MINUTES OF NORTHINGTON COUNCIL ANNUAL MEETING – 14th May 2024

MINUTES OF NORTHINGTON COUNCIL ANNUAL MEETING

St John’s Church, Northington

7.20 pm on Tuesday, 14th May 2024

Present:               Dennis Nye (DN, Chairman)

Juliet Blanshard (JB)

Andrew Bason (AB)

Simon Walker (SW)

Wendy Simson (WS, Clerk)

14 residents

Apologies:           Margot Power (District Councillor)

Fiona Issac (District Councillor)

Jackie Porter (County Councillor)

Russel Gordon Smith (District Councillor)

Rhona Hatchley (RH)

Gail Taylor

Harry & Felicity Buchanan

Matthew Pellereau

Belinda Mitchell

Jane Bryant

Carly-Sue Ray

Zoey LeBrocq

Steph Savil

Rosie Warner

Val Brodrick

Sharon Swithinbank

Nancy Brooke

The Chairman welcomed all present.

  1. MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING

Minutes of last year’s annual meeting held on the 23rd May 2023 were adopted as a true record. The minutes were proposed by Mark Ashburton and seconded by Peter Lamb. The Chairman signed the minutes.

  1. MATTERS ARISING

None

  1. CHAIRMAN’S REPORT

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the Annual Village Meeting.  This is not the Parish Council AGM, which is a separate meeting to follow, but a public meeting to review the past year and discuss local matters of concern.

For newcomers, there is sometimes confusion between the Church Parochial Council and the secular Northington Parish Council.  This meeting is hosted by the latter.

We have just had the Village Hall AGM.  While the Village Hall committee and Parish Council closely cooperate, they are separately constituted groups.

  1. PLANNING CONSULTATIONS

The Parish Council is not a planning authority, but like all in the Parish we have a voice that is listened to by the City and/or County planning authorities.  We believe that the collective Parish Council input is a significant influencing factor when made in accordance with ‘material’ planning considerations.  Material considerations include such items as adherence to our published Village / Community plan, highway safety, loss of collective visual amenity, noise and disturbance, ecological impact and more.

We previously implemented a process to strive for better consistency in our reviews and to minimise the subjectivity from our recommendations.

After a careful review process, the Parish Council will typically lodge a Neutral /’No Objections’ comment.  If we see a problem, then we lodge an ‘Objection’ with relevant reasons to the planning authority.  The Parish Council rarely lends its support to any application.

In the past year, there were just five domestic planning applications that required Parish Council review.  None of these five applications caused concern.

  1. CANDOVER DROUGHT RELIEF SCHEME

The Candover Drought Relief / Augmentation Scheme planning application HCC/2023/0083 was made in the previous year with understandable widespread Parishioner concern.  Following Southern Water’s planning submittal, we held a second village meeting on this topic on 10 May 2023, with representatives from Southern Water.  This meeting was just prior to our last Annual Village Meeting.

The Parish Council, Parishioners and others lodged ~60 objections to the revised planning application that Southern Water submitted in February 2023.

A planning decision was originally anticipated by Autumn 2023.

A regulation 25 request (environmental impact) was made by the planning authorities, requiring Southern Water to provide more details.  The action is now back with Southern Water to supply this information and so the planning decision is on hold awaiting this further submittal.  Once all of the required data has been delivered, the authorities will inform the Parish Council, neighbours and consultees in case of further comments.

A resident suggested that as the pipeline needed to decommissioned by 2030 tht the project may not progress.

  1. SCOTTISH & SOUTHERN ELECTRIC NETWORK (SSEN) POWER OUTAGES

The village has been severely disrupted by at least 14 power cuts in the last 4 months.

The Parish Council lodged complaints with SSEN in February 2024, urging supply network improvements and asking for three key issues to be addressed.

  1. You urgently add secondary supply cabling to those areas of the village with a single cable and who have suffered the most.
  2. You repeat the program of tree clearance/pruning around power cable runs.
  3. You make an ex-gratia compensation payment to all consumers in our village. I do recognise that hot meal reimbursement was already offered.

The matter has already been escalated to include City Councillors, County Councillors and our MP, Steve Brine.

No adequate response has been received to the request for cable doubling.  All that SSEN could offer was the possibility of network enhancements in as yet unplanned 2029-2030 works.

Some continued tree clearance work has been conducted, but power-cuts continue.

With regards to compensation, they have only offered SSEN’s standard compensation package.  The standard compensation procedure is applicable for individual customers who have experienced four or more instances of power loss of over 3 hours on each occasion within the financial year.  Customers need to contact SSEN directly to check if they are eligible for this.

As no adequate plan has been forthcoming from SSEN, we will probably now need to direct our complaints to the Scottish and Southern Electric (SSE) board members.  This will be combined with the threat or maybe promise of a follow-on media campaign highlighting SSEN’s appalling supply performance.

Action: it was agreed that a meeting be convened by the Parish Council to look at how to lobby and get work carried out to improve the reliability of the supply.

  1. BROADBAND PROVISION – FIBRE TO THE PREMISES

We continue to try to progress access to Fibre to the premises (FTTP) throughout the Parish to achieve Gigabit internet speeds.

Little progress has been made on this project largely due to the barriers presented by Open Reach at every step along the way.

Our hope to be included in an early Government sponsored deployment has as yet come to nothing, possibly as it went out to commercial tender.  Northington does not present the prospect of an easy and profitably deployment for bidders.

We may just have to wait for the wider national deployment.

  1. VILLAGE EMAIL DISTRIBUTION

Our village email list is governed by GDPR regulations, so access to the list is funnelled through the Parish Council.

There have been about 70 village-wide emails sent in the year since our last village annual meeting.

We try to restrict emails to non-commercial matters that directly affect our village, although we do allow very local businesses to have limited access.

These emails range from missing dogs (very important to the families involved) to village hall social events, to matters concerning us all, such as the drought relief scheme.

We hope you do not feel inundated with the volume of messages.

There is another, possibly more immediate village communication mechanism provided by Lou Walker’s facilitated WhatsApp group.  Thanks again to Lou for setting this up.

  1. DEFIBRILLATOR TRAINING

Some years ago, Andy Fannon led efforts to get a defib unit installed at the village hall.  Village-wide training was made available concurrent with the installation.  As time has progressed it became apparent that renewed training was necessary.

Our Clerk, Wendy Simson, arranged for training sessions throughout the Candover Valley.  A well-attended session was held in Northington on 24 Feb 2024, conducted by Community Heartbeat.

  1. VILLAGE HALL LIAISON

The Parish Council and the Village Hall Committee enjoy a two-way communication process where the Council feeds back any matters arising in their meetings of interest to the Village Hall Committee and vice versa.  This process has been strengthened since July 2023, with Rhona Hatchley acting as the Council’s Village Hall liaison person.  Rhona contacts Beth Lamb, the Village Hall Chair, prior to each council meeting to ensure we are regularly updated on such matters as:

  1. Key issues affecting the Village Hall.
  2. Use of the grant received from the Parish Council.
  3. Hall Bookings.
  4. Other Village Hall income and expenditure.

As always, Village Hall and Church events are published by the Parish Council via the Village email.

  1. UPDATED VILLAGE / COMMUNITY PLAN

Simon Walker and Rhona Hatchley are working to refresh our community plan.

In 2013, Northington Parish Council conducted a survey on several key local topics such as broadband, housing, land use, parish amenities, footpaths, roads etc. The results were collated and published in a Parish Plan, representing the views of residents of our three villages. The original document can be found on both the Parish and City Council Websites.

A decade has passed since the plan was written and the Parish Council is now undertaking a similar exercise to compare the results over time. Such documents are now called Community Plans.

Consultation is now underway in the form of an online survey which has been circulated to parishioners, seeking their current views.  This input will be distilled into a new community plan, which is to be published by the end of 2024.

This document is an important reference for planning consultations and is considered by the Parish Council and the planning authorities.

  1. OUR ROADS

Juliet Blanshard is currently our Parish Council coordinator for Highway matters.

Neither the Parish nor City Council have any official responsibilities for local highways.  Highways are a county matter.

As much as the Parish Council would like to be able to lobby the County Highways department on behalf of the Parish, the only method of contact is as for individuals, via the Hampshire County Council website.

The issue raised most frequently is potholes and their repair.  On the Hampshire County Council website, it requests that we do not report the same issue more than once as this would put undue pressure on their system.  It further advises that a greater proportion of potholes reported are currently being treated with temporary repairs.  They are taking this approach because in the time taken to undertake a permanent repair between 4 and 7 temporary repairs can be completed.  They state, that ‘we understand that seeing temporary repairs can be frustrating, but this enables them to address any immediate safety risks. A permanent repair can then be considered at a later date.’  This may help to explain why the large potholes such as the one at the bottom of Kites Hill have returned so quickly.

The request for a reduction of the speed limit on the B3046 to extend beyond the Grange entrance is not being ignored by Northington Parish Council.  However, at this present time there has been no change of policy to allow speed limits to change unless there is a record of accidents occurring.  We are looking at other villages’ applications for a change in speed limit and will watch their result closely to see if they have any success.

  1. LENGTHSMAN AND VILLAGE MAINTENANCE

Andy Bason has continued to coordinate our regular Lengthsmen visits for village maintenance tasks.
These visits have focussed on the areas of the village that usually require attention. Whether that is cleaning road signs or clearing grips, there always seems to be enough work to keep the Lengthsman busy every couple of months.

Andy again coordinated our annual village litter pick on 21 April, conducted by a team of volunteers.  About 20 bin bags of rubbish were collected, although collection was hampered due to the already long grass on the verges.  Thank you to the team of helpers.

Andy coordinated a meeting with the Winchester City officer responsible for fly tipping investigation.  This gave us more insight into what is happening to try to tackle fly-tipping and how they follow-up on reports.

It is worth commenting that the recent spate of fly-tipping towards the Lunways while of concern to us is outside of our Parish boundaries.

  1. THE PARISH COUNCIL

2023-24 PARISH COUNCIL TEAM

My fellow councillors deserve thanks for giving up their time to work for the village good.

Our councillors were involved across the board, but as previously noted took on the following areas of focus.

  • Andy Bason has continued to look after Lengthsman Matters and village maintenance, including the annual village litter pick. He has also liaised with the appropriate authorities on fly tipping incidences.
  • Juliet Blanshard has maintained a watchful eye on our highways.
  • Simon Walker was welcomed back to the Parish Council via co-option after a few years break. He is taking care of our website and related matters as well as driving the process to create an updated Village / Community Plan.
  • Rhona Hatchley, who had earlier served as Parish Clerk, was co-opted onto the council and has been coordinating our efforts with the Village Hall Committee as well as working with Simon on the updated Community plan.
  • Myself, Dennis Nye as the elected Chairman, continued with village email coordination, the FTTP project, working on the drought relief scheme response, SSEN power-Cuts, planning matters and whatever else needed doing.
  • Wendy Simson is our highly professional Parish Clerk. She brings her experience of clerking for other local Parishes to her role with us.  She provides timely support and accurate guidance on what we as a Parish Council can and should do.
  1. CHANGE OF COUNCILLORS

Having had the privilege to be a member of the Parish Council since 2018 and serving as Chairman for the past two years, I am stepping down from the Parish Council with immediate effect.  This has been prompted by a planned house move out of the Parish.

With my departure, there is a vacancy on the Parish Council that was previously notified to the village.  We have a new volunteer to bring the council back up to strength.

  1. PARISH COUNCIL NEXT STEPS

The Parish Council will meet shortly to formally vote on co-opting this new member, electing their new Chairperson and deciding upon their respective responsibilities.

Please wish the Parish Council well as they continue to serve our community.

  1. CLERK’S FINANCIAL REPORT

WS gave the meeting an overview of the accounts.

The Parish Council made a small increase to the precept in 2023/24 taking it from £4,500 to £4,950 (10%), a similar increase to £5,346 (8%) has been agreed for 2024/25. The Councillors agreed that the increasing prices of insurance, training, and supplies for items such as the defibrillator necessitated an uplift in line with inflation.

Councillor spent a total of £4,216.57 which included grants of £2,100. Other costs included insurance, membership to Hampshire Association of Local Councils (HALC), hall hire for the meetings and the Parish Council website.

The Chairman has already mentioned the defibrillator training which many of you will know was repeated in Brown Candover and Preston Candover Village Halls to ensure a range of dates.

The Councillors approved an increase in the Clerk’s salary from £1,100 to £1,200 in 2023 for which I am very grateful.

The closing balance on the account is £9,838 this includes £3,565.57 of Community Infrastructure Levy funding.

  1. Any other business

A resident asked that the communities thanks be recorded to the Parish Council and in particular to Dennis Nye for his work as a Councillor and Chairman.

The meeting ended at 8:10pm.

 

 

WS 14/5/2024