Heddon on the Wall Parish Council

minutes of the ANNUAL ELECTORS’ MEETING

held on wednesday, 12th may, 2010 @ 7.30 p.m.

in the knott memorial hall

The Chairman of the Parish Council welcomed seven members of the public to the 2010 Annual Electors’ Meeting, together with Councillor Peter Jackson and six members of the Parish Council.

Ø  minutes of the meeting held in may 2009

The minutes have been previously displayed in the post office, the library and on the village website.

Ø  the chairman’s annual report

This has been a year of successes for Heddon parish but also one of sadness at the passing of our long-standing Parish Council chairman, Brian Selman. Brian first joined Heddon Parish Council in 1966 and was elected chairman in 1979 and held that position until his death in August last year. It was my privilege to serve as his vice-chair for the last few years and I can testify at first hand how fortunate this parish has been to have had Brian leading the community for all those years.

We co-opted a new parish councillor later in the year, Richard Adams and we welcome him to his first Electors’ Meeting, as well as in his new role as deputy chairman. Richard has been particularly active in the development of the new sports field. The provision of a sports field for the village had been an ambition of Brian’s for 30 years or more (we were the only village in the Tyne Valley without its own sports field), so although he did not live long enough to see the first football match played there, he did see a short video of the first training session before he died. The Parish Council has named the sports field ‘The Selman Sports Field’ in his memory.

The development which demanded most of our time over the year was what we initially called the Gateway to the Wall project, which involved the total refurbishment of the County library building and its conversion into Heddon Community Library Business Centre. The Parish Council undertook the work under a development licence from the County Council. We appointed Summers-Inman, an excellent firm of Construction & Property Consultants to manage the project for us and in late summer appointed STP Construction Ltd to undertake the complete refurbishment. The library was closed in mid-September and the job was completed slightly ahead of schedule and on budget, just before Christmas. We were grateful to the staff of both firms for a job very well done. The development has received glowing praise from the County Library Service and we are shortly to receive a visit from the Chief Executive of the County Council. The building contains the new library and four excellent business units, one of which will be the Parish Council office. The community library is run by a team of 24 volunteers, all of whom have been trained by County Library Service staff and all of whom deserve a very big thank you from the whole community. They deserve particular thanks for maintaining the service on a temporary basis from the Green Room of the Knott Memorial Hall during the coldest winter we have had for many years. The responsibility for the development of the building has rightly been taken by the Parish Council, but now that the library is back in its permanent home, we are in the process of establishing a Management Group drawn from the volunteers and other members of the community who will take over the day to day management and running of the library.

The new single tier County Council has taken some time to find its feet and has been quite difficult to deal with at times, although noticeably those officers who formerly worked for one of the defunct District Councils are always the easiest to speak to because they were nearer to the community in their previous roles. The ‘path to nowhere’ which was recently installed at the east end of the Common is an example of the County not communicating. The Parish Council was not informed that this work was to be undertaken and the first we knew about it was when the machinery was on site and work had started. It seems likely that it will be some time before it becomes automatic across the County departments to understand that Parish Councils are the next layer down to them in Local Government. We are members of the East Tynedale Forum, a grouping of all the East Tynedale Parish Councils and we know that we are not the only ones who have experienced these difficulties. Having said that, it is important that we do have a good working relationship with the County staff and we work hard to make sure that we do.

We have been looking at ways in which we can improve the appearance of the village and one of them is to replace street signs, many of which are looking particularly shabby. Currently this is the responsibility of the County but it is a very low priority for them, whereas if we can reach an agreement to take over that function we can deliver it very quickly. On the subject of signs, the residents of Heddon Banks drew our attention to the problem of large wagons driving down Heddon Banks trying to get to Close House by following their SatNav instructions (whatever happened to maps!). We joined the residents in chasing the County to provide new signage on the main road, not only to stop wagons going down Heddon Banks, but to stop them from entering the village at all. The new signs have been in place for some time now and appear to be working.

We also recently replaced the public seating in Centurion Way and will replace others in other parts of the village as part of a rolling programme. These seats will all be made of recycled plastic, which is very hard wearing and relatively vandal-proof and they also comply with the ‘green’ policy, which was adopted by the Parish Council during the year.

The slow broadband speed in the village has been a continual source of annoyance for many years and an opportunity arose when the County IT department were installing the excellent WiFi service in the new library to put further pressure on BT to do something to improve it; so far without success. We will continue to try to find a solution to this problem.

There have been no major planning issues to consider during the year and those that did come to us for consideration were quite straightforward. In addition, a steady stream of queries and requests from both the general public and the County administration have kept us busy throughout the year, either by attending meetings or responding in other ways.

With the General Election and its interesting result in the forefront of the news this seems to be to be as good a time as any to remind you that Heddon on the Wall Parish Council is entirely non-political. The members are serving the community as volunteers and are not influenced by whatever political persuasion is running the County or for that matter, the Country. That being said, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my fellow councillors for their efforts on behalf of the Parish during the year under review and to add to that our special thanks to Councillor Jackson for his continued hard work on our behalf.

Finally, particular thanks are due to our excellent parish clerk, Barbara. We are fortunate to have such a conscientious and hard working clerk who gives far more of her time to parish activities than she is required to do and in the process keeps us all fully up to speed on what is required of us.

That concludes my report for the year 2009-2010.

Ian Armstrong, Chairman, Heddon on the Wall Parish Council

Ø  financial report for 2009-2010

A financial summary was made available to all attendees at the meeting.

Current balances of the parish council accounts are £22,598, down from £94,000 last year. The library project has enabled these balances to be reduced, in accordance with audit requirements, as some of the funds were already earmarked for this. Grant aid made up most of the funding for the library project, with £30,000 coming from reserves. Most of the funding was applied for through the Heddon Village Trust, which was an appropriate vehicle for funding such a community project. Balances of the Charitable Trust accounts total around £75,000.

Assets total approximately £1m, most of which is accounted for by the insured value of the Knott Memorial Hall.

Ø  county report (councillor peter jackson - northumberland county council)

The new Unitary authority for the County has been going for a year now, and we are working on the things that don’t work so well at the moment. The general feeling is that this authority has been planned for three years but that progress has been too slow; the pace of change is however now picking up. My role as a Councillor is as Leader of the main opposition group and Chair of the Scrutiny Group. We are looking at how the services in Northumberland are working for people and we’ve looked at several aspects generally. I chaired a working group that looked into how the roads and pavements were looked after and some recommendations have been made for improvements. I also chair committee that looks after assets of the council. The council owns 1,500 assets, 772 of which are buildings, which is an enormous portfolio of buildings, although some of these are not absolutely necessary for the Council’s business. These are being rationalised and also the way buildings are maintained is being looked at. We’ve had public meetings about flooding, maintaining post office services and also community safety in Northumberland. We are doing a lot of work related to the new emergency hospital in Cramlington, which shouldn’t affect Heddon to a large degree, although the services offered at Hexham hospital are being reviewed. We have also been involved with the care for the elderly programme and the new Manors Centre in Prudhoe, ensuring that better outcomes are realised for older people.

The budget for the County Council is under pressure, even before the financial crisis, savings of approx. £18m had to be found, and next year the savings target will be about £30m. It will be quite difficult to protect essential services, but I will strive to do that. Priorities need to be set, i.e. looking after the elderly and young people, roads and pavements. If you feel that anything important may be under threat, I would be pleased to hear about it. An extra £3m has been secured for the roads and pavements budget. The Planning system is not working at all well. This is right across the County, with planning applications taking about twice as long as they should. This needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

The snow emergency was the big event of the year, and is acknowledged that the County did not react quickly enough to the crisis. Council staff did work extremely hard, but the management response is too slow. Some elderly and vulnerable residents were trapped in their homes for up to a fortnight. The roads of Heddon were under a foot of snow, which was impassable for anyone without a 4-wheel drive vehicle. I did what I could to ensure that access in and out of Heddon was arranged, as much as I could. Lessons have been learned and it is to be hoped that a similar emergency in the future will afford a swifter response.

Questions:
~ There is still a lot of grit remaining in the village from the salting and gritting during the snow. Cllr Jackson will take this up with NCC as it is their responsibility to clear it up.

~ The matter of the essential repairs to the pathway down the Hexham Road was brought up; this has now been exacerbated at the top end of the road by the rabbit holes which are now causing even more damage. This will also be taken up and addressed.

~ Cllr Jackson also explained the Day Care Centre issues, resulting in better provision for the elderly at the new Manors Centre. Quite a number of residents in Heddon are now going to the Oaklands Centre in Throckley for day care.

~ The cost of the Northumberland News publication was asked - this is about £200k p.a. Advertising has been introduced to try to make this pay for itself, however Cllr Jackson does not support its continued publication, which does not appear to have many supporters in this part of the County.

Councillor Peter Jackson, Northumberland County Council

Ø  heddon library

We signed the lease some time ago and this has finally been counter-signed by the County Council. This is for the library building, all of the land it stands on and the footpath up to it and around the back to the church. It is a 25-year lease, with a peppercorn rent. It will be run entirely by the community, including the business centre. The County Council will only continue to provide the library service and stock, etc. The renting out of the offices will pay for the overall expenditure for the building. There is some interest for office rental.

Ø  sports field

The sports field has been up and running for about a year now and has proved a great success. We now have a spectacular pitch there which is used on a regular basis. It is used predominantly by the youth of the village and there is an adult team with about 25-30 regular players. Next year it is proposed to start a Saturday team as well as a Sunday team. John Stewart comes up with the younger people most weeks and a good community spirit is being developed there. This year funding will be sought for facilities at the field. We are keen to promote other sports at the field, e.g. village cricket days or possibly golf bays. The pitch is so good, requests from other areas are now being received to play on the field, although primarily the field is for the use of local people. I will be happy to talk to people about what facilities they would like to see on the field.