Blundeston and Flixton Parish Council - Chairman's Annual Report 2008 – 2009.

General
The Parish Council has met a total of ten times since the AGM last May with no meeting in either August or December. When that happens we always make sure that the meeting in the following month is early so that the maximum gap is never more than six weeks.
The average attendance of the 11 eligible Parish Councillors has been 7.7, one down on the previous year. 
I must congratulate John Blowers again on achieving 100% attendance and this year for a change I managed to match him. Glynis and Stephen only missed one each. I would personally like to thank all those Parish Councillors who have attended on a regular basis for their support and commitment throughout the year and also to Glynis Soanes, Sam Perks and Simon Lewis for their work on the Village Hall management committee. Mrs Hume resigned as a Parish Councillor in October and after due process Graham Wade was co-opted to replace her.
I must also thank Paul Ashdown our District Councillors who has only missed a couple of meetings and has certainly been instrumental in getting a number of things done for us during the year. Similarly Alyson Barron who represents us at County level has manged to get here whenever she can sometimes having to double up with Lound or Oulton Parish meetings.
Attendance by the public got off to a relly good start last year with as many as 15 but then faded away to just 3 or four in recent months.

We continue to have excellent support in our community from the Police who are always either present at our meetings or send in a report. Sue Kershaw gets to our meetings whenever she can and is also frequently seen around the village on her (very green) electric bicycle. PC David Boggis has now retired after serving the northern parishes well for many years and we wish him well in his retirement.

Once again I must record my thanks to our ever- present, overworked and patient Clerk. She serves as the frontline contact for all Parish Council matters and has to deal with a mountain of correspondence and leaflets. She also doubles up as Village Hall secretary and bookings Clerk which probably gives her more hassle than anything. We have now moved up a couple of notches on the technology scale and Barbara’s skills as typist come to the fore by taking the minutes direct to a PC. It also helps that, for most of us, we are able to receive the minutes and agenda direct by email which saves time and car miles. The minutes are also fairly quickly placed on the village website www.blundeston.org.uk and a summary version within a couple of weeks in the Journal, thanks to Barbara and Iris. Barbara has done all this whilst having to cope with her own problems at home with Colin’s serious illness. This is currently ongoing, with treatment on a daily basis in Norwich, and I am sure that you would want me to record our thoughts and good wishes for his speedy return to good health and we hope to see him on that bowling green before too long. 

The village website does also generate a number of enquiries about various aspects of our village often from far afield. Only yesterday I had an enquiry from Dorothy Fiddleman coming over from USA in September who wanted to know when the Church would be open because she wants to view the memorial to one of her ancestors William Sydnor. Unfortunately I have a little problem at the moment as I have recently upgraded my system at home resulting in the loss of a couple of old pieces of web software that I was using and cannot replace. At the moment the March and April minutes have not been posted but I have been able to email them to a couple of people who have asked.

I will, very briefly highlight just a few of the issues which the Parish Council has addressed  during the past year. 

Standards
It was interesting to note in a SCC Information letter on the Town and parish Council briefing from the Standards Board for England that; of the allegations referred to the Standards Board last year there were 3,624 nationally and 50% of those were Parish and Town Councillors. So we have to remain vigilant in this respect because unlike District and County councillors we do not have a direct input of legal advice at our meetings although if in doubt we can get that

Planning
We have discussed a total of 23 planning applications during the year reduction of around a half on the normal number. We always allow time for any views from members of the public present or in writing before we come to a decision. Most of the applications are minor additions to houses and tend not to be controversial. 
In relation to planning the Waveney Local Development Framework discussions are now in the final stages. As far as Blundeston is concerned none of the major sites put forward by landowners have been accepted, we objected to all of them. As a consequence no large scale development within the village envelope is envisaged over the ten year time life of the plan. 

B 1074 Road, Flixton. The ongoing problems with this road have not been off our agenda at all over the past twelve months. As reported last year the road is a rat-run through to Norwich from the North end of Lowestoft and it now seems that it is a favoured short route for those being guided by satellite navigation systems, in particular heavy goods vehicles. Excessive speeding continues to be a problem particularly with motor cycles often on a Sunday morning when speed checks are unlikely to be carried out. 

Other Issues
Crime in and around the village will be covered in the Police Report, suffice it to say that it has been at a very low level during the year with most of it related in some way to HMP.

Simon Lewis took up the issue of the footpath between the Village Hall and Short Road and with the help of Alyson Barron got some County Council funding for this. That has now been satisfactorily completed with the bonus of a path on this side as well and two drains from the road to the pond which has resulted in much more water in the pond. Unfortunatley we have still been unable to get a firm commitment to repair the footpath on Lound Road or to do anything about the ongoing flooding problems there. This has been going on for far too long and maybe the most recent promise that it is in the schedule for minor works in 2009/2010 will bear fruit. In that context it was annoying to say the least that in March we were asked to bid for money for new highway projects but were expressly forbidden from include any maintenance work: a different budget!!
 
The ongoing saga of the Boundary Commissions proposals for the future of local government in the area has been regularly reported by our County and local Councillors. I think that it has now reached the end of the road with a 64 page document in October.

Parking, or should I say poor parking, problems are regularly brought to the attention of the Parish Council at our monthly meetings, either directly by parishioners or more often by a Parish Councillor as a result of representations from parishioners. This is a particular problem in relation to people who think that it is OK to park partly on the pavement presumably in some attempt to cause less obstruction in the road. They need to be reminded that it is a traffic offence to park on the pavement and now I think that some cautions have been issued. Nevertheless, I noted yesterday that, people are continuing to do it often obstructing the pavement for pedestrians and the next step could be fixed penalties if the warnings are not heeded. Parking on the grass verges also causes annoyance and sadly just adds to the general scruffiness of the village.

The footpath maintenance contract with Suffolk County Council now seems to have been sorted out and the paths are maintained. They take just a single cut on each side to ensure that the paths are passable without destroying all the natural vegetation which provides an  important habitat for smaller forms of wildlife.  We are also grateful to Clive and Fred who have done some of the maintenance on the Market Lane to the Street path and also around two of the Village ponds.

We should soon be seeing some new play equipment on the small playing field and the disappearance or modification of some of the old. This has involved funding through the Play group but I will leave Steven to report more fully on that.

Natural England has now taken over responsibility from The Countryside Agency for Millennium Greens. The Trustees of the Green have taken the opportunity to hand over trusteeship to the Parish Council who will take over their responsibilities in perpetuity. This means that the maintenance of the Green will become the responsibility of all Parishioners through the Parish Council which seems to be the right and proper way forward. We have had an advisory visit from Suffolk Wildlife Trust who continue to take an interest in the development of the Green and the pond. We are also very grateful to David Jermy for the maintenance work on all the hedges which he does free of charge as a trustee. We also had a good turnout for the footpath maintenance day last November.

Finally we had some discussion about the renewal of our membership of SALC culminating in a visit from two Representatives of SALC to our February meeting. As a result we agreed to continue in membership for another year.

The Clerk and Chairman presented a Budget  for 2009/2010 to the November meeting estimating a total expenditure of £6,420. As result the Council agreed to ask for a Parish Precept of £6,400

John Nichols
Chairman
11  May 2009