Parish Council
If any Member of the Public wishes to see details of the correspondence or matters mentioned please contact the clerk, details below.
I have published the following pages/posts:
Cllr Jacob Powell attended a Traffic Management Training Course on 25th October and as such is entitled to a mileage allowance of 45p per mile (set by HMRC) for 53.8 miles (calculated using Google Maps). (Local Government Act 1972, Section 174).
The appeal for the Hayes Torr Storage shed is at the bottom of the original planning application on the Dartmoor National Park website – 0221-24 Erection of timber storage building, Hayes Torr Storage EX20 2JJ Appeal 3352543. The Council commented in June – “Sticklepath Parish Council have no objection to the building of the shed, on the condition that the temporary shipping containers, lorry bodies and outside storage are removed, as stated in the Design and Access Statement section 2.0 paragraphs 3 and 4.” We only need to write if the Council decides that it has “something new to say”.
It is unusual for us to be consulted on an appeal, because there is no opportunity for interested parties to submit comments when it the applicant is a householder. It is only because it is a business.
Cllr Powell has produced a report summarising the arguments of the Housing Officer in rejecting the application and Hayes Torr Storage in their appeal.
A working group considered the budget on 28th October, their proposals are listed in the ‘Report on the Budget Meeting’ in the Councillors’ shared folder. The budget itself, with 3 years’ forecasts is included in both PDF and Excel formats. We do not need to submit our precept request until January, so this is a first iteration of the budget for the Council’s consideration. The purpose of a budget is to justify the level of the precept request, and is one of the few actions of the council that is mandated by law.
Former Councillor Emma Bell has resigned from the Council. She will continue to Chair the Playing Field Committee, as a non-councillor member, and we will be electing another Councillor member in Agenda Item 5.3. Emma has been applying for grants on behalf of the Council, and may need to respond to suppliers. Therefore I have created a Playing Field Committee email playingfieldcommittee@sticklepath.org which all members of the committee can access, so that they can continue the work. I will be monitoring Emma’s old councillor email and forwarding anything relevant to the committee.
Emma also held the following responsibilities which will need to be re-allocated:
I attended a webinar about this consultation on 8th October at which stakeholders could ask questions. It was a high-level overview, that did not really provide more information. One important item that was mentioned was that councils should respond mentioning if they wanted to be included in 20MPH zones. It may be that we also want to express an interest in the EV charging rollout and bus routes. Unfortunately it is one of those consultations where you have a long questionnaire asking to what extent you support the strategies and objectives (very important, somewhat important, not important, no opinion) and which of the objectives is most important. It may be necessary for one or more councillors to fill in the consultation on the Council’s behalf, rather than attempt to all vote on the questions. I would suggest that we may want to comment on the ‘Rural Devon and Market & Coastal Towns’ section, and a general comment. You can work through to comment in your personal capacity to see what it is like. The Consultation ends on 30th November. Although you can view your responses online, I cannot find a way to save them to a document!
Devon and Torbay Local Transport Plan 4 – Have Your Say
I learnt a new acronym on the Transport Plan webinar, apparently these LCWIP plans are pronounced ‘El see whip’!!
The previous government asked regions to produce LCWIPs in order for them to assess where funding should go for their Active Travel plans https://www.gov.uk/government/news/101-million-investment-to-boost-cycling-and-walking-nationwide . The funding will be allocated to those that are likely to be used by the largest number of people, hence why they begin and end in population centres. I attended a webinar on the Devon LCWIP on 30th October, where I learnt that although this is a countywide consultation, there are also consultations on LCWIPs for individual areas, these include Dartmoor (which I received just after the meeting) and South Hams and West Devon. I questioned the fact that in rural communities we will never have a large number of people and does that exclude us; the DCC officer said that it was a very valid point and that his inbox was full of people expressing this. The guidelines for the LCWIPs were also urban biased, saying that gradients should not be over 3%, cyclists and pedestrians should be segregated and it should be by the shortest route. We all recognise that would not be applicable in Devon, and is proved so by existing successful tourist active routes. Another point well made was that we seem to spend lots of money and time planning and assessing things, but if there’s no money to do it what’s the point? I have included the slides from the webinar in the councillors’ shared folder.
Devon County – The Chagford to Okehampton route was left out of the final list. DCC were looking for those routes with the greatest number of trips, highest likelihood of developer funding, lower costs and less complexity They also wanted to ensure that every district was represented. Many of the chosen routes are already half built or have been in consultation for a while. I don’t think that we have any chance of them including a little village route, they are just trying to get some money from the government for the ones that are most likely. They are open to responses by email, not just their consultation, so the Council could send an email requesting more representation for villages if they wanted to. Countywide Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) – Have Your Say
Dartmoor – It appears that the DNPA already have some funding, and rather than set out a plan and then consult they are asking people at the start. The Dartmoor consultation actually encourages people to suggest new routes and upgrades to existing routes, and we could respond with Cllr Daniel’s route which has already had a feasibility study. There are some questions on priorities, so if councillors have a quick look at the consultation, they could suggest which to pick. Dartmoor National Park Active Travel Plan Consultation Do the Council want to promote this on the website and social media?
West Devon – The South Hams and West Devon LCWIP consultation has already closed, but if the Council wanted to email them as well, the officer dealing with it was at the webinar, so I know their email address.
This consultation is also an online consultation on whether we consider Fire & Rescue value for money, with lots of different questions. If we wish to respond some councillors need to look at the responses. Closing date 26th November.
The Council bank account (Lloyds) is intending to charge us £4.25 a month from January. As far as I can see the other charges will not apply as we do not have more than 100 transactions a month. We may have to reduce the paying in of odd amounts which is often done by fund raisers as it will cost us in future.
I have researched the other bank which clerks recommend (Unity Trust) and that costs £6 a month. The only bank that is mentioned as free was Lloyds. Some other banks that do free accounts do not accept Parish Council accounts, and would not have multiple signatories. Unless anyone can find another suitable bank, I think Lloyds will still be the cheapest, and it will save a lot of work to leave it there. Other clerks’ experiences show that the account switching process doesn’t always work!
I had forgotten this when doing the budget, so will now add it in! This means that our increase would be nearer 10% this year with the current figures.
In my own time, I attended a free hour-long webinar about AI technologies for Clerks, and learnt about some new tools that I hadn’t heard of before, and tips on how to use them. In particular there is an independent one that claims to be ethical called Claude. There was a tool to record and transcribe meetings, so that you could check your minutes. I actually used AI to create the list of shared documents in the Summons email!