Parish Plan Steering Group Meeting

Thursday 2nd October 2003

Present:            Fiona Gould (Chair)                       Apologies:         Mary Jo Darrah

                            Christine Beresford                                                    Paula Vize

                            Jeremy Barber

                            David Wright

                            Alix Bremridge

                            Cheryl Dowler

                            Gloria Goodliffe

                            Mike Johnson

                            Nona Harrison

 

Actions from last meeting

•  The professional statistician's advice was that we should aim to receive responses from 60% of the households in the village.

•  The school was very keen to participate in the consultation process.

•  22 letters had been sent to the outlying areas, which brought in 2 people to the North Acre event; no other responses received.

•  North Acre exhibition: attended by 36 people. The total consultation sample to date is now more representative of the village. Comments have been collated and will be analysed to form a basis for the next stage.

Public liability insurance

This had been required for the exhibition at North Acre. A decision had to be made quickly for the event to go ahead, and the scheme proposed during that week was approved. The Parish Plan Steering Group is now covered by the Parish Council scheme. This means that the Steering Group has to be a properly constituted sub-committee of the Parish Council which involves no changes to the constitution. The Countryside Agency was happy with the solution.

Action: Meeting agendas must be publicised at least 3 working days and minutes must be also be made available to the public and to the Parish Council, for which the village web site and notice boards will be used.

Financial matters

Jeremy Barber (Treasurer) asked if individual petty cash expenses could be saved up until they totalled £20, for the sake of efficiency.

Travel on Steering Group business outside the parish would be refunded at 20p per mile .

Action: Jeremy to produce a statement at each Steering Group meeting.

Broadband

David Wright reported on the sub-committee's meeting.   The group had drawn up some terms of reference and a target to bring broadband to the village by the end of March 04. There were significant technical difficulties because of trees, lines of sight and the physical fragmentation of Longparish, which would be reflected in the cost of getting it installed. Also needed was a critical mass of users to make it cost-effective for the provider. The sub-committee was following up leads and would continue to meet and report at regular intervals.

Action: David, Alix

Consultation process

Two sub-committees would examine ways and means of taking the consultation process into the next stage.

Actions: Nona Harrison and Christine Beresford to examine opportunities for involving children and young people, with additional input from Corinne Bowman at the shop. This age group had been under-represented in the first stage consultations.  

A second sub-committee would look at options for consulting adults through focus groups and informal meetings with existing clubs/societies. Mike Johnson, Cheryl Dowler, Gloria Goodliffe, Jeremy Barber

Fiona would be available to support both sub-committees as required.

Both groups were to report back at the next meeting.

Other relevant events

•  Nona had attended a Transport and Social Exclusion conference in Winchester. She circulated a written report outlining the content of the day and its relevance to the village. This would be borne in mind in the future.

•  Fiona and Jeremy had attended the Longstock Parish Council meeting by invitation of their Chairman to share our experience to date about Parish Plans. This meeting was also attended by Steve Lees from Planning at TVBC. It is clear that he fully supports the concept of Parishes developing their own views on our their communities should develop and also that he is prepared to discuss his ideas and adapt his proposals in response.

•  Following on from a resolution made at an earlier meeting welcome packs were about to be produced for newcomers to the village. Jeremy/Nona/Gloria were to propose options to the Parish Council on 13 October.

Next meeting

Thursday 6 November 2003 at The Orchards, Forton (courtesy of Alix Bremridge)