Parish Council Meeting - 1 February

Last night I attended the February meeting of Shilton Parish Council, our first of 2011.

The meeting began with updates from County Councillor Phillip Morris-Jones and Borough Councillor Tony Gillias. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both of them focused on the potential job losses at Warwickshire County Council, Warwickshire Police and Rugby Borough Council. There were assurances that 'front line services' would not be affected, although I do wonder, even taking service delivery efficiencies into account, if councils really believe that the public will be unaffected by the levels of job cuts that are being suggested.

Amongst the other issues discussed by the parish council during the meeting, there was a report of the public car park in Church Road, Shilton being used late at night as a discrete location to smoke drugs. This has previously been reported as a problem in the Shilton Village Hall car park, and I hope the police action taken then didn't end up just moving it from one location in the village to another. The parish council agreed to raise the issue immediately with the local Safer Neighbourhoods Team, and then again at the Fosse Community Forum meeting in March, where Warwickshire Police will be asked to treat it as a neighbourhood priority for the next three months.

One issue I agreed to follow up on was the matter of the proposed Rugby Rural CCTV Network project. This was a project first highlight in December 2009, and which I blogged about in March last year. Since then, nothing much seems to have been heard regarding progress with the initiative, and so I agreed to look into the matter further and see what progress had been made. I shall report back on here what I'm able to find out.

In other business, a number of bills were paid, including £465 to E.ON for the supply of electricity to the parish's street lights for the last quarter of 2010, and a further £279 to E.ON for street light maintenance works over the same period. There were reports on the latest planning applications submitted to, and determined by, Rugby Borough Council, and a report from Councillor Stephen White on a meeting he attended last week regarding the formulation of planning policies on wind farm development in the borough (something that is currently exercising the residents of Copston Magna and Churchover). Finally, the parish council declined a request received from the Southam Action Area Group to contribute towards its campaign against the route of the proposed High Speed 2 railway line through the town.

The next meeting of Shilton Parish Council will be held on Tuesday 1 March at 7.30pm in the Parish Council Meeting Room, Church Road, Shilton.