Parish Council Meeting - 2 December

Last Wednesday night I attended the December meeting of Shilton Parish Council.

As well as updates from County Councillor Phillip Morris-Jones and Borough Councillor Neil Campbell, there were updates on a number of on-going matters the parish council has been dealing with. These included the proposed purchase of land in Ash Tree Grove, new seating for the children's play area in the playing field, and the proposed alteration to the speed limit in Wood Lane/Shilton Lane/Lower Road (which I blogged about here in July - who says it takes councils forever to do anything?!)

The parish council also formally signed the contract to purchase the red telephone kiosk in Lower Road, Barnacle that I blogged about here in September. The contract can now be returned to BT and the kiosk (minus the telephone equipment) should soon become a community asset and saved from removal.

Perhaps the most interesting topic of discussion at the meeting was the setting of the parish council's budget for 2010/11. As I've explained before, your yearly Council Tax aggregates the cost of four organisations into one bill - Warwickshire County Council, Rugby Borough Council, Shilton Parish Council and Warwickshire Police Authority. At our latest meeting, the parish council were required to agree what its element of the bill would be for the forthcoming financial year. This then gets added to the amounts required by the other three organisations and forms the bill that you receive through the post.

Our income from the Council Tax that you've paid during this current year is £15,580 (which is paid to the parish council by Rugby Borough Council [to whom you pay the tax] in two equal installments in April and September). Parish councillors held a full discussion on the range of possibilities for next year, and finally decided that our Council Tax precept for 2010/11 would be £15,700 - an increase of 0.77% from this year's amount.

Councillors were mindful of the difficult financial position many households were currently finding themselves in. Whilst the cost of the services that the parish council funds may well increase year on year (eg. street lighting, maintenance of the playing fields and cemetery, and the business rates on the new Church Street car park - which I told you about here in May), it was thought inappropriate to increase its share of the Council Tax beyond the very smallest of amounts.

It'll be interesting to see how the increase compares against the larger councils that make up the vast majority of your Council Tax bill. I fully expect this to be a big issue when the bills begin to land on people's doormats in March/April, to be picked up and exploited by the national political parties leading up to next year's General Election. All councils, large and small, are under pressure to keep Council Tax increases as low as is practically possible, and your parish council has recognised that fact in the budget it's set for 2010/11.

Photographs Around Shilton and Barnacle

Reading other blogs, it strikes me that one thing my blog lacks is pictures and video. The work of a parish councillor can get a little dull for even the most interested of reader, so I shall try and lighten things a little with one or two photographs taken by me from around Shilton and Barnacle.

In the first of an occasional (and probably infrequent) series, here are a few shots taken in a field near to Sowe Fields Farm during the course of an enjoyable hour-long walk this morning. (If the quality is a little poor, it'll be because they were taken on my mobile phone.)

The next post will get back to the council stuff, I promise!

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.

Free PCs for Community and Voluntary Organisations

Warwickshire County Council has 100 recycled computers to give away free to community and voluntary organisations throughout the county.

I've reproduced that press release from the county council for anyone who may be interested in acquiring one of the PCs for their organisation:

Warwickshire County Council has 100 recycled computers available FREE to community or voluntary organisations within Warwickshire. Applications are invited by 5.00pm on Friday 18 December 2009.

There are up to two computers available per organisation. Each computer package will consist of a Dell Gx240 desktop computer, with a Pentium 4 1.5GHz processor and 256Mb memory.

It will include a monitor, keyboard and mouse, plus OpenOffice 2.0 software. Modems are also available if required. A three-month warranty is offered with each computer, though no on-going support or maintenance will be available. Laptops may be available.

For further details click here.

Sarah James
Grants Officer
Environment and Economy Directorate
Warwickshire County Council

Would You Pay More?

Would you be prepared to pay more Council Tax to Shilton Parish Council to receive a higher standard of local services? This was one of the issues discussed at the November meeting of the parish council.

All of the local government services that Shilton and Barnacle receive are provided by either Warwickshire County Council, Rugby Borough Council or Shilton Parish Council. The costs of the services provided by the county and borough councils are funded partly by the Council Tax that each household pays, but primarily from central government grant (which in turn, of course, is paid for out of general taxation). The parish council is unique in that all of its income (except for a small amount gained from the fees and charges that it levies for things like burials in the Church Road cemetery) comes from the Council Tax.

The services that each tier of council provides is clearly laid down and specified in law, eg. the county council provides social services and education; the borough council empties the bins and runs leisure centres; the parish council provides street lighting and the aforementioned cemetery. However, some parish councils, unhappy at the services provided in their local area by their bigger brothers, are now beginning to look at doing it themselves where they think they can provide better services than those that they currently receive.

This can be done primarily in one of two different ways:

• the county/borough council already provides the service, but the parish council thinks that it can do the job better. This could relate to litter picking (borough council job) when the parish thinks that taking over responsibility for its own, more local, area would result in a better service. The borough could delegate the responsibility (and hopefully the money!) to the parish council, who then takes over job of keeping the streets clear of litter.
  
  
• the county/borough provides a service, but the parish council agrees to pay the county/borough extra money if it provides an enhanced service. This is sometimes seen with grass cutting, where the borough council may only cut the grassed areas in a village, say, eight times a year, and then the parish council pays the borough an amount of money to cut it an extra three times.

The key issue in either of these situations is that the public is likely to end up paying extra money to their councils to get a better public service than they would otherwise receive.

So are people prepared to pay more, to get better? Critics argue that the Council Tax payer ends up paying twice for a service that should be properly done in the first place. Proponents will say that you get what you pay for, and you can get better if you're prepared to pay more.

At the last parish council meeting, we received notice from Warwickshire County Council of the gritting programme for the forthcoming winter period. I happen to think that the villages are well served by the gritting programme we receive. However, despite our continued protests, the one through road that will not be gritted is Shilton Lane (from its junction with Lower Road to the Coventry boundary at Lentons Lane).

Should this be gritted? Yes, especially for the cars travelling at speed from the Coventry direction into our area. Will it be gritted? No. So the parish council agreed to ask the county if they would grit it if we paid them the cost of doing so.

This doesn't mean that it's going to happen (and certainly not in time for this winter). The county council have got to agree to do it, they've got to tell us how much it will cost, and we've got to agree whether or not we want to pay this in order to get the enhanced service that we would otherwise not receive. But it's a good example of where ambitious parish councils can make a real difference to the lives of its residents (assuming of course, that its residents are happy to pay the price!).

If you have an opinion on this issue, leave me a comment below.

Temporary Road Closure - Shilton Lane

The parish council has received notification that Shilton Lane will be closed to traffic for one day on Wednesday 2 December whilst Warwickshire County Council undertake highway works.

The diversion for motorists affected by the closure is via Lentons Lane, Coventry Road, Top Road and Lower Road (and vice versa).

Parish Plans and the Customer and Partnerships Committee

Last Thursday evening I attended a meeting of Rugby Borough Council's Customer and Partnerships Committee in Church Lawford.

The meeting was being held as part of that committee's review of the effectiveness of Parish Plans. A Parish Plan is a document produced by a community (normally through the parish council) that sets out how the people who live in the area want it to develop in the future. The plan will also set out the action that is needed to achieve this.

The Customer and Partnerships Committee is looking into how the borough council responds to Parish Plans, what could be done to encourage the preparation of plans in those parishes currently without them, and how the monitoring and on-going development of plans is carried out. The purpose of this particular meeting was to gather evidence from parish councils on these matters, which it would consider at its next meeting in December.

Of the 39 parish areas in the borough of Rugby, 11 had produced Parish Plans, and one (Shilton!) has one in production.

A number of parish councils were represented at the meeting, almost all of whom had produced a Parish Plan. The area of biggest contention seemed to relate to the extent to which the local planning authority (ie. Rugby Borough Council) would take into account planning policies and objectives contained within Parish Plans that were contrary to national planning guidance when it was considering local planning applications. Somewhat unhelpfully, the Warwickshire Rural Community Council said that Parish Plan policies should be taken account of, and Rugby's planning department said that they wouldn't be! This only confirms my long held view that the primary job of council planning departments is to apply national planning guidance, rather than show any significant local discretion in determining what should, and shouldn't, be approved (but that's a blog for another day!).

Addressing the committee, I made the point that that each community (and its parish council) faced their own particular challenges and had differing capacity to meet those challenges, and this would be reflected in the scope and ambition contained within its own Parish Plan. I hoped that Rugby would recognise this in the flexible way they supported the objectives of each plan, seeing that small scale progress can have as positive an influence on the community as more ambitious projects. I shall let you know what the final report says.

These sorts of meetings prove a good chance to hear about the work that neighbouring parish councils are doing, which in turn provides the motivation and challenge to achieve more with our own parish council.

So You Want to Be a Councillor?

Elections for 16 of the 47 seats on Rugby Borough Council (including one in Fosse ward) may still be 174 days away, but a seminar is being held later in the month for local residents who may be thinking about standing for election on 6 May next year.

The event, to be held on the evening of Thursday 26 November, will provide more information of what being a local borough councillor entails, the skills required, and the sorts of issues that a councillor gets involved in. Anyone considering standing for election to the Town Hall next year should seriously consider taking advantage of the event to find out more about what's involved.

I've reproduced the press release from the borough council for your information:

People interested in finding out about becoming a local councillor are being invited to attend a special seminar being held in the Town Hall later this month.

The 'warts and all' look at the lives of councillors will take people through the challenges faced by modern councillors in representing the community on the borough council.

The event's aim is to encourage people who may have previously thought they could not be a prospective candidate for whatever reason, to perhaps reconsider.

The programme for the evening will cover various aspects involved in being a local councillor including the responsibilities of the council and the role of the councillor, the skills that are required to execute the role and the time commitment needed to carry out the work.

The event will also offer a question time session with current councillors and is being held at 7.00pm on Thursday 26 November in the Council Chamber at the Town Hall.

For further information or to register your interest, contact Steve Garrison, Democratic Services Manager,on (01788) 533521.

Rugby Rural Link Minibus Under Threat

Perhaps the local bus services have been that poor for that long, people have given up even thinking of using public transport to get about. I'm not sure what else could explain the woeful use of the Rugby Rural Link minibus service.

I blogged back in July about the launch of a new minibus service in the Shilton and Barnacle area for people who had difficulty accessing existing bus services and needed to get to the local shops. The minibus is jointly funded by Rugby Borough Council and Warwickshire County Council, operated by the Warwickshire Community and Voluntary Action Volunteer Centre and for £2 per person each way (£1 for concessionary pass holders) will take local residents to a supermarket in Walsgrave. The minibus operates across the whole of Rugby borough, and serves our patch on Mondays.

At Tuesday's parish council meeting, Councillor Neil Campbell reported that in its first six months of operation, just 13 people had registered to use the service, of which only five had actually ever used it. Needless to say, Rugby are questioning whether funding a bus service for five people represents value for money. And with all councils having to look closely at what they spend their budgets on, this situation is not going to be allowed to carry on indefinitely.

So it's "use it or lose it" time folks. If you've ever thought about catching the bus to the shops on a Monday, register yourself on (01788) 539572 and help keep the service alive before it becomes something else 'that we used to have'.

Keep an eye out for more on this issue in the next edition of the BASIS magazine.

WALC AGM - 29 October

Last Thursday night, I attended the 2009/10 AGM of the Warwickshire and West Midlands Association of Local Councils (WALC) in Warwick.

Representatives from more than 50 of the town and parish councils in Warwickshire met in Shire Hall to elect the officers and county committee of WALC for the forthcoming year. But the most interesting part of the evening was the guest speaker, Councillor Hazel Williams, Vice-Chairman of the National Association of Local Councils (NALC).

Councillor Williams spoke of the new programmes that were being developed in partnership with NALC to further enhance and promote the role of parish councils, including new powers to create parish councils in areas where they did not currently exist, the promotion of the Quality Parish Council scheme, and the devolution of greater powers to parish councils.

Councillor Williams considered that all three main political parties were looking to introduce more localism into decision making - effectively taking powers away from the government in Westminster and giving it to local people to decide matters for themselves. I support this in principle, but expressed my concern that the talk was increasingly of delegating powers to "the community", rather than to town and parish councils. The tier of government closest to the public will only be taken more seriously when it is given greater responsibilities. I remain sceptical that any serious and effective delegation of responsibility can be given to the public in general (despite what the political parties say), not least because there is no mechanism with which to administer that responsibility. Parish councils are already here and need to be ready to step up to the challenge.

NALC shares this view and is lobbying the political parties ahead of the forthcoming general election to get them to commit to empowering local councils with more powers. In support of this, a 'Manifesto to the Political Parties on the Future of Local Councils' has been produced by NALC which it wishes all political parties to sign up to. The maifesto includes pledges to:

• recognise local councils as the first tier of local government and the grassroots of our democracy,
• ensure that local councils are represented on regional and county level strategic bodies,
• establish local councils throughout all areas of England,
• ensure that local councils are statutory consultees on all matters affecting their area,
• increase funding to improve the capacity and effectiveness of local councils,
• introduce a volunteering programme for 11 - 16 year olds with local councils as part of the citizen curriculum.