Blundeston and Flixton Parish Council - Chairman's Annual Report 2009– 2010.

General
The Parish Council has met a total of twelve times since the AGM last May so we have met every month without a break. The average attendance of the 11 eligible Parish Councillors, 9 for Blundeston and two for Flixton, has been 8 which is much the same as the previous year. 
I must again congratulate John Blowers on achieving 100% and this year that feat is also matched by Sam Perks and Glynis Soanes has only missed one meeting. I would personally like to thank Sam for standing in as Chairman for the three meetings which I missed through illness and the one in March when I was away. I must also 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 Herrivan resigned as a Parish Councillor for Flixton in June and after due process Mrs Joanne Browne was co-opted to replace her.
I must also thank Paul Ashdown our District Councillor who has only missed the odd meeting and has certainly been instrumental in getting a number of things done for us during the year. Our County Councillors Alyson Barron and Malcolm Cherry were replaced after the election last June by Colin Law and Mike Barnard and both have managed to attend some of our meetings. However there are inevitably clashes with other Parish Council meetings, everyone seems to prefer a Monday, and it is impossible for them to attend them all. Both of them managed to find us £750 each from their County Locality budgets to help fund a new central heating boiler and additional radiators for the Village Hall and we are most grateful for that.
Attendance by the public has been reasonable again this year, averaging around seven with a maximum of 11 at our August and November meetings falling away to only three in the snow in January. 
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 Stranks took over as Community Officer for our northern area in May of last year. 
As you know this year has seen the retirement of our long serving clerk and we would all I know want to express our warm thanks for her dedication over the years, both as Parish Clerk and clerk to the Hall management committee. Although Barbara officially retired at the end of the year she has continued to be available for advice and help to our new clerk. In that context we welcome Karen to the post and hope that she enjoys a long and happy tenure. She was appointed after due process which involved consultation with the Suffolk Association of Local Councils and subsequent advertising of the vacancy.
The minutes of our meetings continue to be quickly placed in draft on the village website www.blundeston.org.uk and a summary version within a couple of weeks in the Journal, and thanks are due to Iris for that. Publication on the website does comply with the legal requirement for the minutes to be publicly available. The website also continues to generate a number of enquiries about various aspects of our village. The site is available for any Village organisation to have their own page or pages which I can create for you. Provided that you give me the information in a manageable format, I will regularly update it for you. A few organisations have already taken advantage of this.

Going through the minutes of all our meetings last week I noted a number of recurring themes. This is in part due to the fact that some issues never seem to get resolved whilst others appear to be permanently ongoing. Ongoing issues that come immediately to mind are fly tipping and traffic problems on the B1074.
Fly tipping in the countryside is sadly a problem across the country and we suffer our fair share. Unfortunately the culprits are difficult to catch but I would urge you that if you see an offence being committed then try to get as much detail as you can without confronting anyone and putting yourself at risk.
The B1074 continues to be one of the most dangerous stretches of B road in the county and the year has seen some accidents on that stretch of road through to St Olaves. Excessive speeding is a big issue and at one time the police considered that, within our stretch of the B1074, there was nowhere safe enough to do speed enforcement and stopping vehicles. During the year the police have operated at least one speed check on the Lowestoft road and a number of drivers were issued with fixed penalty tickets.
Speed watch. In the context of excessive speeding you may be aware that through our liaison with other parishes in the northern area via the Northern Parishes meetings, there is an initiative to purchase a speed detection device, for use by trained volunteers. All the parishes have contributed to this and the volunteers are currently undergoing training. I will leave further details of this scheme for others to report progress.
The two other main traffic issues are the junction of Church Road with the Lound road and the B1074. Councillor Barnard has been involved with Suffolk Highways with attempts to make this junction safer but to date no firm proposals have been put to the Parish Council.
Of just as much concern is the ongoing problem of traffic and parked cars on Church Road at school times. At one time 57 cars were noted parked along Church Road. We are active in seeking some solutions to the problem which is going to get much worse in 2011 when two new classrooms come on stream. Unfortunately, and in my personal opinion, little or no thought was given to this problem by the County when they made the decision to enlarge the school.
In November we had a major pollution incident with raw sewage leaking in to the pond at the end of Barkis Meadow subsequently killing all the fish. Anglian Water were quickly on site and it transpired that sewage had leaked from a blocked pipe in the Street into the surface water drainage pipe which runs from the Street down the footpath to the pond. A site meeting with Anglian water was set up by Bob Blizzard which he attended. Subsequently all the water was removed from the pond and replaced with water from Whittlingham Broad. They have promised to re-stock with fish this Spring.
In August the new playground equipment was installed. The money to do this was all obtained through a grant from Suffolk County Council and that was all done through the pre-school group. For that we are grateful to the efforts of Diane Button and the Brownies whose ideas and designs won the approval of the funding committee. Thanks also to Stephen Rees who acted as Parish Council liaison for the project. The success and popularity of the new equipment has brought its own problems of parking at certain busy times. There can be clashes with village hall use and a certain amount of understanding and give and take is required.
Phase 2 of the skate park has also now been completed thanks to the efforts of Wendy Dawson and her team. This was officially opened by Bob Blizzard on a very wet Saturday in April.
In March, and after a request by a parishioner, Stephen Rees organised a village litter pick which unfortunately was very successful. I say unfortunately because sadly there ought not to be a need for litter picking which is basically rubbish, carelessly deposited, mainly I suspect by villagers around our lanes.
That’s just a flavour of some of the issues dealt with by the Parish Council over the past twelve months. You will note that I haven’t mentioned the normally controversial topic of Planning. We have dealt with 21 planning applications but none could be considered to be particularly controversial and over the past seven months the throughput has dried up to one application per month.

John Nichols
Chairman
10  May 2010