Clerk’s Report November 2023

Clerk’s Report to Sticklepath Parish Council November 2023

If any Member of the Public wishes to see details of the correspondence or matters mentioned please contact the clerk, details below.

General Tasks

• I have forwarded lots of emails to the councillors, and read others which proved to not be of interest to Sticklepath.
• Planning – I have forwarded photos of the chimney in the main street to the Dartmoor National Park Planning Enforcement Department asking them to advise whether the complaints that we have received are valid. DNPA contacted the house owner but they did not do the work on the chimney. DNPA are requesting local knowledge about who does.
• I have written to Cllr Lynn Daniel asking if the council can be informed when the road sweeper is due.
• I have written to the organisers of the Police Liaison Meeting, asking if their notes from the meeting can be published on our website.
• We have had 4 changes to the Electoral Roll, 3 new people and 1 deletion. This leaves a total of 344 electors.
• Four emails have come through about different South West Water street works for the Sticklepath that is in Barnstaple, the contractor Kier who sent them say that we will not receive any more!!

Website

I have published the following pages/posts:

• Parish Council Minutes and associated reports.
• Disciplinary Policy
• Whistleblowing Policy
• Local Housing Survey reminder
• Councillor Recruitment Advert
• August and September Rainfall Figures
• Dog Orders Consultation
• South Zeal Carnival Post

I will not be publishing the Broadband and Mobile Signal review, as it is too long now after the release date (July)

Planning

• For information only, I note that a planning application from The Long House, Sticklepath in South Tawton parish for a ground mounted solar PV array has been withdrawn.
• To clarify uncertainty regarding NMA/0054/14 24m x 6.7m wooden double garage with front facing apex at Staplers. As Cllr Powell and Cllr Bell have discovered, there was a planning application for a double garage in 2014 which the Parish Council supported, and which was approved by Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) 0054/14. What has been applied for this time (October 2023) is a Non-Material Amendment (NMA), which means that the new applicant is altering the original plans (in this case making it smaller). This does not go through the whole application process and is checked by a Housing Officer (a delegated decision) to ensure that the change is non-material, i.e. it’s a minor change that would not alter the original decision. This type of application does not get consulted on, so the council are not informed, neither does it appear in any lists sent out by DNPA, although it can be searched on their planning portal. The Approval stated that the work had to be started within 3 years, which it must have been or they wouldn’t have approved the NMA. Since the building is therefore fully within planning regulations I have not added it to the agenda.

Election Costs

• I have heard from West Devon Borough Council, that they will be recharging us costs for the uncontested election last May. The total will be £69.86 for ”various tasks relating to each election area e.g. preparing and taking nomination papers, preparing and sending official notices, writing to candidates etc, and differs for each area dependent on the number of candidates who came forward. The cost of the nomination papers is the material cost and is multiplied by the number of seats your council has plus a couple extra.” This cost will not be invoiced until next April, so we will be including it in our 2024/25 budget.

Training

Devon Association of Local Councils (DALC) Conference –

DALC work on behalf of Parish and Town Councils in Devon to provide advice and training, and liaise with and lobby the National Association and other larger bodies. Their conference was a chance to hear about what they and other supporting organisations were doing. There were displays from DCC and WDBC and from suppliers which I briefly viewed.

DALC (like everyone) is short of money, so will be increasing the subscription costs in order to resource their advice service properly, 25% of the subscription goes to NALC. They are run by a board of 9 councillors, for which any councillors can stand, with several full-time staff . They are hoping to liaise more with their 356 member councils to provide the service that we need. Subscriptions are based on the number of electors for a parish, we are on the minimum. I, and some other tiny councils were asking that training costs should be on a sliding scale depending on council size too. They do not plan to increase training costs.

We had talks from NALC, DCC and the Devon Lord Lieutenant’s Office. DCC in particular were very badly received, with councillors and clerks angry that they are being ignored and overridden. There were case studies from Seaton and Broadclyst which were very interesting. I attended a workshop on communicating and engaging with communities.

It was useful to learn more about the sector, and in particular appreciate the difference in sizes between the councils, some there had budgets over a million pounds. I got a chance to meet my SLCC mentor in person. There were 70 councils represented there, with over 100 delegates, a mixture of about half clerks and half councillors.

Local Councils and Local Planning

I attended a free Scribe webinar on this, which was actually very interesting. The speaker was from the Town Planning Association, and he clearly laid out the different levels of planning and the problems with negotiating them. It is important to realise that there is no right of appeal after planning permission has been granted, so if we want to object we must do so strongly beforehand. He mentioned that this week the government has brought in a law which means that government policy (not parliamentary policy) overrides all other planning levels. I should be sent the recording of the webinar soon, so if anybody wants to see it to increase their knowledge of how the planning system works, I would be happy to send it to them.

Devon’s Housing Crisis

This was the first of DALC’s free Connect events, which are a new idea to “foster information sharing, and collaboration as well as providing a valuable source of knowledge and updates for councils.” They were mentioned in one of the DALC newsletters that I forwarded to councillors.

The speaker was Lord Richard Best, Chairman of the Devon Housing Commission, a very knowledgeable man who has worked with housing projects all over the country. It was the Devon Housing Commission that the Council filled out the form for in October, they are gathering information about housing in Devon over a two-year project, and the commission has members from all interested parties including developers and housing associations. He has discovered that all the problems that affect housing in the country, (such as lack of building, unaffordability, lack of long-term rental properties etc) affect Devon in a much worse way. For example, we had less social housing to start with, and we have lost more of it than other parts of the country. One encouraging bit of news is that the idea of requiring planning permission to change from a residence to a short term let will be happening, but I’m not sure when. One disappointing fact is that Housing Associations are disposing of social housing that is too expensive to maintain or upgrade, and are not replacing them. He is hoping they can at least bring in a rule that they have to offer them to other housing associations or community schemes first. He took on board all the feedback that came from the councils; Exmouth Council had put in a neighbourhood plan to ensure older peoples housing, but McCarthy Stone have bought up all the land and sell their expensive properties to incomers.

I attended the two webinars on planning/housing on consecutive days, so I may have got the facts from each mixed up!!

The next Connect event is Connect Event on 9 November, with an update on a Devolution Deal for Devon.  I will not be attending that one as it is less relevant to our Council. https://devonalc.org.uk/news/introducing-our-connect-events/

Agenda Items

8.7 Six-Monthly Budget Review

Cllr Bell was right with her corrections on the budget in the last meeting.

On the Subscriptions I have removed the comment that DALC doubled, in fact it only went up by 21%.

On the Village Environment, because we had included the £300 for weed spraying in the budget it covered all the extras. I think I took Eddy’s quote from January and took it off the amount left, without noticing that it included the weed spraying. In fact his latest invoice is less than he quoted even without the weed spraying! I have amended the budget accordingly. It is much easier with these invoices in, the Village Environment is within budget and I’m not sure there is any more to pay.

	Budget	Already Spent (including Oct invoice)
Highway – Verge Cutting	£160.00	£100.80
Highway – Weed Spraying	£300.00	0
Highway – Others	£130.00	£124.74
Playing Field Grass Cutting	£860.00	£821.70
Billy Green Grass Cutting	£110.00	£63.00
Oak Tree Park Seat	£1.00
Bins	£550.00	£525.11
Hire of Ride on Roller		£84
Footpath & Bench Repairs		£60.00
	£2,111.00	£1779.35

8.8 Amendment to Standing Orders

The amendment to Standing Orders Section 15 following the agreement at the last meeting is as follows:

New Version	Old Version
xv. request an extension from the Planning Authority for the period in which a response can be received, for any planning application notified to the Council where the deadline is before the next ordinary meeting of the Council,	xv. refer a planning application received by the Council to the Chair or in her/his absence the Vice-Chair (if there is one) of the Council within two working days of receipt to facilitate an extraordinary meeting if the nature of a planning application requires consideration before the next ordinary meeting of the Council;
xvi.      refer a planning application received by the Council to the Chair or in her/his absence the Vice-Chair (if there is one) of the Council if no extension has been granted, to facilitate an extraordinary meeting if the nature of a planning application requires consideration before the next ordinary meeting of the Council;
xvii.     facilitate an online agreement on a planning application received by the Council, only if an extraordinary meeting cannot be called
xviii.    ensure that a majority online vote has been obtained on the final wording of the response to any planning application agreed online before submitting it;