Good Evening,

Welcome to the Annual Parish Meeting for Carlton with Chellington Parish Council. My name is David Jenkins and I am chair of the Council.  Last year in my report I mentioned that Richard Davis and Les Benson were retiring from the council. We have been joined in their stead by Susan Owen and Doug Neil. This means that the Parish Councillors for Carlton and Chellington are Vice Chairman Jane Tusting and me, ably supported by Jim Brandon, Anne Geerts, Tim Coles, Eileen Devine, Louise Dempsey, Susan Owen and Doug Neil. This year we lost the services of our clerk Nina Knight who quit suddenly for personal reasons. Her departure was a bit of a shock and it was subsequently discovered that there were quite a few urgent jobs left unfinished. As a result we have appointed Delia Shephard to the role of acting clerk. Delia is the clerk at Brickhill Parish Council, a much bigger Parish than ours and brings a wealth of experience and advice to the job. Delia’s appointment is temporary and we shall need a clerk of our own.  We have also reappointed Iris Allsopp as Responsible Financial Officer. Together this team is now your Parish Council.

This year has been interesting as Bedfordshire County Council has ceased to exist and we are now part of the Borough of North Bedford. The Mayor of Bedford, Frank Branston died during this financial year and he has been replaced by Dave Hodgson. Dave has indicated a willingness to engage with Parishioners and to listen to your comments. As part of this he will be looking to come out to the village one evening and meet people in The Fox. Dates and times will be posted in due course.

So what has the Parish Council been up to?

Speeding

It is now a year and a half or more since Peter Planterose and a group of concerned villagers organised a petition asking for speeding in the village to be addressed. We are still working on this. Firstly we have arranged for a Speed Indicating Device to be made available and have had it in the village on two separate occasions. Parish Councillors, assisted by Frank Fishwick have manned the device and we have reported over 40 speeding motorists to the Police. As we are not Policemen offenders caught like this cannot be prosecuted but they do get a letter from the Police and for very excessive speeds a visit by a Policeman. We have also agreed that we should have installed a mobile vehicle activated speeding sign. However this has been promised for months and there is still no sign of it. I have written again this week asking about it and have been assured that it will happen in the next few days.

The speed sign has also been used in Pavenham. They caught over a hundred. An extremely high percentage of those people were from Carlton. It seems that parishioners want the traffic to slow down but don’t want to slow down themselves. As I noted in my report on the subject in The Bridge. If you want to see traffic slowing down, drive slowly.

Highways

Obviously we have had a very cold winter and this means that the highways have become damaged with lots of potholes. We have also had the ongoing saga of the Anglian Water leaks at Carlton Crossroads to deal with. In the end I wrote to our MP who it turned out was having lunch that day with the Chairman of Anglian Water. Funnily enough the leaks stopped very soon after. The state of the roads is poor but is the responsibility of Amey and the Highways authority at Bedford Borough Council. We have two highways representatives, Susan Owen and Doug Neil. They take an overview of the roads, footpaths, litter bins and so on. If there is anything that concerns you about the state of the highways please mention it to them  or to the clerk or to me or you can contact Bedford Borough Council directly.  I have to say that I think that our roads within this Parish are better than most although with plenty of room for improvement. Over the winter I was shocked by the very poor state of the roads with regards to salting and wrote to Councillor Royden, the Deputy Mayor on the subject. He too seemed powerless to do much.

Also on the subject of Highways we did make a lot of fuss about the ditch and railings at Bridgend. The ditch was cleaned out and as a result a lot less water is leaking out onto the road after rain. The hedge is also being trimmed. But the state of the posts and railings gets worse. We are still badgering highways for these to be fixed but again without much luck. There were some suggestions made by Highways for a repair with a rubber kerb which we rejected on the grounds that it was going to be too costly. In addition it would be unsightly and out of keeping with the rural nature of the area. Finally, it turned out that the proposed solution had never been trialled in such a situation and we did not want to be guinea pigs.  We have agreed to ask for the posts and rails to be replaced. We are aware that they are nasty, dilapidated, damaged and dangerous but aside from pressing for the work to be done there is not a lot we can do.

Dog fouling continues to be a problem. We have put in an extra dog bin on The Moor and on the Causeway removing the one that was hidden away on the Gannick. I still see though dog mess close to the bins and even polythene bags of mess just flung down on the ground.  If you know who is doing this please let us know and we will get the Dog Warden involved. There is a bylaw and anyone caught letting their dogs foul can be fined £100. Someone has been going round the village painting around the dog mess with white paint. In some ways this is useful as it allows you to avoid stepping in the stuff but the white paint lasts a lot longer than the dog waste and is unsightly. If you know who is doing that please ask them to stop.

Planning

The Council has a planning committee. This year it has consisted of Eileen Devine, Jane Tusting and Louise Dempsey. These people review each plan that we receive. We are allowed to comment on plans in the same way as anyone else in the village may comment. We have no statutory powers however and unless we have a very specific point to make about a plan that ties in with the Borough Council’s policies our views are not likely to affect the outcome of the planning process. Nevertheless, it is a lot of work and I would like to pay tribute to them for that work.

Footpaths

Tim Coles, who also runs Neighbourhood Watch, has taken on the role of looking at the footpaths in the Parish. If you know of any problems with footpaths do let Tim, or Delia or me know.

School Governing Body, Village Hall Committee, War Memorial Committee and Playing Field Committee

Parish Councillors represent the Parish Council on all these bodies.

Web Site

The Parish Council has a website. It is at www.carltonwithchellington.co.uk. This report will be published there. I do urge you to look at it. I fear some bits are out of date. This happens because people do not let us know when there is a need for an update.

Bus shelter

Following the removal of the bus shelter we have replaced it with a seat and are soon going to have a litter bin in position. The seat will be marked with a brass plaque in memory of Billy Crammen.

Village handyman

Following Billy’s death we appointed Richard Sinclair to keep the village tidy. He is working through a great deal of the village tidying up. I am pleased with what is going on there. Anything which you think needs doing can be reported to Susan Owen, Doug Neil or me.

Baptist Chapel Wall

When the Baptist Chapel closed we were given a sum of money to maintain the graveyard. A decision was made to try and encourage wild flowers to grow by using a management regime similar to that used in a hayfield and this is ongoing.

After hours bus.

The HomeHoppa bus service run by AGS cars sponsored by Beds County Council came to an end leaving youngsters stranded in the village unable to go into Bedford on an evening in the weekend because of lack of transport back. The Council funded a re-launch of the service for a trial period. We did ask about how many would use it and were assured that many would. In conjunction with Harrold Parish Council that was run for several weeks. We circulated everyone in the village to let them know it was happening and when. Not one person used the service and so it has now been cut.

No Cold calling.

We have introduced the No Cold Calling scheme. It is not illegal to cold call however but if you do get such a call follow the instructions you were given when the scheme was launched. The Council decided that the signs at the entrance to the village are fairly pointless and are ugly and a decision has been made to remove them.

Affordable housing

Some of you will have sons and daughters who would like to live in the village but can’t afford to do so. We were looking at providing affordable housing for local people with the Rural Housing Trust. Last year I announced that they had gone into administration and their work was being taken on by Hastoe Housing Association. They negotiated to purchase land but then the lady who was doing this for us finished her contract with Hastoe in January and we have not heard from them since. This will be a task for the council in the forthcoming year.

Precept

In this time of recession we have taken the decision to freeze the precept. I think mine has gone up by less than 1%. I hope you will appreciate our efforts to keep your costs down.