Fosse Division Community Forum - 22 November

Last Thursday evening, despite the wind and rain, I attended the quarterly meeting of the Fosse Division Community Forum, held in Wolvey. Also attending from the parish council were Councillor Stephen White and the clerk, Margaret Cartwright.

The meeting received a presentation from the Rugby Rural North Safer Neighbourhood Team on local issues they've been involved in during the past few months, along with a report back on the three local policing priorities identified at the last meeting. None of these related to Shilton/Barnacle area.

However, in identifying the local priorities for the next three months, Stephen White referred to concerns regarding speeding traffic in Leicester Road, Shilton. This had been a matter that a local resident had recently contacted the parish council about, and it was therefore put forward as a matter that deserved extra attention. Fortunately, the forum agreed to adopt this as one of the three local priorities, and therefore the local Safer Neighbourhood Team will be visible during the next three months seeking to slow speeding traffic entering the village along Leicester Road. The on-going work the police are doing on this issue can be viewed here.

The forum then received two of its regular updates: from Leigh Hunt from Warwickshire County Council on the superfast broadband project, and from Anna Rose from Rugby Borough Council on planning issues and developments. A number of briefing notes were circulated with information on matters on interest, including the progress on a gypsy and traveller site allocations development plan, quality control monitoring of the highways maintenance teams, and the Warwickshire Director of Public Health's 2012 annual report (the video at the bottom of this post is of Dr John Linnane introducing his report).

The next meeting of the Fosse Division Community Forum will be on Thursday 14 March from 7.00pm at the Village Hall in Monks Kirby.

Free Computers for Community Organisations

At the Fosse Division Community Forum on 13 September, information was circulated regarding recycled computers that Warwickshire County Council was making available for community and voluntary organisations:

Warwickshire County Council is making 125 recycled desktop computers available free of charge to community or voluntary organisations, including town and parish councils, within Warwickshire. Each organisation can apply for up to two machines each, which will consist of a Dell desktop with Windows 7 and a 80Gb hard drive, a monitor, keyboard and mouse, with a number of licence free programmes and a three month warranty. No laptops are available.

Locally based community groups or small-scale groups with little or no IT equipment can apply, but will be asked to demonstrate how it will help their organisation to grow. The PCs have been reformatted by skilled ICT staff so that they are reliable with a good memory.

For an application pack, email Ali Mainey at alisonmainey@warwickshire.gov.uk or call her on (01789) 260134. Applications are invited by 5.00pm on Friday 26 October.

If you know of a local organisation that would benefit from one of these PCs, please get in touch with Alison.

Parish Council Meeting - 7 August

Last Tuesday night, I chaired the August meeting of the parish council.

The meeting opened with two members of the public wanting to raise the issue of the maintenance of land in Ash Tree Grove that was now under the ownership of the parish council. A number of hedges were becoming overgrown and some of the trees needed pruning. The council undertook to address these concerns, starting with the hedges being cut back in the next couple of weeks. It was good to see members of the public attending the meeting in order to get matters of concern to them resolved.

County councillor Phillip Morris-Jones and borough councillor Chris Pacey-Day then gave updates on local matters of interest. Phillip stressed the financial constraints that were continuing to be experienced by Warwickshire County Council, along with attempts to attract more members of the public to attend meeting of the community forums that met around the county, and the upcoming election on 15 November for the new Warwickshire Police & Crime Commissioner.

Chris reported that he has recently been appointed to sit on Rugby Borough Council’s new Gypsy & Traveller Strategy and Action Planning Group, which he hoped would provide a greater focus to the work being undertaken by the borough council to provide a satisfactory longer term solution to the accommodation needs of gypsies and travellers in the area.

Streetlights have been a subject matter that’s exercised the parish council’s mind over recent months. On Tuesday, councillors received an update on the replacement of the damaged light in Church Road (which should happen in the next few weeks), and agreed to replace a unit in Hallway Drive that was reported to be flickering and buzzing intermittently. Both of the units will be replaced with more energy efficient LED lights, and so will look different to the streetlights that are currently there (this will be most obvious in Hallway Drive). The parish council was mindful of installing lights that had a reduced electricity consumption, and will be interested to hear the views of residents as to the quality and penetration of the light that the new LED bulbs emit.

New signs will also be ordered to designate the reserved parish council/cemetery parking outside the meeting room in Church Road after the existing signage was recently damaged.

The parish council has been formally notified that its clerk, Emma Raymont, will be leaving her post on 31 August, following her recent appointment to a full time job. Despite this being fully expected for some time, it is still disappointing that the parish council will soon no longer have Emma’s enthusiasm and dedication to call upon. In readiness for 31 August, councillors discussed the recruitment of a replacement clerk and what steps it needed to take to ensure that this key position was filled by someone willing and able to bring their own experience and ability to the role.

The remainder of the meeting focused on the regular financial matters, planning application consultations and other matters of correspondence.

The parish council will meet again on Tuesday 4 September at 7.30pm at its parish meeting room in Church Road, Shilton. Members of the public are welcome to attend, especially if they have matters/concerns they wish to draw to councillors’ attention.

Fosse Division Community Forum - 1 March

Earlier this month I attended the quarterly Fosse Division Community Forum in Ansty. This public meeting discusses matters of relevance and interest to the Fosse area, which includes Shilton and Barnacle.

The meeting started with PC Giustine Cree from the Rugby Rural North Safer Neighbourhood Team providing a report on local policing matters during the last three months. It is at this meeting that members of the public can suggest priorities for the local police during the next quarter. One of the priorities that was agreed was for the police to focus on the problem of speeding in Leicester Road, Shilton as vehicles entered the village from the Wolvey direction. It was agreed that a minimum of five separate speed detection operations will be carried out over the coming weeks, and you can read further about how these are progressing here. A report back from the police on this matter will be given at the next Fosse Division Community Forum in June.

The main focus of the meeting were presentations from Nick Gower-Johnson from Warwickshire County Council on the provisions of the Localism Act, and from Ian Davis from Rugby Borough Council on planning and development matters within the area.

Nick Gower-Johnson went through a number of the key aspects of the Localism Act that had the potential to impact on parish councils and local communities. The act is large and complex, but sought to have four key themes running through its aims:

• freedoms and flexibility for local government
• rights and powers for local communities
• reform to the planning system
• more decisions about housing to be taken locally

As Nick explained these themes in more detail, it was clear that the Localism Act would provide the opportunity for local communities to become more involved in the running of their own areas, but that this was invariably conditional on a range of different matters. It'll be interesting to see over the coming years whether parish councils are able to grasp these opportunities and become real community leaders and champions. What is certain though is that there needs to be a significant number of people prepared to get actively involved for the good of their area in order to realise these new rights and powers. A parish council that sits back and waits for things to happen to them is, more than likely, going to be bypassed.

Ian Davis took the opportunity to talk about local planning matters. Of particular interest in the Fosse area was the status with planning applications for a series of wind turbines in the Offchurch and Copston Magna areas, and the on-going matter of gypsy and traveller sites around Shilton and Barnacle. The parish council has long argued that the best protection against this type of development within Green Belt land was for the proper provision of sites across the borough, so it was pleasing to hear Ian say that Rugby Borough Council was finally beginning to start the process that would do this.

The first stage was to re-assess the total need for gypsy and traveller pitches that would be required in the coming years. Work was currently being undertaken to determine genuine housing need, and it was expected that the results of this work would be published in May. I shall blog more about this issue when the data is released.

The next Fosse Division Community Forum is scheduled for 21 June 2012 at a venue to be agreed.

Fosse Division Community Forum - 16 June

Latest Thursday night, I attended the quarterly Fosse Division Community Forum meeting in Withybrook where matters affecting, and of interest to, the Fosse area are discussed.

It was nice to see a good turnout from the local area at this meeting: four Shilton parish councillors were in attendance, along with a further five residents from Barnacle. This turnout was principally to hear the item on local policing priorities, which is when the Rugby Rural North Safer Neighbourhood Team ask members of the public what they would like to see the local police team focus on during the next three months.

The discussion was led by Sergeant Sam Oakley, who heads up the local Safer Neighbourhoods Team. There were a number of suggestions put forward for policing priorities, including carrying out extra patrols to try and curb much of the anti-social behaviour that seems to have increased around the Top Road area of Barnacle recently. The police were supportive of this request and agreed to adopt it as one of their priorities, albeit slightly diluted by rolling it into a wider priority to deter anti-social behaviour in Barnacle, Shilton and Ansty collectively. I hope that proper focus is given to where anti-social behaviour is currently happening, rather than where there are (largely unsubstantiated) community fears that it might be.

Helpfully, the Safer Neighbourhood Team keep a log of the action they have taken in response to this policing priority, which can be viewed here. At the time of writing, two specific patrols had been conducted by PCSO Matt Havelock on Friday 17 June at 9.50am and Saturday 18 June at 3.20pm. There is a commitment to undertake a minimum of 15 extra patrols during the next three months.

Anna Rose, Head of Planning and Culture at Rugby Borough Council, then gave a presentation on development issues in the borough. These focused on the proposed housing development at the Rugby Radio Station site in the east of the borough (providing 6,000+ new homes) and the Gateway development site in the north of Rugby town (which will provide a further 1,000+ new homes). Whilst not impacting directly on the Fosse area in themselves, these will be significant housing developments that will meet the future housing needs of the borough up to 2026.

More contentiously, Anna Rose also updated members of the public on the development of wind farms in the borough (the current planning application by SSE Renewables for nine turbines at Churchover can be viewed here) and on the appeals that have been lodged against Rugby Borough Council's refusal of planning permission for two gypsy caravan sites in Top Road, Barnacle. The first appeal, at land on the south side of Top Road (and known locally as 'Top Park 2') is scheduled to begin on 1 November, with the appeal at the larger 'Top Park 1' site to commence sometime after that date.

Finally, Tonino Ciuffini, Warwickshire County Council's Head of ICT, gave a presentation on the campaign to improve broadband speeds within the county, and urged everyone to complete a questionnaire on the broadband service that they currently received, as well as what they'd like to receive in the future. I've blogged previously about this questionnaire (which is being organised by the Coventry & Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce, with support from Warwickshire County Council).

The poor broadband line speeds that are being experienced by too many people in the county (including in Shilton and Barnacle) mean that we are increasingly being left behind as more and more public services, as well as social/leisure services, are being delivered on websites that need highspeed broadband availability to make full the use of.

Questionnaires need to be completed by 30 June. Click here to complete the questionnaire if you a a business, or here if you're completing it as a local resident. I would urge everyone to do this, as it all helps in getting the evidence needed to securing funding to improve line speeds.

The next Fosse Division Community Forum is scheduled for 29 September 2011 at 7.30pm at a venue to be agreed.

Parish Council Meeting - 2 June

On Tuesday night I attended the June meeting of Shilton Parish Council.

Introducing himself at the meeting was PCSO Matt Havelock who recently started work in the Rugby Rural North Safer Neighbourhood Team, which includes the Shilton and Barnacle area. Matt seemed keen to get to know the villages and the problems that are being experienced, and to help with this he has restarted the mobile police station scheme whereby he will visit each of the larger villages within his Rugby Rural North area in order for local residents to meet him, raise issues of concern or to get more information on police matters.

The mobile police station will be in the village hall car park, Wood Lane, Shilton between 3.15pm - 4.15pm on Sundays 19 June, 10 July, 31 July and 21 August. Sadly, timings do not yet allow for the mobile police station to visit Barnacle, and this matter was raised with him. He promised to see if it could be scheduled in later on in the year.

PCSO Matt Havelock can be contacted on (01788) 853853.

In other business, County Councillor Phillip Morris-Jones reported on recent matters at Shire Hall, including Warwickshire County Council's continued attempts to save £66m from their budget over the next three years. Part of these savings (a seemingly trivial £16,000) will come from the closure of Bulkington library, although local residents there are making good progress in their attempts to take over responsibility for the library to ensure it remains open.

Councillors also congratulated Councillor Morris-Jones on his recent election as Chairman of the county council for 2011/12.

The parish council considered its response to two on-going public consultations: Warwickshire County Council's proposals for improved partnership working (which includes proposed changes to the way community forums operate), and a consultation from the Department for Communities and Local Government on changes to the Government's guidance to local authorities on the provision of travellers sites. This is clearly relevant to both the settled and gypsy/traveller communities living in the parish, and it is appropriate for the parish council to express its views on the matter.

Those of you at the Annual Parish Meeting in May would have heard of the plans to replace the hedge in the sports field that runs alongside Bulkington Road and to erect netting to stop balls from straying on to the road. The parish council is keen to progress with this project, although it will not be cheap to do and the proposals will therefore require significant oversight and scrutiny to ensure that value for money is being achieved.

Councillors discussed this on Tuesday night and asked for a number of further quotes to be sought, as well as examples of where similar type netting had been installed at other sports pitches so that they were clear as to what exactly was to be provided.

The parish council's internal auditor has returned its audited accounts for 2010/11 and these were circulated to councillors. I will attach copies of these accounts to this post in the next few days so that you can see exactly where the money's been spent during the last year.

Councillors also agreed once again to sponsor the trophies presented to participants in the Shilton village sports day being held later this year.

A long meeting ended just after 10.30pm. The next meeting of the parish council will be held on Tuesday 5 July at 7.30pm.

Fosse Community Forum - 17 March

Click on the image above if you need to make it larger to read it more easily.

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.

Fosse Community Forum - Venue Update

Back in December, I mentioned that Warwickshire Police's Safer Neighbourhood Team were to look into reported instances of drug misuse taking place in the car park at Shilton Village Hall. This had been raised at the most recent Fosse Community Forum, and the Police agreed to target the car park during the next three months to try to address these concerns.

The next meeting of the Fosse Community Forum is being held on Tuesday 23 March, starting at 7.30pm. This was to have been held at the Village Hall in Shilton, giving residents a good opportunity to come along and hear what had been done.

Unfortunately, due to the unavailability of the room, the meeting will now be held at the Village Hall, Brockhurst Lane, Monks Kirby. I shall be at the meeting, and will report back on what the Police had to say for those of you who are unable to get to Monks Kirby.

A poster advertising this meeting can be viewed here.

Fosse Division Community Forum - 1 December

On Tuesday night I attended the Fosse Division Community Forum in Pailton. This is a quarterly public meeting organised by Warwickshire County Council to discuss matters affecting, and of interest to, the Fosse area of Rugby.

The main topics of interest for me were proposals for a rural CCTV system being rolled out in interested parishes throughout the borough. The system is being promoted by the county council and provides for a camera that sends images, via the internet, back to a central control area, which can be retrieved at a later date by the police if there was suspicion that criminal activity had been captured by the camera. It's important to stress that these cameras would not be continously monitored, so it would be unlikely that a crime would be observed as it was taking place, but they could provide additional evidence to the police for any subsequent investigation or prosecution.

A trial of the system will be held in Wolston in the new year, and I hope to go and see it in operation to judge its potential value for Shilton and Barnacle. The officer leading on the project also agreed to attend a future meeting of the parish council to give a fuller presentation on system's capabilities.

The use of CCTV cameras can be controversial, with some people objecting to the principle of being filmed and recorded whilst they go about their daily business. Other people find some amount of comfort in the deterrent effect it can provide (especially with the relative sparsity of rural policing). If the parish council did seek to have a CCTV camera installed in either village, I would be seeking a full consultation exercise with residents to ensure that they supported the measure. In the meantime, if you have an opinion on this issue, leave a comment at the bottom of this post or contact the parish council direct.

The forum meetings also provide an opportunity for the public to suggest local policing priorities in the area for the next three months. Shilton Parish Council has been aware for a number of months now of instances of alleged drug dealing/taking on the Shilton Village Hall car park. I raised this as a priority to be addressed, and it was agreed that Warwickshire Police's Safer Neighbourhood Team would focus resources on the car park over the coming months.

The police are required to report back on the outcome of their work at the next forum meeting. Helpfully, this meeting will be held on 23 March at Shilton Village Hall. I hope that as many local residents as possible turn up to the meeting to hear what the police have done about this particular problem, and to question officers themselves about any other concerns that they may have.

A number of other topics were discussed, including:

• The county council's Cabinet are to consider a report on the outcome of the Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service's consultation exercise at their meeting on 28 January. If the outcome of that consultation exercise is to recommend changes to the existing Fire Service (including the potential closure of a number of fire stations in the county which I blogged about in October here), a final decision on this will be taken at a meeting of the full county council on 9 February.
• A presentation was given on the planned housing and business development proposals at the former Radio Station site on the eastern side of Rugby.
• A presentation was given on the role and work of the Warwickshire Probation Service and the Community Payback initiative. This is the scheme whereby unpaid work is undertaken by convicted offenders in order to make the community a better place to live. It was reported that 60,997 hours of unpaid work had been carried out by offenders throughout Warwickshire during 2008. This may be something that the parish council looks at utilising locally to help improve the look of the area, eg. by undertaking litter picks.
• The Rugby Community Safety Partnership gave a presentation with advice and guidance for protecting yourself and your family from being the victim of crime, safeguarding your property and building safer communities. I collected a number of 'goodie-bags' containing helpful tips and advice (and a few free gifts!) which I'll look to hand out at the next surgery at Barnacle Village Hall. If you want a bag for yourself, leave me a message or let me know the next time you see me.
• A regular update was given by Warwickshire Police. There had been 30 incidents in Shilton and Barnacle that had been reported to the police in the three months September - November. There was no further breakdown of what these 30 incidents actually were, although the police did undertake to have this more detailed information available at future meetings. They also highlighted the new online Crime Mapper service, which provides information on reported crime levels for the county, borough or ward areas. If anyone is interested in seeing the actual levels of crime in our area, this website is well worth a look. (And you give you a headstart, I can tell you that there were two burglaries, no robberies, five vehicle crimes, one incident of violent crime, and seven instances of anti-social behaviour in the Fosse ward during October).

Overall, it was a very interesting meeting. If it sounds like it's your sort of thing, then come along to the next meeting on Tuesday 23 March at 7.30pm at Shilton Village Hall.