Minutes of the Annual Parish Meeting Held on Wednesday

Minutes of the Annual Parish Meeting held at 7.00 pm on Wednesday 3rd May 2017 in the Village Hall,

Scraptoft Rise, Scraptoft

Present Councillors: Peter Elliott (Chairman), Emma Lee (Vice Chairman); Gillian Graham; Leanne Clark, Lynn Morris, Sally Skyrme (Clerk)

Apologies Cllr Chris Allibone, Cllr Andrew Hall

Minutes The Minutes of the Annual Parish Meeting held on 6th April 2016 were accepted as a true record and duly signed by the Chairman

Matters arising from the Minutes

None

Chairman’s Report

Attached

Any other business

There were no items for discussion.

Chairman

Chairman formally closed the meeting.

SCRAPTOFT ANNUAL PARISH MEETING 2017

CHAIRMAN’S REPORT

As usual it’s been another busy year for the parish council, with even more development planned for the area.

We started the year by finding out just how much the new local plan was going to affect us. We now know that even though the strategic development area across the Thurnby Scraptoft Valley, with its new link road from the Station Lane / Covert Lane island across to the A47 has for the time being been shelved, though we will almost certainly be getting the Scraptoft North development on the Golf course at some point, which could well bring another 1,400 new homes into the parish. Though to be fair, the time scale and exact number of houses is still being discussed at HDC and will depend to a large degree on how the Lutterworth strategic development area progresses.

One development in the parish I'm sure we won’t be sorry to see come to fruition is the Persimmon development, with all the problems that it's brought to the Parish Council over the last few years. The last house on this development was completed in early spring last year, and now over the last few weeks persimmon kicking and screaming, have started to level the soil they dumped on the site four years ago, into one level area suitable for a football pitch. Not as far as I can see to the exact levels and measurements they were asked to do, but I suspect this is the nearest that we are going to get. There still remains a number of things to be completed on the site, and we must continue to press for these to be completed before the site is passed over to HDC.

Davidson's development at the hall is now finished, with just a few clearing up and tidying jobs remaining to be completed, here the Parish Council is hoping to have the two pieces of land in front of the Hall passed over to them with an Electric point installed on this ground somewhere in the vicinity of the Hall gates which we could use as a point for a Christmas tree. Sally may have more on this later.

As one developer finishes another one starts, this is true with Bellway

Homes who have now started their development on land off Beeby Road, hopefully we'll have a better relationship with these developers than we have had with the Persimmon Homes development.

Getting away from developments, I'd like to say a little about the Community Hub, we've waited a long time for this, and I can hardly believe it’s actually coming to fruition. Our Builders Tomlinson's began work on site in January of this year, with work commencing on erecting the shell of the building starting this week. I think the next important step is to form a sub committee made up of members from the P.C. and public as soon as possible, so that things can be kept moving forward read for hiring the place out once completed, we have a completion date of mid-October this year when I hope we will be able to have a formal opening of some kind.

Recently there has been major changes to the bus services in Scraptoft with a planned withdrawal of services from a large area of the parish. To counteract this the P.C. initiated a joint public meeting together with Thurnby PC at Fernvale school, were over 200 people turned out to vent their anger at the bus company’s proposals. I'm now pleased to report, I think mainly due to the meeting and its turn out, that the bus company decided to reinstate 6 buses a day over the route that services were to be withdrawn.

After hearing rumours of changes coming to our Post office the parish Council asked the post office exactly was happening, and we were informed that talks with the co-op were still on going, but if things go as planned, the outcome will be that,

Post office services would be offered from to low screened, open plan style service points, integrated into the retail counter. The branch would be open Monday to Saturday from 9amin the morning to 8pm in the evening and Sunday from 8am to 8pm in the evening. To complete the work of refurbishing the branch, the post office will be closed for up to seven days during July or August. If anyone wishes to send any feedback about these changes I have the email address where this can be sent.

The grass cutting consortium set up with our neighbouring parishes two years ago still appears to be working well, as dos our contract with burnt oak for looking after Edith Cole Park with this in mind the PC will be continuing these contracts over the coming year.

Many other things have been dealt with by the Parish Council over the last year ranging from car parking and vandalism, to litter and Ducks crossing the road. As the size of the parish increases I can only see more challengers coming before the council over the ensuing year.

One other thing I feel must be mentioned here before I finish, is the retirement

of Jean Parr. Jean worked so hard as Clerk to the Parish Council for many years, and we wish her well in her retirement.

I think that we've been very lucky to find Sally here to taken over from Jean,

and I'm sure she's going to be an asset to the Parish Council in the future.

I'd also like to thank all the Parish Councillors for the work that they've done over the past year.

Peter Elliott.