Normal business again – sort of
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19 April 2023
This blog is about Hughenden Parish Council's normal scheduled Council meeting on 11 April.
I can’t make it to the Annual Parish meeting and the next Full Council meeting is not until 16 May so it may be some while before I blog again.
As part of the sanctions imposed on me, I have been “excluded from attending any premises of the Parish Council except to attend meetings of the Council”. So, I got to the meeting on 11 April just on time and left promptly. I have to say I didn’t feel the need to go earlier or stay later.
The new permanent Clerk, Alice Fisher, was able to attend which was good. She starts on 1 May.
I had already informed Council (and residents as far as I was able) that, although I would continue to help and support my constituents, I would no longer support the work of the Council as a corporate body.
For 2 years, I have thoroughly read all the papers for Council meetings and checked issues I was uncertain about before the meeting. However, most of the papers for this meeting were about corporate issues rather than directly affecting residents. So, I didn’t read them. It saved me hours of time.
Where I hadn’t read the papers and therefore didn’t feel sufficiently informed, I asked for a recorded vote at the meeting and abstained.
So on with the meeting
We started with the draft minutes of the last Council meeting on 21 March (which I had read thoroughly).
No-one had any comments until I pointed out that, as recorded, the meeting would have been inquorate; a councillor was recorded as present who wasn’t there; apologies were recorded from a councillor who was there, and one councillor was entirely missing.
I also explained my concerns with the way the appointment of the new Clerk was recorded; as recorded I didn’t think her appointment was sound. The Chair, Cllr Cadwallader, then made a disrespectful remark about me.
The locum Clerk who was taking the minutes said she would redraft the minutes of 21 March and put them to the next Council meeting.
Cllr Carroll, who is a Bucks councillor for Hughenden, had then arrived so we went back to the previous item which was “Reports from Buckinghamshire Councillors”
Cllr Carroll set out a number of issues which he said he was tackling or had tackled successfully, including the refusal of a planning application at Four Ashes and the resurfacing of Georges Hill which is to be done by the end of the year.
I asked Cllr Carroll to add another issue to his list.
I had asked the enforcement team in BC in February, on behalf of Widmer End Residents Association, if they could investigate what looks like temporary buildings in a field next to the public right of way at Four Ashes.
The enforcement team had still to come back. Cllr Carroll said he would chase this up.
When Council returned to the main agenda, I asked Cllr Cadwallader to apologise for the disrespectful remark he had made about me. He apologised and we carried on.
Item 5 on the agenda, was the item which gave me most concern. It was a list of Council resolutions made since September 2022 which had not yet been actioned.
The list of action points now stretches to eleven pages and none of the actions are prioritised. The list just gets longer and longer each Council meeting
Cllr Main offered to work with the Clerk to prioritise the list and ensure responsibility for the actions was correctly assigned. Council accepted her offer.
Council then agreed two grant requests - £282.95 to Hughenden Primary School to cover the on-going costs of a defibrillator and £500 to the Grange Area Trust as a contribution to maintain its footpaths.
Item 7 were motions submitted by councillors. The first was submitted by Cllr Main for a commemorative bench in each ward and the planting of trees to mark the coronation of King Charles III.
After some discussion, this motion did not get a seconder, mainly because it was not clear where the benches would go and how much they would cost. And councillors had been asking for trees to be planted in the parish for years, but Council had still not got essential tree work done and this needed to take priority.
I said I would have voted against the motion anyway on principle; I don’t think a penny of taxpayers’ money should be spent on the coronation. I believe the monarchy legitimises a feudal system of inherited wealth and privilege. It’s a view that may not be held by many in Buckinghamshire but I am not the only one who thinks this in the ward I represent.
The agenda had a motion by me on streetlights but I did not submit it and it was included in error. It was a rough draft and the work is unfinished.
I resigned from the Streetlights Working Group on 6 April because of the Council censuring and sanctioning me.
Council then: -
- approved a motion from Cllr Kearey to stream the Annual Parish meeting. I’m not very good with IT matters but I think this means residents can watch the meeting online;
- discussed the problem of gates giving access from private houses to HPC land and agreed the Council should object;
- was unenthusiastic about moving the old gates at the burial grounds to the bottom field; and
- approved a notice board to be put up in an unused bus shelter in Great Kingshill. (I voted against this on the grounds that Council should know how much money it is voting to expend when it votes for a motion.)
Council then approved a revision of Standing Orders, adopted a scheme of delegation (I think), a revised bank mandate and a list of payments. I hadn’t read any of the papers so I abstained.
Item 14 asked Council to confirm five HR policies. It turned out that they were already included in the Staff Handbook which the locum Clerk could not find because of a “data transfer”. I have asked what this data transfer entailed.
I’m just glad I didn’t read those papers.
There were two more policies to consider but I hadn’t read those either. I think one, a social media policy, was referred to HPC’s Communications Working Group.
Council then discussed a letter from Hughenden Primary School.
By which time it was about 10pm and a confidential discussion about the locum Clerk’s hours was deferred.
So in terms of getting real things done, Council approved a notice board for Great Kingshill (and yes I voted against that).
And Council added lots more actions for the outstanding action list.
Not a great achievement for a meeting of 2 ½ hours.
