularly on the Melton Road continues to give concern. These have varied from sheds broken into right up to major theft.

The Millennium Sign has been repainted and Notice Boards touched in.

Around one thousand daffodils were planted.

Warning signs about fouling of the school playing fields were initially torn off and have now been renewed with more substantial material.

Snow and Ice caused a number of problems in the hard winter and thanks are due to the County Council for doing a good job in difficult conditions.

The need has been identified for an Emergency Plan for the parish and we will provide this in the near future. The old plan lapsed a few years ago.

I have attended the Rural Community Action Parish Forum and the Rushcliffe Annual Town and Parish Conference.

The number of Newsletters has been limited to three this year as my view is that whilst we like to keep you informed, where there is nothing to say there is no point in publishing.

Please continue to support the excellent work done on the web site by Alan Hunt.

4] Correspondence

There was no correspondence to report.

5] Report on the Finances of the Parish Council

The clerk presented a written report on the financial situation of the council. It showed that the council started the 2009/2010 financial year with a balance in hand of £11,469 and ended the year with £12,371.

The clerk mentioned that the main items of expenditure included £382 for insurance, £240 for grass cutting and maintenance, £102 for newsletter printing and £283 for subscriptions.

The income during the year totalled £5,131 comprising of £4,632 from  precept, £40 from sales of the village history book, grants received from Rushcliffe Borough Council for planting of plants amounted to £147 and £312 recovered from VAT spent on items and services during the 2008/209 year.

The council had issued a precept for an income of £4,632 for 20010/2011,  the same as in the previous two years.

6] The Rev Thomas Ousley Charity Trust

The meeting was given a report on the state of the Trust, which dates back  to the year 1721, by its chairman Mr John Stockbridge. It had been established by the Rev Thomas Ousley, who had been the minister of All Saints Church at Stanton on the Wolds and who had left a property in Gedling which was eventually sold and the money invested.

The Trust funds were currently invested with the Nottingham Building Society and amounted to £820. There had been no grants made by the Trustees during the last year. The annual return for 2009 had been submitted to the Charities Commission and had been accepted. The current Trustees term ends in July this year and the parish council was required to appointed new trustees for a further period of four years.

One of the first tasks of the newly appointed Trustees would be to examine the future of the Trust as the amount of interest that was available for distribution was so small. The Charities Commission had said it would like to wind up all Trusts under £5,000 in value.

7] Report by the Borough Councillor Mrs Fiona Mason

Rushcliffe Borough Council, like everyone else in these current economic times, has had to consider ways to cut costs to balance the books.  During 2009 meetings were held with various groups including Council Officers, Councillors, business rate payers and members of the public to discuss budget cuts.  The consultations and discussions resulted in a Council Tax increase of just £1.98 for a band D property for the year 2010/2011 and various efficiency savings were brought into place.  It was felt that rather than cut services some increase in charges would be preferable and, as a result, a revised charging scheme has been brought into place in the West Bridgford car parks which are now a standard rate for daytime and evening parking of £1.00 for a two hour stay, with the previous 50p hourly rate having been abandoned.  A charge has been implemented for the use of a second green bin at £25.00 per annum and the Borough Council is cutting costs in other ways such as the reduction of paper reports to Councillors and by taking on sponsorship for litter bins and planters around the Borough.

It has been decided to retain the £500 Community Support fund allocated to each Borough Councillor to allow Councillors to give funds to schemes of benefit to the community in their ward.  During 2009 I was delighted to be able to donate £100 towards the provision of IT equipment for Willow Brook School  in Stanton as well as supporting  the upgraded and refurbished kitchen at Willoughby on the Wolds Village Hall and by giving a donation towards the purchase of a new village notice board in Widmerpool.

During the year, off-street parking solutions continued to be sought to alleviate parking problems in our larger villages.  In Keyworth it was decided to put parking orders on the Bunny Lane and Church Drive car parks to enable enforcement of antisocial parking to take place e.g. parking out of bays and parking in a disabled space without a blue badge.  Parking by school staff in the Church Drive car park continues to be unresolved it having been decided that on balance it was better for long stay parkers to continue to park in the car park rather than to reserve some bays for short stay parking only.  The Keyworth Parish Council has been requested to reconsider whether parking at the Village Hall could assist with parking problems associated with South Wolds School.

Planning, as always, continues to be an issue and generally creates lively debate. Rushcliffe Borough Council, along with the other district councils in Nottinghamshire, is currently working on the Local Development Framework process which, through its Core Strategy, will seek housing solutions to 2026.  The Government insists we in Rushcliffe must allocate sites for a further 13,000 houses and that two thirds of these must be in on adjoining "the principle urban area" which means in or around West Bridgford.  This has brought forward for debate two possible large sites at Clifton Pastures and Gamston each for 4,200 houses.  During March and April various consultation events were held around the Borough on the first draft of the Core Strategy.  Around 1,700 responses were received from Rushcliffe residents, unsurprisingly the overwhelming comment was too many houses.  The result of the consultation is being analysed and the second stage of the Core Strategy is due in the Autumn of 2010.  The impact of the election last week may alter things but we will have to wait and see.

I look forward to working with the Parish Council and wish you well during 2010/11 in what will undoubtedly be another challenging but let's hope enjoyable year.

8] Report on the village website by Alan Hunt

The un-adopted or provisional Minutes of the bi-monthly Parish Council Meetings now appear on the web site soon after each meeting instead of being delayed for 2 months before being made public. The Planning section of the web site now includes the Minutes of the Planning committee meetings soon after the meetings.

 As promised at the Annual Parish meeting for 2009, we have purchased the complete census for 1911 for the parish. There were lots of mistakes in the compilation available from 1911.com and we were able to send in 40 corrections, all of which were accepted and updated on their web site. An index to the names recorded for Stanton has been placed in our web site, however it is not possible for us to give any further details from this census as they are under copyright. Would-be researchers will have to subscribe to 1911.com.

 “In Memoriam” has been enlarged to accommodate 3 more names of Stanton men who fought in WW1 that were noticed in the 1911 Census. Albert Disney lived and worked with the Bryans family on Manor House Farm. Ernest Pare was a live-in farm labourer at Pages Farm and migrated to Manitoba after the war. Herbert Williamson lived and worked for Edmund Brown on Browns Lane and migrated to Utah before the war began. He subsequently joined the Canadian forces. Two further names are shortly to be added that we gleaned from the Parish Registers held in the Nottinghamshire Archives. Stoker George Cox married a Lily Goodman of Stanton. George served on HMS Penarth, a minesweeper that sunk after hitting a mine off Yorkshire. Captain Herbert Chadwick of the Royal Flying Corps married Dorothea Knight of Stanton. He learnt to fly at Thetford in a Maurice Farman biplane. We have a photograph of Captain Chadwick and are awaiting permission to use the picture from the RAF Museum at Hendon.

There is a long note on the history of the construction of the Stanton tunnel in the “Village history” section. We have located a cross section diagram of the tunnel which we hope to incorporate into the article. Apparently the Notts Archives do not have a copy.

A new section on the “Archaeology” of the parish has been included. Pages include “Pre-history” dealing with Stanton from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age to the Iron Age; Roman Stanton, Anglo-Saxon and Norman Stanton, Medieval Stanton and Post-medieval Stanton. The sections are illustrated by various “finds”. In the “Latest News” section we have made an appeal to parishioners to look out for possible “finds” in their gardens, particularly clay pipe bowls, un-glazed pot sherds or any pieces of worked flint particularly when deep digging or foundations are being put in. It is important to record any such finds with the date and grid reference before the data is lost. We were very fortunate that a new Neolithic flint axe was found by George Turnbull of Melton Road in the 1980s but unfortunate in that the exact site and date were not recorded.

The number of hits on the web site has increased over the last 12 months from around 10,000 hits per month to between 15,000 and 16,000. These figures have been criticised as misleading as the number of hits does not mean that actual pages of information were down-loaded from our site. In fact, for the last 5 months the percentage of hits that led to pages being down-loaded was around 40%. August 2009 was the busiest month with 5,235 pages being down-loaded. Currently the web site is down-loading between 900 and 1,200 pages of information a week.

9] Queen’s Diamond Jubilee

The parish council had appointed Coun. Mrs Benney and Mike Sheriston to head the organisation of events to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in June 2012.

10] Any other items of business

The meeting was told of possible plans by Tesco to open a store in Keyworth. A petition opposing the move was being organised.

A suggestion was made that details of the footpaths in the village and the councillors responsible for them could be put on the council website as well as being included in the newsletter.

Concerns were expressed that the centre road structures on the A606 road had been removed. The matter was currently being investigated by County Coun. John Cottee.

Speeding traffic on the A606 was raised, with strong concerns being expressed by residents.

The state of the roadside footpath along the A606 road from the beginning of the built up area right through Browns Lane was criticised. Grass was overgrowing on to the hard surface making it hardly wide enough in parts for anyone with a pushchair etc to travel on it. The clerk was asked to write to the County Council’s Highways Department.

The meeting closed at 8.10pm.