Parish Council Meeting - 1 June

On Tuesday night I attended the June meeting of Shilton Parish Council. There was a fairly light agenda for this meeting, resulting in an early finish and back home for 9.00pm. However, there were a few items of interest that were considered.

As part of the Shilton and Barnacle Parish Plan, the Warwickshire Rural Community Council had previosuly carried out a Housing Needs Survey to determine what local need there was for new housing in either of the villages. The Housing Needs Survey is an important document because Rugby Borough Council should only give planning permission for new housing development in the parish where it is intended to meet an identifiable local housing need. Up until the production of the Parish Plan, it was not known what the additional housing need was for local people with a connection to either of the villages. This left the parish open to 'evidence' submitted on behalf of a developer that what either village really needed was a new estate of five-bedroomed Executive housing, and we would have had no hard evidence to show that this wasn't the case.

However, the Housing Needs Survey only identified a need for 3 x two-bedroomed houses in the parish. The only new development that Rugby Borough Council should therefore allow is a planning application that will meet this identified need.

Warwickshire Rural Community Council has been looking to identify suitable land in either Shilton or Barnacle where these three properties could be built, and one piece of land recently identified was in Spring Road, Barnacle. I had my concerns about the suitability of this site, principally because of the dangerous junction at Spring Road/Top Road. A small development of three houses could still result in six or more extra cars using this junction on a daily basis, and I was not comfortable in supporting this because of the potential increase in traffic at a junction that is, effectively, blind from all three directions.

Thankfully, Warwickshire County Council's Highways Department shared this concern, and once they indicated that they would object to any development in Spring Road on highway safety grounds, the proposal was effectively vetoed. Warwickshire Rural Community Council will continue their search for other possible sites that would be suitable for development and will report back to future meetings of the parish council.

Councillor Bill King, Chairman of the parish council, also reported that our annual accounts for the last financial year had now been audited and given a clean bill of health. So, for anyone who's interested in what your money goes on, here are Shilton Parish Council's finalised accounts for 2009/10:

Income
Burial fees - £1,885
Wayleave - £8
Precept - £15,580

Total - £17,473

Expenditure
Cemetery maintenance - £917
General administration - £4,835
Playing field maintenance - £1,127
Car park - £3,007
Land at Ash Tree Grove - £950
s137 payments - £100
Barnacle notice board - £360
Street lighting - £3,788

Total - £15,084

Balance at start of year - £861

Income less expenditure - £2,389

Balance at end of year - £3,250

The next parish council meeting is on Tuesday 6 July.