Parish Open Meeting
Chairman’s report April 2005
The make up of the parish council did not change during the year, but, most unusually, we did have two changes of parish clerk during the year. First Lucy Cook and then Julia Wiblin found the work too onerous to combine with the demands of a growing family. We are most grateful to Sarah MacNamee for stepping in to the post where she has quickly established herself in the role. We very much hope that Sarah will enjoy the challenge and be with us for some years.
In recent the workload on parish clerks has increased considerably and this has coincided with a commensurate increase in the nationally recommended scales of remuneration for parish clerks. In Drayton St Leonard we had fallen behind and over the past two years have been catching up so that we now offer the national scale. However, the clerk’s salary is responsible for a substantial part of the precept and most of the increase that it has been necessary to levy in the past two years.
The volume of paperwork with which all levels of government bombard parish councils shows no signs of abating. Much of the paperwork is concerned with announcing how targets over which we had no input in the selection have or have not been met, and a great deal of it is of little relevance to a small rural parish. Much of it does seek to consult though. The Council only tend to respond to such consultation when they feel it is in the parish’s interests or when the parish would be directly affected.
One area where this occurred during the year was over the possible downgrading of the B4015 to unclassified status between Clifton Hampden and Chiselhampton. The Council feel this will divert traffic through the village and have asked the County Council to reconsider their recommendations. We recognise that some solution to the traffic flowing from an expanding Didcot to the M40 needs to be found but we can’t believe that the road through Drayton St Leonard is it.
Pressures on the Green Belt continue. We opposed the expansion of Oxford to the South and our efforts, through PAGE, to stop the proposed gravel extraction, do seem to have had some success. It seems that the whole question of where the county should obtain its future gravel from has been sent back to the drawing board. It could still be the case that this area will be chosen but alternatives will also be fully considered and importantly the supposed RAF preference for this area has been retracted.
The Council continued to meet on an ad-hoc basis to consider the various planning applications within the village that had been submitted to South Oxfordshire District Council. The Parish Council are consulted on all such applications but is not a planning authority in its own right. The Council’s views are deliberated and both the applicant and neighbours have an opportunity to make their views known to the Parish Council. The Parish Council views are noted by SODC and the Council makes those views known in writing. The Council will not, as a matter of policy, attend SODC planning meetings either to support or oppose minor planning applications. The Council were pleased to note that a consent for a new house on the Willowbeck site has finally been obtained.
Also we were pleased to see that the “polo-mint” signpost project has finally been completed and that Broadband internet access has arrived in the village. Although we do not normally refer to church matters at the parish council it is of general interest to note that our vicar will shortly be taking over responsibility for the Baldons in addition to Berinsfield and Drayton St Leonard. Some changes to the pattern of services in the village seems inevitable.
Maintaining at least the existing level of services in a small rural community is a continuous struggle. The Parish Council are most grateful that so many parishioners lend a hand in one way or another and help maintain the strong community spirit that exists in Drayton St Leonard.
Simon Richards April 2005.