Site Updates and How to Post Your Comments

Hopefully you'll have noticed a gradual improvement in the appearance and content of this blog.

Those of you who were with me from the start may well remember the bland 'all white' look of the site. Things have moved on a bit from those minimalist beginnings, and I'm beginning to feel more happy about the way the blog's looking. I know that it still doesn't have enough video, audio or pictures, but I'm always on the lookout for how it can be improved so that it is a more attractive site to visit.

There are two new improvements to the site I wanted to tell you about. After each post, you'll now see a 'Reactions' tool. This allows you, by clicking in the box next to the description that best fits your reaction to the story, to give instant feedback on what you thought about what you've just read. It's helpful to me to see what people are interested in and what they're not. And it'll be interesting for other people viewing the site to see which stories have generated the most interest. So the next time you read something you like, or don't like, let everyone else know by registering your reaction!

If you've wished that there was some way to be automatically notified of when this blog gets updated (and you're not technically minded enough to subscribe to my RSS feed), then you'll be pleased to know that there now is. Email me (dan essex@sky.com - but without the space between my first and surname) and you will be automatically notified by this blog every time I post a new story, saving yourself time logging on to the site only to find the same story still at the top of the page, and getting to read the new stories as soon as I post them.

I have one further request to make regarding people adding 'Comments' on to the stories that I post. It's not a new feature on the blog, but it is one that's woefully underused. I guess you come to this site because you're interested in what I've written. I am equally interested in what you think. So if you've always wanted to post a comment, but don't know how to, here's the straightforward guide:

• The last ten stories that I've posted always appear on the homepage of the blog. The title of each of those stories is actually a clickable link (eg. the title of the story immediately below this one is "What the Parish Council Will Cost You"). If you've read a story that you want to comment on, click on the title of that story.
• This will take you to a new page containing just that one story that you clicked on (the rest of the blog page will look exactly the same). Scroll to the bottom of the story and you'll see a heading "Post a Comment" followed by an empty box.
• Type whatever comment you wish to make (good or bad!) in that empty box.
• Underneath the box, you'll see another heading "Comment as:" with a down-pointing arrow next to it. Click on the down arrow.
• You'll be presented with a list of up to eight options, but you only really need to concern yourself with the bottom two. If you want to add your name to the comment you made, select the second from bottom "Name/URL" and then type your name in the box that pops up (and then click "Continue"); or select "Anonymous" and your comments will be posted without you having to say who you are.
• Finally, click on "Post Comment" and that's all there is to it.

And if you think that this sounds complicated, try it once and you'll realise just how simple and obvious it actually all is.

Once people start posting comments, these will appear at the bottom of the each post they relate to. Have a look at my 1 February 'Scrutiny Review' story as a good example of this.

Blogs become really interesting when there's a regular exchange of differing views and opinions, so I'm calling on my regular readers to set an example and let's start having a conversation!

What the Parish Council Will Cost You

I told you in December that Shilton Parish Council had set a budget of £15,700 for 2010/11. I'm now able to tell you how this will be reflected on the Council Tax bills that you'll start paying from April.

It is important to remember that this is not the total Council Tax bill that you'll have to pay, but just one element of it (relating to Shilton Parish Council only). The combined costs of Warwickshire County Council, Rugby Borough Council, Warwickshire Police Authority and the parish council make up the overall Council Tax bill that you have to pay.

Each of these other bodies are currently in the process of setting their budgets for the forthcoming year, which will be added together before the bills are sent out to households. For a quick recap on the funding of your local councils and the Council Tax, read here and here.

However, if you'd like to know exactly how much you'll be paying in 2010/11 towards the cost of the parish council, the total annual amount (depending on what band your property comes under) is:

• Band A - £29.07
• Band B - £33.92
• Band C - £38.77
• Band D - £43.61
• Band E - £53.30
• Band F - £63.00
• Band G - £72.69
• Band H - £87.22

In true politician's style, I'll tell you that for a Band D property, this equates to only 84p per week. I'm hoping that you'll now tell me whether we're worth it or not!

Scrutiny Review Proposal for Rugby Borough Council

Each year, Rugby Borough Council carries out a series of scrutiny reviews on topics of local concern. A number of in-depth reviews are undertaken by small cross-party groups of councillors, who will gather evidence in order to make recommendations for change or improvement to the Council's Cabinet.

In order to assist in drawing up its work programme of reviews in 2010/11, Rugby is asking individuals and organisations (including parish councils) to suggest issues of local concern that would benefit from a detailed review by the Borough Council. With this in mind, over the weekend I submitted my suggested scrutiny review for inclusion within their 2010/11 work programme.

My suggestion is a review of the availability of highspeed broadband internet in rural communities within the borough. It can't have escaped anyone's attention in Shilton or Barnacle that the broadband access is slow at best, at times becoming non-existent. Where broadband is available, line speeds are so slow that making use of services like the BBC's iPlayer is impossible.

The problem is due to the distance from properties in the two villages to BT's exchange, which is located at Walsgrave. The further the distance between the house and the exchange, the slower the download speeds will be. I'm told my property is 6.1km away from the exchange, which is right at the limit of being able to access broadband services. And unless BT build an exchange closer to the village, things won't improve.

The Government are recommending that households throughout the country should have access to 2Mbps download speeds by 2012, and have introduced the 50p per month 'broadband tax' on all telephone line rentals to help pay for the infrastructure upgrades that will be required to deliver these improvements. The 2Mbps download speed is considered the minimum required to be able to watch streaming video services like the iPlayer and YouTube. But will these improvements happen before the end of 2012? I very much doubt it.

My scrutiny review would require Rugby Borough Council to establish how many households within the borough are currently unable to access broadband speeds in excess of the Government's recommended 2Mbps. It asks what measures Rugby Borough Council could take to ensure that those households currently without highspeed broadband access were not disadvantaged in accessing public information over the internet. And it challenges the Council to work with technology partners to look at innovative ways to bring highspeed broadband to rural communities within the borough through the use of wireless technologies.

There are many examples across the country where wireless technology has been used to provide the solution to slow broadband speeds. Hopefully, this proposed scrutiny review will help test the extent to which Rugby Borough Council are prepared to work with local communities to overcome pockets of super slow broadband.

Rugby's Overview and Scrutiny Management Board are meeting on 15 March to consider which reviews to take forward into next year's work programme. I shall keep you updated on progress as it develops. Broadband is no doubt a topic I'll return to again at another time!

More Suggested Bookmarks

The social networking phenomenon of the last 12 months must surely be Twitter. It's often been hard to avoid references in the media to the microblogging service that lets users post messages containing no more than 140 characters - a sort of text message for the internet, if you like.

It may have started out in 2006 as an innovative way by which to share snippets of information with friends, but these days large organisations increasingly use Twitter to get their messages out to the general public.

The public sector is catching on to this, and two Twitter sites that may be of interest to you belong to Warwickshire County Council and Rugby Borough Council. Both sites contain breaking news stories, with links to where you can read more about the particular topic. These sites are often a good first place to visit on the internet if you want to source the most up to date information from your local councils.

Which begs the question, does Shilton Parish Council need a Twitter page? Leave me a comment below if you have an opinion!

Regional Spatial Strategy Update

The Regional Spatial Strategy continues on its long, slow grind towards completion. If you remember, the RSS is a West Midlands-wide policy document, prepared by the West Midlands Regional Assembly, that sets out the long term objectives for the use of land across the region. Included within this are policies about the scale and distribution of new housing development, where investment in transport infrastructure will take place, and policies for improving the environment.

It's been of particular interest for Shilton Parish Council because the RSS will also specify how many new gypsy and traveller pitches each council in the West Midlands must make provision for during the next 20 years. This is being done by estimating the likely need for new pitches across the region, and then deciding how many of these should be allocated to each council area. Once this figure has been settled on, the local council (eg. Rugby Borough Council) must agree its own planning criteria that, once applied, will result in planning permission being given for the number of pitches that it is required to accommodate.

In other words, the Regional Spatial Strategy tells each council how many gypsy and traveller pitches there must be within their local area, and then the local council has to decide itself where within its boundaries it will give permission for these pitches to be located.

Back in August last year, there was a public consultation on the proposals for how many pitches should be allocated to each council area. The consultation provided three different possible options from which to choose, and which would have resulted in Rugby borough having to accommodate either 66, 61 or 55 additional pitches in the period 2007-17, depending on which criteria was adopted for allocating the 939 total additional pitches that it was considered the West Midlands needed.

Bringing things up to date, the West Midlands Regional Assembly have now published their preferred option, based, in part, on the responses received to the consultation. And they've had a change of heart!

Neither of the three options consulted on has been adopted. Instead, they have come up with a new fourth option, which is to allocate pitches as and where the need arises (and that was the option that would have resulted in 66 new pitches for Rugby borough), but in an attempt to avoid too many pitches ending up in any one council area, each council will have its allocation capped at a maximum of 42. And that is the new total that has been allocated to our borough (the surplus 24 pitches from the original 66 having been reallocated to Coventry[12], North Warwickshire[6], Tamworth[3] and Warwick[3]).

As a county, Warwickshire will have to find a total of 152 extra pitches between now and 2017 to accommodate the expected increase in gypsy and traveller population. This will be divided up as follows:

• North Warwickshire - 16
• Nuneaton & Bedworth - 29
• Rugby - 42
• Stratford-on-Avon - 42
• Warwick - 23

These proposals will now be the subject of a further round of consultation, with a view to a final decision being taken by the West Midlands Regional Assembly at its meeting in March. Things could still change, but I'll let you know what's happened as soon as I hear!

A copy of the full report that contains all of this information can be read here. Pages 8-39 of the report specifically relate to the allocation of pitches issue.

Normal Business Is Resumed

Apologies for the lack of updates and stories for the last month. A technical problem with BT deprived me of broadband access just before Christmas, and it took until just a few days ago before the corroded wire was found, replaced and I was back online.

For everyone who's kept checking back for updates when there's been none - thanks for sticking with me!

Planning Application Consultation

This week, a planning application has been submitted by:

• Weavers Cottage, Lower Road, Barnacle - amendments to the planning permission previously given for the erection of a first floor rear extension.

Full details of the application (including site plans) can be found by clicking here. All comments on the application must be received by Rugby Borough Council.

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.