January 2022 Minutes
STUBTON PARISH COUNCIL
Minutes of the Parish Council Mee2ng held on Thursday 13th January 2022
Present
Cllr Mar,n Davis - Chair
Cllr Andrew Smith
Cllr Jackie Warren
Cllr Rick Crooks
1. Introduction and announcement from the chair
The chair welcomed everyone and explained the current Covid regulations; that all should be masked; that the meeting will be recorded for minuting purposes and that he was the acting ‘Proper Officer’ in the absence of a Clerk.
He announced that he will be stepping down as Chair at the May 2022 AGM, and resigning at the end of that meeting, having been a counsellor for eight years and chair for over 2 years.
He announced that Councillor Butler had resigned as councillor on the 5th of January 2022, and the Chair thanked him for all his work.
Councillor Davis read out a eulogy, submitted by the previous Chair, Hugh Wilson, for the late Vic Kerr, who was for many years, a local councillor, and who worked closely with the Stubton Parish Council (see attachment #1)
2. Apologies for Absence.
District Councillor Alexander Maughan, who is attending the Westborough & Dry Doddington Parish Council meeting.
SKDC Penny Milnes who is unwell
3. Declaration of interest.
None
4. Open forum
• A resident queried the postbox re-painting being very poor and the village gates requiring repainting with the Dodd Lane ones have been damaged again. Councillor Davis has still to set up a working party for the gates’ repainting, and Councillor Warren offered to chase up re-the poor paint job on the postbox.
• A resident raised the issue of planting, adjacent to Mayglen and asked why it was not on the agenda. Councillor Davis explained that this item was resolved at the last meeting, with the resolution to go ahead and plant.
• A resident asked if the Best Kept Village signs of 2012 could be replaced with 2021 signs. Councillor Davis will see if this can be possible, as LCC Highways will not provide new signs, and that resident offered his assistance in this matter.
5 Minutes of meeting held on 20th October 2021 to be agreed and approved.
This was proposed, seconded and carried, as a true and accurate record, and signed by the Chair.
6. Update from DC Alexander Maughan.
In the absence of District Councillor Maughan, Councillor Davis read out the report he had submitted.(see attachment #2)
7. Update from SKDC Councillor Penny and Milnes
None
8. Financial update
8.1 Payment requiring approval. nil
8.2 Payments since last meeting. CSW £40 awaiting invoice; receipt of £400 from best kept village competition.
8.3 Current finance situation. Available spend £2742.75 (see attached#3)
8.4 Consideration for spending excess monies held by PC. Councillor Crooks wished it to be minuted “what our projected financial position might be for 2022 re.expecting a precept of £1400, minus the consideration for a potential election, would leave balance of around £1200-£1300.”
9. Community matters
9.1 Council Spend.
9.1.1
BKVC award £400: suggestion of a plaque for the 2021 accolade, to be mounted on the village hall wall. A resident wished some £50 of the award monies to go to planting at the green, adjacent to Mayglen, and another resident said she would match that figure.
Councillor Crooks therefore proposed a motion that the Council spend: ( i ) £50 towards planting;
( ii ) to procure ( to a maximum spend of £100 ) a plaque for our Village Hall, and ( iii ) the balance of the award to be ring-fenced for ‘village beautification’.
This was seconded by Councillor Davis and the vote carried unanimously.
9.1.2
Defibrillator fund: Councillor Davis explained that the current balance of the fund is £437.85.
He wished to clarify to all that the defibrillator was originally agreed to be supported by fundraising and private donations, and not from the PC precept. Councillor Warren let it be known that the Stubton Hub were going to organise a fundraiser to support the defibrillator fund.
9.1.3
The Village Signage survey: After discussion, it was agreed that the village sign survey would be hand-delivered to all Stubton households, rather than by email & online.
Further discussion concluded that we would not use an email shot, due to our current GDPR restraints.
9.2 speed reduction options in the village.
Councillor Davis explained that this has consistently been an item appearing on historical minutes, and made all aware of what had been proposed previously and what had been disallowed by highways.
9.2.1 to 9.2.3
Community speed watch (CSW). We have joined CSW at a cost of £40 and it was proposed to set up a sub-committee to take this forward. Parish residents of Mayglen volunteered to be the co-ordinators for the community speed watch. Councillor Crooks suggested that we don’t have to operate this through the CSW scheme, and proposed an independent cheaper procurement of Speed Indication Device (SID) equipment. He also proposed a motion that the sub-committee look at all the possibilities of speed reduction in the village and report back to the Parish council at the next PC meeting; the above was voted on and carried unanimously.
Councillor Crooks additionally wanted it to be minuted that “in 2019, a joint committees meeting of the VHMC and SSC, together with the Parish Council, had agreed that this endeavour would be jointly funded.” Councillor Crooks was asked provide the minutes to show this, as that recollection was queried.
Following a discussion about who should be sourcing the funding for endeavour, Councillor Crooks proposed that the subcommittee above would also be responsible to investigate the matter of finding any necessary funding. This was proposed and seconded; voted and carried, with one abstention from the Chair.
9.3 —
9.4 Update on the renovation of telephone box housing the defibrillator. Councillor Davis said that three quotations for renovation had been received; they were £375, £400, and £470. It was voted unanimously to accept the middle quotation of £400. Councillor Warren is to pass the quotation details on to the Parish Council Chair.
9.5 Plans for celebrating the Queens Jubilee in June 2022. Councillor Warren said that the Stubton Hub had itself, just voted to organise the celebrations with the idea of a street party, on Sunday 5th June 2022. Councillor Smith agreed to be the Parish Council representative as we would support the Hub in organising the celebrations for the Jubilee. This was moved and voted in favour, unanimously.
10. Recruitment of new Clerk.
Councillor Davis announced that the Parish Council had only one interested applicant for this position, and he proposed appointing Jenny Taylor as the new Parish council Clerk. This was voted on, and passed unanimously.
11. Date and time of next meeting.
The next meeting will be on Wednesday 16th of March 2022, at 7.30pm, but this could be dependant on the availability of the village hall, re- proposed upcoming building works.
Attachment #1
District Councillor Victor (Vic) Kerr.
Councillor Vic Kerr was the representative for Lovedon Ward on SKDC for many years. During my time at Chair of Stubton PC, Vic was a constant help and support, always with a sense of humour, with all issues affecting Stubton and relating to SKDC.
He rarely missed a Parish Council meeting and was greatly supportive of everything to do with local communities. Born into a farming family in Westborough there wasn’t much that Vic didn’t know about matters affecting the local area that came within his Loveden ward.
Stubton benefitted in so many ways from his local knowledge and advice and I would like his help and enthusiasm acknowledged and recorded in the Minutes.
Hugh Wilson
5th January 2022
Attachment #2
Councillor Alexander Maughan Report January 2022
Budget 2022/23
Similar to the Parish Council LCC is setting the budget for 2022/23 financial year. The draft budget was approved by the executive last week and now subject to a public consultation and scrutiny from Councillors, before being voted on by the Full Council in February.
Key budget headlines:
. LCC will spend £534 million on delivering services across Lincolnshire next year. More than half of Council funding is spent on delivering adult care and children's services, supporting the vulnerable in our county.
. In addition to the revenue budget there is capital programme worth £113 million in 2022/23 and
£268 million in future years. The programme includes projects like Grantham bypass, County flood schemes (including Long Bennington) and North Hykeham Relief Road. Funding for capital projects mostly comes from S106 developer contributions, grant income from government and council borrowing.
. We are proposing a balanced budget which means there will be no requirement next year to take money from reserves. However, deposits Rishi Sunak announcing a 3 year spending review, the government has only given a funding settlement to councils for one year, so the medium term financial plan remains uncertain. The current projections expect a draw down on reserves of £23 million the years after (being a 50% reduction of the finance volatility reserve).
. To balance the budget we are proposing a council tax increase of 3% on the adult social care precept, to help fund cost pressures in this area.
. The budget includes cost pressures of £42 million. These cost pressures relate mostly to the increases in the living wage and national insurance contributions from April, which the council will need to pay to its staff and contractors. £8 million of this will be funded through additional income and making savings such as smarter working.
. In 2020/21 the Department for Transport cut our allocated highways maintenance grant by £12 million (25%). This is the portion of road tax that we receive from Government to maintain local roads. We funded this shortfall from reserves in the current year, with some additional money to support extra road resurfacing in rural areas too. However we cannot continue to fund recurring costs from diminishing reserves.
We are calling on the Government and our Lincolnshire MPs to support our campaign to fix this roads funding gap. If they do not, we face a very difficult decision with regard to future road maintenance funding in Lincolnshire.
More details about the campaign and how to get involved can be found at: https:// www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/highwaysfunding
Best wishes, Alexander Alexander Maughan
Lincolnshire County Councillor for Hough Division
Mobile: 07707 060 022
Email: cllra.maughan@lincolnshire.gov.uk
Twitter: @CllrAPMaughan Facebook: Cllr Alexander Maughan
Attachment #3
