Planning Application Consultation

This week, a planning application has been submitted by:

• Top Park, Top Road, Barnacle - retention of the use of land and ancillary operational development as a residential caravan site, including the erection of six temporary amenity blocks.

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 Thursday 13 January.

Need to Report Potholes?

Cold Weather Advice from Rugby Borough Council

With the cold weather seeming to have started earlier, and being more sustained, than in previous years, Rugby Borough Council has issued some cold weather advice and set up a dedicated page on their website for further information. The web page provides links to all the key information you'll need to know in the case of heavy snow or prolonged cold weather and is worth visiting as a first point of call.

The council's most recent press release says:

Waste collection crews are trying hard to collect the bins in the current icy conditions.

However, with the cold weather conditions we are experiencing at the moment it is sometimes difficult to get the garden and food waste out of the frozen bins.

Residents are urged to loosen their bin lids and also try to loosen the garden waste where possible to help the crews with getting the waste out of the bins.

And for those residents on income-related benefits, the Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed that recorded temperatures in the CV21, CV22 and CV23 postcode areas have dipped below the trigger point for Cold Weather Payments.

Those eligible residents will receive an extra £25 within the next 12 days.

Additionally, all matches due to be played on borough council-run sports pitches will be cancelled this weekend.

For more information, visit www.rugby.gov.uk/severeweather

I must admit that I find it hard to believe that it was cold enough in the CV21, CV22 and CV23 postcode areas to trigger Cold Weather Payments, but the CV7 area was too 'warm'. Hopefully it's not the case of Rugby council forgetting that residents with a CV7 postcode live within the borough. I shall perhaps investigate that one further and report back. Until then, keep warm!

WALC AGM - 27 October

On Wednesday night, I attended the 2010/11 AGM of the Warwickshire and West Midlands Association of Local Councils (WALC) in Warwick.

Representatives from 40 of the town and parish councils in Warwickshire met at Shire Hall to elect the officers and the county committee of WALC for the forthcoming year, and to hear a keynote speech from Jonathan Horsfield, Renewable Energy Advisor for Warwickshire County Council.

The topic of Jonathan's speech was 'UK Energy Security and Peak Oil', which may not be at the top of every parish council's agenda, but was an interesting subject nonetheless. The concept of 'Peak Oil' is that it is the point at which the maximum amount of oil is being extracted from the earth. After this point has been reached and then passed, oil production will rapidly decrease, prices will dramatically increase, and the knock-on implications for travel, heating and food production etc will need to be tackled by governments, energy companies and individuals.

It was perhaps all a bit 'Doomsday scenario' for a gathering of mostly geriatric parish councillors, but the general theme was that all of us will be required to re-evaluate our dependency on oil and be prepared for changes in lifestyle and disposable income as a finite natural resource becomes ever more scarce. Jonathan outlined in practical terms what the impact of increasing oil prices could have on the services the county council provided, including highways maintenance, transportation, catering and children's services.

If you want to learn more about this issue, have a look at the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre website, or watch video from Warwickshire County Council's seminar held in June on energy security and the implications of oil supply for local authorities here.

Parish Council Meeting - 5 October

Last Tuesday I attended the October meeting of Shilton Parish Council. It was my first parish council meeting for two months and it was good to get back up to speed with a number of the on-going issues that had been a feature of recent meetings.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the main topics of discussion was the events of 24/25 September in Barnacle that ended up with the submission of a planning application for the creation of a gypsy caravan site for three families in Top Road. Borough Councillors Tony Gillias and Rachel Watts attended the meeting to update the parish council on events as they were developing, including the High Court hearing that was taking place in London the following day (more here.)

The parish council were being consulted on the planning application for this development, and after a full discussion, councillors agreed to inform Rugby Borough Council that they objected to the granting of planning permission, principally on the grounds that the area was in the Green Belt and it was therefore inappropriate for development of this type to be permitted there.

In other business, a local resident in Shilton had complained in the past about the speed of traffic in Wood Lane. As a result, Warwickshire County Council had undertaken a covert speed survey on 9 September. It was now reported that the outcome of this survey showed an average speed of 34.6mph along the road, qualifying it for a more in depth speed survey to establish the full extent of the speeding problem in the area. In the meantime, look out for Smiley Sid to be making an appearance sometime soon to encourage us all not to exceed the speed limit!

Finally, the parish council appointed Emma Raymont as its new Clerk to take over from Andrea Mogano, who had stood in following the retirement of Chris Warburton. Emma's contact details will be publicised in the next edition of the BASIS newsletter, but can be contacted at clerk-shiltonparish@hotmail.co.uk if you need to get hold of her before then. A huge thanks needs to go to Andrea for everything she's done over the last few months - the parish council would've been in a much worse state of affairs were it not for her efforts!

Planning Applications Consultations and Decisions

This week, planning applications have been submitted by:

• Land south side of Top Road, Barnacle - change of use of land for use as a residential caravan site for gypsy families, comprising three pitches for the siting of three mobile homes and three touring caravans, including ancillary works.
• Tree Tops, Shilton Lane, Shilton - alterations and extensions to dwelling to include extension to side and provision of living accommodation in roof space, erection of detached triple garage to front and alterations to access.

Full details of the applications (including site plans) can be viewed here (Top Road) and here (Shilton Lane). All comments on the applications must be received by Rugby Borough Council by Thursday 28 October (Top Road) and Wednesday 20 October (Shilton Road).

Rugby Borough Council has also reached the following decisions on planning applications submitted in June/July:

• Land west of Bulkington Road, Shilton - erection of a stable and tack room, and provision of a menage - approved.
• The Spinney, Shilton Lane, Shilton - erection of a day room/amenity block to existing authorised gypsy site - approved.

The full decisions on these applications can be viewed here (Bulkington Road) and here (Shilton Lane).

Planning Application Consultation

This week, a planning application has been submitted by:

• The Spinney, Shilton Lane, Coventry - erection of a dayroom/amenity building to existing authorised gypsy site.

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 Monday 13 September.

The Cost of Getting Elected

If you think you can get yourself elected to public office for free, then think again (unless you're aspiring to no greater office than a parish councillor!)

Getting yourself elected to your local borough council isn't cheap, and getting elected to Parliament will cost serious money. So you'll either need deep pockets yourself, have a wealthy benefactor who's happy to bankroll your political career, or (most likely) you'll have a political party that'll pick up the tab, or at least a significant amount of it.

Fortunately, all candidates who stand for public office must state how much money they spent trying to get elected (whether successfully or not). So with last May's General Election fast becoming a distant memory, here's the full list of how much each of the six candidates who wished to become Rugby's new MP spent in trying to win your vote:

Mark Pawsey (Conservative) - £18,869.29
Andy King (Labour) - £15,801.79
Jerry Roodhouse (Liberal Democrat) - £4,292.79
Barry Milford (UKIP) - £745.00
Mark Badrick (BNP) - £550.40
Roy Sandison (Green) - £249.46

Which comes to a grand total of £40,508.73 spent by the candidates. I suppose at least one of the above will argue that it was money well spent!

Not to be outdone (despite being considerably outspent), candidates seeking to be elected borough councillor for the Fosse ward on Rugby Borough Council have also published their election expenses:

Rachel Watts (Conservative) - £367.85
Robert Bevin (Labour) - £92.70
Richard Gunstone (Liberal Democrat) - £0.00

So if you fancy taking on either Mark or Rachel the next time they're up for election, at least now you know how much they're likely to spend trying to beat you!

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.