April 26, 2000

Chairman’s Report 1999 - 2000

Tim Daw 26 April 2000

I have been honoured to be your chairman for the last year; I hope I have represented you as you would wish.

This millennial year has been a busy one for the village, the council and many of us personally.

The parish council gained a new member who joined this year, Mrs Butcher, and I am sure we all appreciate the hard work she has done on behalf of the council and of the village. We have also appointed a joint (with Etchilhampton) school governor this year.

The village as benefited from the voluntary activities of the Millennium committee, both for the various festivities and from organising and implementing a tree and stone planting program that will be a lasting memorial. Our thanks go to them as well.

We also can celebrate the completion of the school and its excellent Ofsted reports, again a lot of voluntary labour has made this a success.

The village as whole thrives with many different clubs and societies of people giving up their free time and creating value for all. Only last month many of us enjoyed the pantomime for instance.

As Chairman I feel disappointed that I haven’t managed to drive the business of the council forward faster. In many ways I am sorry that despite much hard work we haven’t finished many projects this year. The dead hand of bureaucracy seems to reduce all progress to a crawl.

We are still slowly going through the steps we need to take to improve the access to the Green, we are still battling to improve footpaths, though there was a success with the new kissing gates and bridge, and we are still being exercised by the amenity area on the glebe.

The council also spends an immense amount of time just keeping the normal business of a council going, making sure that planning decisions have a local input, keeping the grass mown and battling for the interests of the village with the many many layers of committees, councils, and bodies that control our every move. My thanks to all the members for their ceaseless and unrecognised work through out the year. And I would particularly like to thank the Clerk for all her hard work, the job doesn’t get any easier.

She also has accepted the extra burden imposed on us by ourselves of being on a pilot project to put our Audit out to tender. This opening up of a monopoly to market forces should show benefits to us and the ratepayers.
This year also saw the introduction of the Wigglybus. My cynical view is that so far all the hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on this venture has done is given a few people a few cheap journeys, closed down a couple of regular bus routes and enabled a lot of consultants do a lot of consulting. I hope I will be proved wrong because in the next year rural transport is going to be a major issue and good solutions are hard to find. I hope the council will not give into every single-issue interest group on this matter and continue to display its usual healthy scepticism.

In the next year I am sure we will have even more paper from above showered onto us, that we will finish some of our projects and that we will continue to try to do the best we can for the whole village. And I hope I can continue to serve the village and the council in any way I can.

Posted by timdaw at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)

ANNUAL PARISH MEETING

MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL PARISH MEETING
Held in the Village Hall, All Cannings on Wednesday 26th April 2000 at 7.30p.m.

MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL PARISH MEETING
Held in the Village Hall, All Cannings on Wednesday 26th April 2000 at 7.30p.m.
PRESENT: Mr. T.Daw ( in the chair)
Mrs E Currie, Mr C. Butcher, Dr Hollway, Mrs Butcher, Mr Hunt,
APOLOGIES: Mr D.J.Willmott(WCC) ,Mrs Riseley- Prichard and Mrs J Combe

CHAIRMAN’S REPORT:
The Chairman gave a report of the year’s work undertaken by the Parish Council. A copy is attached to the Minutes.

MINUTES:

Minutes of the Annual Parish Meeting held on 28th April 1999 were read, confirmed as the true record and signed by the Chairman.

MATTERS ARISING:

Millennium committee; Many successful activities have taken place during the year and various projects such as the memorial Sarsen stones and cemetery gates are still in progress.
Litter Grant: No litter grant has been received from KDC for the last two years. The Clerk was asked to see if more free skips could be ordered due to the increase in population in the last year.

ACCOUNTS:
A summary of payments and receipts for the financial year ending 31st March 2000 was given in the new format by the Clerk.
Actual receipts for the year was £8,049.21 and payments were £11,706.56 (incl. £7,000 transfer from leisure investment account)
Balances were given as follows;

GENERAL ACCOUNT £ 15,496.85
BURIAL ACCOUNT £331.15
TOTAL BALANCES £15,828.00
It was resolved that the accounts be accepted. The Chairman signed
the accounts. It was noted that no litter grant had appeared in the books , the Clerk was asked to enquire about this with Kennet District Council.

DISCUSSION PERIOD: Nothing was brought forward

There being no other business the meeting closed at 7.25p.m

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Chairman Date

Posted by timdaw at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)