Bishopstone and District Group Parish Council

Annual Meeting

Chairman’s Report

Thursday 7^th May 2009

PARISH COUNCILLORS:

Lost: Hayley Birch

We still have one vacant position for the Bishopstone parish and one for Byford

ACTIVITIES / ACHIEVEMENTS include:

We have purchased a new notice board for Byford Common. It still awaits installation and now that winter is over this should happen soon. New name signs for the notice boards have been engraved and also await installation – our thanks to Brian Merrick for donating the wood. A firm of painters has agreed, free of charge, to coat the notice boards with a preservative and mount the new name boards at the same time.

We successfully applied for village name signs to advertise Bridge Sollars on the A438.

We organised our first litter picking day through Bishopstone in February this year where 14 volunteers gathered a worryingly large amount of assorted litter.

John Macklin is the new footpath officer for Bishopstone. The vision of a continuous footpath in Bishopstone passing around Bishon Common and along the disused railway line to the Mansell Lacy road bridge has been unsuccessful because permission to use the disused railway line as a footpath was refused. We have, however, obtained agreement with Herefordshire Council to have 5 stiles replaced with gates after three of the stiles had been vandalised.

We continue to push for lower speed limits for parts of our parish – particularly a 30mph for Bishopstone. It would appear that central Government is also keen to reduce speed limits in rural areas.

We have arranged to hold our first Annual Public Meeting to take place next week with a guest speaker.

In this year we have had three guest speakers British Red Cross, Community Wheels and tonight we have Low Cost Housing presented by Community First.

Herefordshire Council Waste Management have finally agreed to extend their curbside recycling service to rural Herefordshire at no extra cost and with no loss of the existing waste collection service. This will commence in November and all households will be supplied with a wheeled bin for recycling. This completes all targets set for recycling as per our Parish Plan.

Whilst completing another successful year we have been prudent with our precept requirements. In the last three years we have raised our precept by less than a pound per band D household, which with a parish charge of £16.65 for this year is less than half the average band D parish charge in Herefordshire.

Perhaps the biggest success this year has been the achievement of the final and main part of the lottery grant of £178,507 for the New Bridge Community Centre conversion works. There have been many ups and downs during the course of this application – and there are still other problems to overcome – particularly with regard to car parking provision, but the steadfast determination of the Community Centre Committee has overcome all obstacles to gain this grant and we offer our congratulations and thanks.

I would also like to thank our Planning Committee for their continued and consistent service.

We are grateful too for the continued and active support of Adrian Blackshaw our ward Councillor, who has endeavoured to represent our Parish interests within the Herefordshire Council whenever possible.

Once again our Parish Clerk, Barry Megson has been unstinting in his time and trouble for our Parish Council and I am extremely grateful for his help and contribution.

Penny Redshaw (chairman)

This report will be published on our web site and in our next newsletter