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Minutes of the Parish Council meeting held on 8th December 2008 in the
Supper room of the Parish Hall at 7.45pm.
Present: Councillors Tulip, Williams, Mills, Reid, Eakins, Dunhill and Stephenson.
Also present were County Councillor Dale, 3 members of the public and one member
of the Press.
1. Apologies were received from Cllr Heslop and Cllr Latham.
2. Minutes of last meeting: The minutes were agreed as a true record.
3. Matters arising:
Trees at the Wellington: Cllr Dale
had ascertained that Tynedale owned the land along the road to the station behind
the Wellington and were therefore responsible for the trees. The Clerk would
write about the dangerous state and copy the letter to Cllr Dale.
School Travel Plan: Cllrs Dale, Tulip and Reid met with Jen Stephenson
at the school to discuss the school plan. The School has major concerns about
their walking bus crossing the main road and this would be an integral part of
their plan.
4. Minor Maintenance Matters:
a) Safety mirrors: These
need fixing and assessing. Cllr Mills offered to take this on with the help of
Cllr Reid. She would liaise with the Clerk over collection of them.
b) The No –Smoking signs for the bus shelters. Cllr Tulip volunteered to
fix these. The new stone shelters had space on the lintels that would be suitable
for the signs.
c) Play park: Cllr Dunhill would look at the work needed
in the Playpark when the evenings began to draw out again as there was no urgency.
The Clerk would chase up the quote from the fencer about replacing the wooden
roofs on the small climbing frame.
d) Lights in the bus shelters: Cllrs Mills and Reid would
check the level of existing lighting before considering special lights.
5. Correspondence:
a) General.
b) Tyne Valley Community Rail Partnership: A letter had been
received concerning a request for permission for the TVCRP to site an information
board on one of the bus shelters in the village. Whilst agreeing in principle
to this, there was concern expressed that the boards were very large and it might
be better to have a smaller board in all four bus shelters, especially if they
were aimed at visitors rather than residents. The Clerk would write accordingly.
6. Finance:
a) The financial statement and receipts were accepted by all Councillors.
b)
The following payments were authorised by all councillors:-
MF Anderton / Salary / November £391.00
MF Anderton / Expenses / November £31.01
Photocopier £18.28
Marchburn Lane Res. Assn/S.137 £30.00
NCC/Bench in Playpark £575.75
SLCC/ Subs for 2009 £94.00
Playdale £15.28
Northumbrian Water £15.52
c) Budget: Cllr Tulip had held two informal meetings
with Councillors to go through the budget for the precept, explaining the reasoning
behind some of the changes. Some items had gone up, some were expected to rise
and the budget had been held low for the last two years. By deferring some repayments
to the Capital account such as the repayments for the new bus shelter and by
trimming some of the maintenance figures, a figure of £24,500 was arrived at. It was noted
that a special provision was having to be made of £3500 to pay the Audit
Commission as a result of an investigation. At present the exact cost of this
is unknown, but it must be borne by the public purse. A proposal to round the
precept down to £24,000 by Cllr Eakins was defeated. The original proposal
to set a precept of £24,500 was carried unanimously.
7. Minor matters: Cllr Stephenson raised the matter
of the saplings between the tennis court and the Playpark. Cllr Dunhill agreed
to have a look, with Cllr Tulip if possible, and suggest alternatives.
Cllr Eakins has expressed an interest in getting the Parish
website more up to date with its information and he had already held a meeting
with Dave Porter, our Webmaster. Cllr Eakins will have a meeting with the Clerk,
who, it was agreed, should continue to act as the ‘gatekeeper’ for information to be
filtered through to Mr Porter. He will also then meet with the various village
organisations to encourage them to be more current with their information and
to get into the habit of forwarding events in particular. This will take some
time to develop. It is also important, as was raised by a query, to be able to
put bits of news onto the website which might appear in the Parish News for instance,
but it is important not to try and replace the Parish News in any way.
Cllr Reid attended the AGM of the Tyne Valley Community
Rail Partnership; one of the main issues discussed was the lack of late trains.
It was noted that Malcolm Chainey (Chair of the Partnership) now lives in Riding
Mill.
The date of the next Parish Council meeting will be the
19th January to allow for holiday arrangements.
The meeting closed at 8.50.
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