Tim Daw 25 April 2001
It has been my honour and privilege to be your chairman for the last year; I hope I have represented you faithfully
This has been the real millennial year and much has happened in the village.
The parish council has benefited from all the hard work all the councillors put in, both with fulfilling the official duties, the paperwork never gets any less, and with the extra work they do on top as good citizens. It might be wrong for me not to thank everyone equally but I hope you will allow me to thank Sylvia Butcher especially for all the work she has done on the Playground.
The Playground has benefited from our capital fund and we believe our steady approach to improvements is giving the best long-term value to the village.
The Millennium committee has been a credit to the village and its activities will be long remembered after the street party and maybe even The Dome has faded from our minds. I particularly treasure the photograph they organised which will be an object of fascination in years to come. Our thanks go to them for being a great example of what voluntary effort can achieve. In many ways the same can be said of the Fete organisation, it was yet another successful year.
The school is a credit to the village and it is thanks to the staff and governors, and from their leadership also to the parents and children, I am sure the whole council would like us to pass on our appreciation to them all.
We succeed this year in reversing the work of our predecessors in the 1950s who, when they arranged fro the green to be flattened, assured that there was no easy access from Chandlers Lane, well there is now and a great improvement it is. Alison as Clerk has engineered the church’s land agents into taking responsibility for the Glebe Field and this should now be a kept tidy and mown which will be of great benefit to everyone. She has also worked hard to have improvements made to the signs at Allington, it will happen, so bear with us on that one. She will be tenacious with the Highways people as she was with Beazers, which ensured the chicane was eventually completed this year. The Amenity areas of the Glebe seem to have settled into a well-ordered existence now, thanks to everyone for their unity in achieving that aim
We are still working to improve footpaths, though with the Foot and Mouth being upon us little has happened for the last few months.
We are in the first year of having outside auditors rather than the audit commission and I think it has been a successful pilot, and I am sure the Clerk will have something to say about the way it has impacted on her workload. Young baby Ann has spent a lot of time in front of the screen trying to help her mother with the figures.
In the coming year we have several priorities, one of which is to ensure that with the demise of WDS we carry on having our grass cut in a cheap and efficient manner.
The council spends an immense amount of time just keeping the normal business of a council going, my personal goal is keep the meeting as short as possible while still allowing everyone their say. 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.
Posted by timdaw at April 25, 2001 03:14 PM