Parish Council Meeting - 5 October

Last Tuesday I attended the October meeting of Shilton Parish Council. It was my first parish council meeting for two months and it was good to get back up to speed with a number of the on-going issues that had been a feature of recent meetings.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the main topics of discussion was the events of 24/25 September in Barnacle that ended up with the submission of a planning application for the creation of a gypsy caravan site for three families in Top Road. Borough Councillors Tony Gillias and Rachel Watts attended the meeting to update the parish council on events as they were developing, including the High Court hearing that was taking place in London the following day (more here.)

The parish council were being consulted on the planning application for this development, and after a full discussion, councillors agreed to inform Rugby Borough Council that they objected to the granting of planning permission, principally on the grounds that the area was in the Green Belt and it was therefore inappropriate for development of this type to be permitted there.

In other business, a local resident in Shilton had complained in the past about the speed of traffic in Wood Lane. As a result, Warwickshire County Council had undertaken a covert speed survey on 9 September. It was now reported that the outcome of this survey showed an average speed of 34.6mph along the road, qualifying it for a more in depth speed survey to establish the full extent of the speeding problem in the area. In the meantime, look out for Smiley Sid to be making an appearance sometime soon to encourage us all not to exceed the speed limit!

Finally, the parish council appointed Emma Raymont as its new Clerk to take over from Andrea Mogano, who had stood in following the retirement of Chris Warburton. Emma's contact details will be publicised in the next edition of the BASIS newsletter, but can be contacted at clerk-shiltonparish@hotmail.co.uk if you need to get hold of her before then. A huge thanks needs to go to Andrea for everything she's done over the last few months - the parish council would've been in a much worse state of affairs were it not for her efforts!