May 2022 Minutes AGM
Aslackby Parish Council – Annual General Meeting
Minutes from meeting held on 30th May 2022
Present:
Parish Councillors
Cllr Brian Wilkinson (BW)
Cllr Rachel Stevenson (RS)
Cllr Katie Long (KL)
Cllr Rick Miller (RM)
James Leach – Clerk (JL)
District Councillors
Cllr Richard Dixon-Warren (RDC)
County Councillors
Cllr Martin Hill (MH)
1 Apologies – Cllr John Pickard (JP), Cllr Malcolm Dodds (MD
2 The Chairman welcomed all present.
3 Election of Officers
JL welcomed all present. He asked if BW was willing to stand as Chairman again? BW said if nominated he would. JL said he had received 2 emails from the absent Councillors MD & JP proposing BW as Chairman if he was willing to stand and was nominated. This was unanimously seconded by all the other Parish Councillors. BW accepted the nomination and was duly elected as Chairman. BW stated that this would be his final year as Chairman. JL then asked for nominees for Vice Chairman. MD had already proposed JP via email, this was seconded by RM. JP had accepted this by email, if he was nominated. JP was therefore duly elected as Vice Chairman. All other Councillors accepted their posts.
JL reminded all Councillors that they would all be up for re-election next year, before they could stand on the PC.
4 Members of the Public – Alison Ray (AR) and Alison Carbilas (AC)
BW asked if the members of the public wished to speak at this point. AC asked why the signpost for the green burial site had appeared on the road sign at the entrance to the village. JL asked if this was an issue to which AR stated that there was a gentleman’s agreement to state that funeral traffic would go via Laughton Road and not through the village, so they should not be coming through the village.
AC asked MH if the correct permission had been sought to put the sign up. MH said that permission should have been sought from Highways for the sign so he will check if this was done and report back.
JL stated that if funeral traffic did come through the village it was probable due to the state of Laughton Road. BW said that some funeral directors had refused to use Laughton Road because of this. JL said that Laughton Road had been an issue for the past few years and was as bad as it was back in 2018. MH disputed this and said a lot of work had been done. Some discussion was had around the state of the road. MH said that I was a country road and a lot of traffic from the airfield now used the road. All they could do was keep repairing the worst bits.
AR said the lorries from the airfield could go via the Folkingham entrance, however BW and MH pointed out that there was no physical road at this end of the airfield so this currently could not happen.
5 Declarations of Interest – None.
6 Minutes of the Last Meeting – agreed and signed. Proposed by KL and seconded by RS.
7 Matters Arising
Some matters were still outstanding. These will be dealt with below or carried forward to the next meeting.
8 Planning
JL had received a revised Planning Application from AR re altering the garage site. This had been discussed at the previous meeting so no objections were raised.
JL had also received notification that the application from Mr Cook at Brookside for an extension had been granted.
At this point the proposed Solar farm at the Airfield was discussed. JL said that everyone he had spoken to was in favour of the development, in principal. BW said he had had similar feedback. A meeting had been arranged by the developers at the Village Hall on Thursday 23rd June and all householders had received an invite. Once this had been done nothing would probably happen until next year when a formal consultation would begin. This could take up to 18 months to complete.
MH said that if it did go for full planning, he would have to declare an interest.
JL & BW said that they had both received letters from Mr Thompson, re the proposed development from the Conant Estate. These had been circulated prior to the meeting to all Councillors. Nothing needed to be discussed at present as the PC was awaiting further contact from Mr Thompson re a public meeting. He was currently preparing an information leaflet for each household. MH did stress that any proposed development on the scale proposed by Mr Thompson would only go ahead if it had the full support of the village.
9 Cemetery
There had been no interments since the last meeting.
10 Neighbourhood Watch
There had been a number of scrap thefts from the Airfield in the past few weeks. All these had been reported to the Police and some scrap had been recovered.
There had also been some trouble in the close with all night parties, drug taking and car racing. The police had attended and it was currently under investigation.
MH said he had received an email from one of the residents about this and was trying to organise a meting with them.
11 Highways
JL said the road by the Church was currently closed again to fix another leak to one of the houses that Mr Baxter had recently built. He had spoken to the foreman and he had been informed that the closure would be until Wednesday this week, however they hoped to have everything done by Tuesday.
As a result of the road closure SKDC had not collected the bins. JL had contacted them and they had informed him they would endeavour to collect them this week so households should leave their grey bins out. Information to this affect had been put on the Aslackby Facebook.
AR said she hoped they sent a proper lorry this time as last time this happened, they sent a much smaller one and as a result her bin had not been emptied.
Laughton Road was still an issue and despite some repairs being carried out there were still a number outstanding. However, the junction, which had been a cause for major concern had now been repaired.
MH said he did not have a date for when the lower speed restriction would be done on the main A15.
MH said that the drain issues had been investigated and LCC now realised it was a lot bigger job than anticipated. They will be doing some more investigation work before a full plan of action was done.
RDW said that the parking issues within the village were currently being investigated and he would feed back as information became available.
All other Highways issues would be carried forward to the next meeting as JL had not finished contacting the relevant authorities.
Action: JL
12 Finance
JL said the current balance of the current account was £1691.15 and the savings account was £12,290.65.
JL had received a number of invoices which he already paid:
• BDG Mowing - £260.00
• Zurich Insurance - £214
JL said he had sorted out alternative insurance cover with Zurich who had come in £400 cheaper than the renewal quote from the previous insurer. JL expressed his thanks to RDW for suggesting Zurich at the previous meeting.
JL said the maintenance kit for the phone box had now been collected by SR and hopefully this would be painted before Church/Jubilee Fete this weekend.
Finally, JL had received a letter from Lloyds Bank to state that the Bourne branch would be closing on 21st November. This would mean the PC could pay money in at a local Post Office, but would be unable to do inter-account transfers for which you needed to go into a branch. The nearest branch would now be Stamford. JL suggested that we discuss the idea of moving accounts to on line banking, if this was an option or one of then Building Societies in Bourne. He will add this to a future Agenda.
Action: JL
13 Correspondence
All correspondence had been dealt with through in previous sections, apart from the following:
• JL said he had received an email from Ellen Massey re the possibility of a further donation of trees this Autumn. Further details would be available in due course.
• JL had received an email from LALC to state that Councillors should not use their personal email addresses for Parish Council, business. JL had forward this to all Councillors and it was agreed that thus required further discussion at a later meeting. RM said he had looked into this and it was not a difficult thing to do. JL will put it on the Agenda for the next meeting.
Action: JL
• LALC had sent out an email re a Networking Day. JL asked if anyone wished to attend but no one did.
• JL had received an email from Maisie McMahon with a template where the PC could list its top priorities, such as Anti-Social behaviour. He had forwarded this to Councillors and asked that they consider this in time for the next meeting so that JL could complete it and send it back. This should be done on a monthly basis, as it would enable the Police to prioritise their resources.
Action: JL
14 SKDC Update/Neighbourhood Plan
RDW gave a brief update as there was not a lot to report, plus he was still gauging what information the PC would like.
• SKDC have voted no to an increase in allowances for Councillors.
• RDW had looked into what would happen if the PC did not have a Chairman and, although this was not now relevant as BW had agreed to stay on for another year, SKDC would appoint create a Court and SKDC would send someone to Chair the meeting.
• SKDC will be fully re-opening the Customer Service centre on 6th of June.
15 Lincolnshire County Council Update
MH gave an update
• LCC will be maintaining the same level of spend for road maintenance, despite receiving no additional funding from Central Government.
JL asked what response there had been to the Postcard asking people to complete an on-line petition re road funding. MH said it had been extremely well supported but when put to Central Government it had, unfortunately, made no difference.
16 A.O.B
BW gave out future meeting dates:
11/07/2022, 12/09/2022, 17/10/2022, 28/11/2022, 09/01/2023. The remaining dates for 2023 will be decided at a later date.
JL asked what was happening re the agreed donation from the previous meeting re the Jubilee celebrations. SR said that it had been agreed all receipts would be given to her and these would be presented to the PC for payment.
JL asked SKDC & LCC what was happening re Ukrainian refugees. MH & RDW said that 440 refugees had been successfully rehomed. They had received over 3000 volunteers and these now had to be screened in relation to safeguarding. Once this was done the names would be passed over to SKDC who would carry out house checks.
They did state that even though volunteers may have registered on the Government website, they still had to find their own match with a Ukrainian family as SLDC and LCC could not do this.
17 Date of next meeting Monday 11th July 2022 – 8.00 pm at the Village Hall.
Meeting closed at 08.12