WALC Rugby Branch Meeting - 24 June

Last Thursday I attended the Rugby branch meeting of the Warwickshire and West Midlands Association of Local Councils (WALC) in Rugby. This was the annual joint meeting that the WALC Rugby branch has with Rugby Borough Council in order to discuss matters of joint concern and interest.

There were a number of different issues discussed, including fly tipping/litter, dog fouling and flooding. However, the issue that interested me most was an update from Rugby Borough Council as to recent developments regarding the production of the borough's Gypsy and Traveller Site Allocations Development Plan Document.

In May, I blogged that Councillor Tony Gillias had reported at the Shilton Annual Parish Meeting that production of this important planning document - that would identify where, within the Rugby borough area, provision for the 42 extra gypsy and traveller pitches that were needed between now and 2017 were to be located - had been delayed, and would not now be adopted until July 2012. At the time, I indicated how disappointed I was that this plan had been delayed from February 2011 to July 2012.

As with so much to do with local government, there is a long and tortuous history to the production of the Gypsy and Traveller Site Allocations Development Plan Document, and for a recap you should read my blog post from January this year. However, in summary, the plan would have allocated land for the 42 extra pitches that the West Midlands Regional Spatial Strategy said that Rugby Borough Council had to find. Each local authority in the West Midlands had to identify sufficient land within its area to provide for the number of pitches that the Regional Spatial Strategy required of it. Rugby's total was forty-two.

This was all well and good, until the incoming Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government decided to abolish Regional Spatial Strategies. In fairness, this policy was common knowledge by everyone well in advance of May's General Election, but it's implementation has left local councils (including Rugby) with a fair amount of uncertainty. It was the Regional Spatial Strategy that said Rugby BC should provide for 42 extra pitches, but if the Regional Spatial Strategy has been scrapped, how many pitches should it now provide for? And because of this uncertainty, Rugby has actually decided to do.......... well, nothing.

It has formally decided to suspend any work on producing its Gypsy and Traveller Site Allocations Development Plan Document for the next six months, in which time it hopes to get guidance from the Government as to how many pitches it needs to accommodate. Which means, at the very earliest, there will be no Site Allocations Plan in force until January 2013.

I strongly believe that this is bad news for Shilton and Barnacle. A Site Allocations Plan would have ensured that traveller sites were located in areas where they were most suited, both for travellers themselves and the settled community. It would have given clear planning guidance to travellers as to where Rugby BC would support their applications for sites, and it would have avoided the "one rule for us and another rule for them" argument that can so damage community relations. As it is, we are no further forward in finding a planning solution to the siting of traveller sites in the borough than we've ever been. And there's now no realistic likelihood of any progress being made within the next year.

The Government thinks that local councils are best left making these sorts of decisions, without having to implement diktats "from above". I am all for giving local authorities more powers and responsibilities, but on this issue I have to say that I think the Government is wrong. The West Midlands Regional Spatial Strategy evened out the amount of pitches that each council had to provide, to ensure that sites were provided across the region and that no one council area was required to provide a significantly larger number of extra pitches than any other council area.

As I said in January, Rugby's original allocation of 66 extra pitches was revised down to 42, and the surplus 24 pitches were re-allocated to neighbouring authorities. But now with no Regional Spatial Strategy to enforce that re-allocation of pitches, have a guess at how many of Rugby's 'surplus' 24 pitches the councils in Coventry, North Warwickshire, Tamworth and Warwick will want to volunteer to provide??

The hope is that the Government, within the next six months, will issue clear guidance to local authorities and the Planning Inspectorate as to how they are to determine applications for traveller sites. And if the answer is to leave it up to each council to determine, and provide for, its own need (as most councils want), then Rugby will be a big loser. Anyone who thought that traveller sites should be allocated more evenly across the West Midlands should not be happy at the scrapping of Regional Spatial Strategies.

I'm hugely doubtful, given all of the other national issues that need to be addressed, whether anything will be forthcoming before Christmas. But until it does, Rugby Borough Council are not going to do any more work on developing its policies for the proper provision of gypsy and traveller sites within the borough.

Parish Council Meeting - 1 June

On Tuesday night I attended the June meeting of Shilton Parish Council. There was a fairly light agenda for this meeting, resulting in an early finish and back home for 9.00pm. However, there were a few items of interest that were considered.

As part of the Shilton and Barnacle Parish Plan, the Warwickshire Rural Community Council had previosuly carried out a Housing Needs Survey to determine what local need there was for new housing in either of the villages. The Housing Needs Survey is an important document because Rugby Borough Council should only give planning permission for new housing development in the parish where it is intended to meet an identifiable local housing need. Up until the production of the Parish Plan, it was not known what the additional housing need was for local people with a connection to either of the villages. This left the parish open to 'evidence' submitted on behalf of a developer that what either village really needed was a new estate of five-bedroomed Executive housing, and we would have had no hard evidence to show that this wasn't the case.

However, the Housing Needs Survey only identified a need for 3 x two-bedroomed houses in the parish. The only new development that Rugby Borough Council should therefore allow is a planning application that will meet this identified need.

Warwickshire Rural Community Council has been looking to identify suitable land in either Shilton or Barnacle where these three properties could be built, and one piece of land recently identified was in Spring Road, Barnacle. I had my concerns about the suitability of this site, principally because of the dangerous junction at Spring Road/Top Road. A small development of three houses could still result in six or more extra cars using this junction on a daily basis, and I was not comfortable in supporting this because of the potential increase in traffic at a junction that is, effectively, blind from all three directions.

Thankfully, Warwickshire County Council's Highways Department shared this concern, and once they indicated that they would object to any development in Spring Road on highway safety grounds, the proposal was effectively vetoed. Warwickshire Rural Community Council will continue their search for other possible sites that would be suitable for development and will report back to future meetings of the parish council.

Councillor Bill King, Chairman of the parish council, also reported that our annual accounts for the last financial year had now been audited and given a clean bill of health. So, for anyone who's interested in what your money goes on, here are Shilton Parish Council's finalised accounts for 2009/10:

Income
Burial fees - £1,885
Wayleave - £8
Precept - £15,580

Total - £17,473

Expenditure
Cemetery maintenance - £917
General administration - £4,835
Playing field maintenance - £1,127
Car park - £3,007
Land at Ash Tree Grove - £950
s137 payments - £100
Barnacle notice board - £360
Street lighting - £3,788

Total - £15,084

Balance at start of year - £861

Income less expenditure - £2,389

Balance at end of year - £3,250

The next parish council meeting is on Tuesday 6 July.

Annual Parish Meeting - 12 May

Last Wednesday night I attended the Annual Parish Meeting in Barnacle. This isn't a formal parish council meeting, but is an opportunity for the community to come together once a year to hear reports and feedback from the different local authorities and community organisations that exist in Shilton and Barnacle. The venue of the Annual Parish Meeting alternates each year between the two villages.

This year, there were presentations from Shilton Parish Council Chairman Bill King, Warwickshire County Councillor Phillip Morris-Jones, Rugby Borough Councillor Tony Gillias, and representatives from Shilton Village Hall Committee, Barnacle Village Hall Committee, Shilton Playing Fields Committee and the BASIS editorial team. Sadly, in addition to these people, there were only three other members of the public in attendance. Perhaps, in hindsight, more people would've turned out if there had been a keynote speaker on a topic of local interest around which the meeting could've been themed. Something to consider for next year.

It was heartening to hear of the many achievements and progress being made by the voluntary groups in the two villages. There are so many good things happening, it's a shame that they often don't filter down to the wider public, who remain largely unaware of the time and effort put in by so many volunteers.

I was interested to hear the report from Councillor Tony Gillias because he provided an update on the borough council's Gypsy and Traveller Site Allocations Development Plan Document. This is an important document in that it will identify where, within the Rugby borough area, provision for the 42 extra gypsy and traveller pitches that are needed between now and 2017 are to be located. (If you're new to this issue, it might be worth reading my blog entry from January which summarises the progress made to date).

Sadly, the progress reported by Tony Gillias was that there hadn't been that much! Delays in producing Rugby Borough Council's Core Strategy has pushed back the production of the Gypsy and Traveller Site Allocations Development Plan Document, meaning the current timescale for production is now:

• Evidence gathering: February - July 2010
• Consultation: January - March 2011
• Publication: June 2011
• Submission to the Secretary of State: October 2011
• Examination: February 2012
• Adoption: July 2012

So despite currently being in the evidence gathering stage, the final plan won't be formally adopted until the London Olympics are underway. It's a constant frustration for the parish council as to how long these planning documents take to produce. Looking back over the history of this, the plan's adoption has now slipped from February 2011, to summer 2011, now to July 2012. Let's hope there are no further delays.

On a happier note, Tony Gillias also reported that he was to become the Chairman of Rugby Borough Council's Planning Committee for 2010/11. Congratulations to Tony, and lets hope he can use his influence to ensure there are no further delays in the production of the site allocations plan.

Finally, the Annual Parish Meeting was the first meeting attended by our new borough councillor Rachel Watts. The Chairman welcomed her to Shilton and Barnacle and congratulated her on her recent election victory.

Planning Application Decision

Rugby Borough Council has reached the following decision on a planning application submitted in September:

• The Stables, Wood Lane, Shilton - erection of an agricultural storage building - approved.

The full decision on this application can be viewed here.

Broadband Scrutiny Review - Update

You may recall that back in March I reported that Rugby Borough Council had decided not to undertake a scrutiny review into the availability of high speed broadband in the rural areas of the borough. This was a suggestion I had made in response to their request in February for issues of local concern that would benefit from a detailed review by the Borough Council.

Yesterday, I received a letter from Rugby's Scrutiny and Policy Officer setting out in detail the reasons why the Council had decided not to undertake a scrutiny review into this issue.

This is the letter:

Thank you for submitting Shilton Parish Council's interesting proposal for an overview and scrutiny review on access to high speed broadband in rural communities. The members considered a record 33 proposals and reducing these to a manageable shortlist was a challenging task. I have to inform you that your proposal was not selected for inclusion in the scrutiny programme in 2010/11.

The members noted that the issue of slow speeds and non-availability of broadband in rural and many urban areas across the country was currently being addressed through the Broadband Service Commitment. They felt that a national rather than a local approach would in the first instance be most appropriate, and a local scrutiny study would duplicate much of this. In the meantime, Virgin and BT are known to be doing some work to make improvements in individual areas, and I am sure local councillors will do all they can to act as spokespeople for their areas.

This is as far as the members' discussion of the matter went. However, I would add that, after the completion of the present phase of the national assessment of 'not-spots', it might be worth looking at this subject again. The funding of the national initiative to improve coverage will presumably continue to be problematic, and - given the dire prospects for public funding - this will be no less the case at local authority level. However, if the businesses that will benefit believe there is a good business case for putting up the money themselves, all may not be lost.

You might therefore consider resubmitting your proposal next year, possibly focusing on local initiatives. I would warn, however, that there will still be no guarantee that a case can be made for a scrutiny review. The uneven availability and speed of broadband may be a matter of public concern, but it would be hard to argue that high speed broadband is necessary for social networking and the types of communication with and by the council that are mentioned in support of your proposal. (Admittedly, though, no broadband at all is a different matter.)

In the meantime, there may be work that interested parish councils can do in their localities, for example by gathering evidence so that local businesses would regard putting money into a wireless scheme as a sound investment and, indeed, by co-ordinating schemes funded this way.

Thank you again for your suggestion. We rely on involvement from outside organisations and individuals to keep our overview and scrutiny work relevant to local people's needs and concerns, and I hope you will not be deterred from making other suggestions in future.

I'm grateful to Rugby BC's Scrutiny Office for this considered response but, regrettably, don't entirely share their confidence that the private sector alone can be relied upon to meet the demand in rural areas for highspeed broadband provision.

I shall blog again within the next week on my more detailed response to the issues raised in this letter and the way I think things could evolve for rural broadband provision.

Planning Application Consultation

This week, a planning application has been submitted by:

• Woodway Engineering Ltd, Lower Road, Barnacle - provision of a vehicular access door.

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 by Friday 28 May.

Rugby Borough Council Election Results

Voting to elect 16 councillors to sit on Rugby Borough Council for the next four years took place on Thursday, and after the votes had been counted the Conservatives were returned to the Town Hall with an increased majority.

By the end of the night, the Conservatives had won 10 seats (an increase of one), Labour had secured four seats (unchanged) and the Liberal Democrats had won two seats (down one). The overall balance of power in the borough for the next year will be:

• Conservatives - 28 seats
• Labour - 11 seats
• Liberal Democrats - 9 seats

The Conservatives now have a majority of eight over all other parties in the Council Chamber and retain the control of the council they've had since 2007.

The full result for the Fosse ward was:

• Rachel Watts (Conservative) - 1,242
• Richard Gunstone (Liberal Democrat) - 548
• Robert Bevin (Labour) - 452

Congratulations to Rachel Watts who has now taken over the seat vacated by Neil Campbell. I look forward to working with her through the parish council in getting the best for Shilton and Barnacle.

General Election - 6 May - Rugby Constituency Candidates

The nomination period has now closed for the General Election being held next month, and six candidates have put themselves forward to be the MP for the new Rugby constituency. The candidates are:

• Mark Badrick (BNP)
• Andy King (Labour)
• Barry Milford (UKIP)
• Mark Pawsey (Conservative)
• Jerry Roodhouse (Liberal Democrat)
• Roy Sandison (Green)

Polling will take place on Thursday 6 May. Further details about the nominated candidates can be found here.

Thou Shalt Not Pass!

Rugby Borough Council Elections - 6 May - Fosse Ward Candidates

The nomination period has now closed for the upcoming elections to Rugby Borough Council, and three people have put themselves forward hoping to be one of the borough councillors for the Fosse ward for the next four years. The candidates are:

Robert Bevin (Labour)
Richard Gunstone (Liberal Democrat)
Rachel Watts (Conservative)

The election will be held on Thursday 6 May. Further details about the nominated candidates can be found here.