Parish Meeting March 2024
Washingborough Parish Council
Minutes of the Annual Parish meeting held on Wednesday 6th March 2024 at 6pm.
AP 24/1. WELCOME
Cllr Mrs Simons opened the meeting and welcomed all in attendance explaining that this meeting is a legal meeting and is for the benefit of our residents to raise any queries and also to make suggestions for ideas that could enhance the village.
AP 24/ 2. A presentation from the ‘I Forget’ service of Age UK, regarding help for people with dementia and
their families was well received by all present.
AP24/3. NOTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING held on the 8 March 2023
These were agreed and signed as the minutes.
AP24/4. ANNUAL AND FINANCIAL REPORT
It’s been another busy year for the Council and although we have not undertaken any major projects, such as the play park, we have made considerable improvements to the Community Centre and Civic Office.
This year sadly saw the passing of Council member and former Chairman Derek Fothergill. Derek had served this council for over 10 years and will be much missed.
August saw our long serving Caretaker retire and we wish him well.
We are pleased to announce that Julie, our environmental officer is now looking after our buildings interiors along with her litter picking and dog warden duties and Steve, our groundsman, is now responsible for all Council owned outdoor spaces. Along with all the other ad hoc jobs that they are asked to look at.
Council would like to take this opportunity to thank all our staff for their hard work, including the most necessary skill of having a sense of humour.
The main project that we have been busy with in this financial year has been the replacement of windows and some doors in the community centre building. We will shortly be replacing the window dressings in the Main Hall and then taking a bit of a breather. Still to do will be an upgrade to the front doors to increase accessibility – the clerking team are looking to see if there are any grants available to help with the cost of this, as we know it’s going to be quite a substantial amount of money.
We have also started to upgrade our lighting to energy saving LED’s on the outside of the building and in the future, we will look at the inside of the building.
Our bookings in the Centre have increased over the last two years and we have a wide variety of groups and clubs meeting here, these include fitness and social activities. If you would like to know more, please ask the clerking team.
Once again, we have hosted the popular Scarecrow Festival, which is held in August, along with our neighbouring Parish Councils of Branston and Heighington.
In September we held a fundraising Macmillan coffee morning, raising over £320 for Cancer support.
October was the re-start of our Thursday fortnightly coffee mornings and we’d like to thank the residents for supporting us.
Our playing fields and sporting facilities are well used by local sporting groups and clubs. In addition the play park, Multi Use Games Area and gym equipment continue to be very popular and are well used by our younger residents, and some older ones as well!.
Within the last year we have had all our trees surveyed and necessary work has been carried out, located the interactive speed sign around the village and have started to replace waste bins with ones that will take both litter and dog waste – or dual fuel bins as they are nick named.
Following Storm Babet, in November, an open meeting was held in the Community Centre. This was organised by Lincolnshire County Council with representatives from the Environmental Agency and the Internal Drainage Board, for residents to raise concerns regarding the flooding in the village.
The Parish Council has since set up a working party to look at reinstating the Emergency Flood Plan and sent a list of questions to the Internal Drainage Board regarding the recent floods. We also continue to raise matters of local interest to the relevant authorities on behalf of our residents.
We are pleased to say that we are in good shape financially, which last year allowed us to request a much smaller precept than normal to assist the village in a very tight economic year.
This year, the precept has had to return to a more normal increase following our auditor’s advice that Job Evaluations of our Staffs’ roles be undertaken. This has resulted in an increase to our staffing budget. Also, like everyone else, we are finding that our general running costs are increasing, however, we continue to run our business within our budget and keep a very strict eye on our expenditures.
Parish Councils are made up of volunteers from the Parish. The number of Members we should have is determined by the number of parishioners.
For Washingborough we should have 13 Members but we are currently running at 9.
We are actively looking for new Councillors, so if you feel that you could make a difference and have a few spare hours a month we would like to hear from you.
AP24/5. ELECTORS’ QUESTIONS WERE AS FOLLOWS
Queries were received regarding contact details for further advice.
A parishioner asked for the junction at Park Lane, School Lane, Main Road and Fen Road to be looked at due to poor visibility and some drivers lack of knowledge when approaching a roundabout.
There being no further business the meeting closed at 7.55pm.