What does the Parish Council do? Parish Councillors are elected for a four year term. The list to the left shows the Parish and District Councillors. Parish Councillors can be contacted by phone (hover over name). District Councillors are contactable at firstname.secondname@cotswold.gov.uk The Parish Council has quite wide powers, many of which it chooses not to use. It is consulted on many of the activities of the District and County, and also by the NHS and Police from time to time. It has powers to raise money, and sets an annual precept, which requires the District Council to collect moneys from you with your Council tax. Check your Council Tax bill to see what we charge you (it varies by council tax band as do the other charges). The published accounts are available on the Parish Council publications page (button above). The best way to see the activities of the Council are to glance through the minutes, which are published monthly here as well as on our noticeboard by the phone box. All meetings are open to the public. At the Annual Meeting of the Parish Council on Monday 9th May 2011, Karen Mogridge was re-elected as chairman and Sarah Powell as vice-chairman. Parish Plan/ Village Emergency Plan Information on this has moved to a new page   ©  Somerford Keynes Parish Council and Contributors 2011-2 Who’s Who Parish Councillors John Brailey Karen Mogridge Tessa deBertodano Mike McKeown Ron Munroe Sarah Powell (Chairman) Roger Sleeman District Councillors Clive Bennett Esmond Jenkins Juliet Layton County Councillor Shaun Parsons All parish and district councillors serve until May 2015. County councillors serve until May 2013 Page last updated 15 May 2012 County Council Boundary Changes The areas served by County Councillors are called Divisions. The Council proposed to reduce the number of divisions from the current 63 to 53.  The new division for our area will be those polling districts listed below. It differs greatly from our current division, which you can find on the county site. It sweeps along the Thames and then north to include Bibury and parts of the upper Coln Valley. It goes nowhere near where our present councillor hails from. The new list of polling areas given is: Poole Keynes, Preston, Siddington, Somerford Keynes, South Cerney, Down Ampney, Driffield, Maiseyhampton, Poulton, Ampney Crucis, Ampney St Mary, Ampney St Peter, Barnsley, Bibury, Coln St Dennis, Winson, Kemble There being no responses from anyone, the Boundary Commission laid the draft order in Parliament in January. The new division is called “South Cerney”. Parliamentary Boundary Changes. The Boundary Commission is charged with reducing the number of MPs by about 50. The local change seems to recommend adding Wotton-under-Edge and Minchinhampton to the “The Cotswolds”. Detail can be found on the Boundary Commission for England website. www.cotswoldlakes.org.uk Planning Planning matters are not quite straightforward. The planning authority for most matters is Cotswold District Council. However the planning authority for Mineral extraction, waste matters, schools, and any other land or structure owned by the County Council is the County Council, so they can give themselves permission, which seems odd. In many cases telecomms and other utility companies do not need permission, but have to advise of their intentions. In this internet age, paper documents rarely exist. The Parish council receives alerts from the District Council about all applications in the parish. It also alerts us about applications by the county and by Wiltshire Council about neighbouring land. (There has been a recent application by the Water Ski club, which adjoins our boundary south of the Spine Road, for example). You too can sign up for these alerts on the planning page of Cotswolds website (link above). Their website is perverse and has no shortcuts, so good hunting! The Parish Council will consider all these applications and may choose to comment or object from time to time. Such comments are made on the webform provided on the planning pages, and are thus not readily seen by others. You can demand from Cotswold District Council to see all comments and objections, but you may have to make an appointment to visit their office. The relevant parish council minute will say if we comment or object, but may not give the reasons. If you are proposing to make an application, you are welcome to inform the Parish council, to see what response is likely. Conservation Area The Parish has a Conservation Area covering much of Somerford Keynes village from Croft House northwards, missing out some but not all of the modern housing. If you want to do building alterations or tree work in this area, you may well need permission from Cotswold District Council. The planning department will advise if permission is needed. A map showing the area was published in the Parish Newsletter of December 2004 Better Broadband Gloucestershire and Herefordshire Councils have seed money from DCMS to improve broadband in the two counties. Much of the Forest of Dean and of Herefordshire does not yet even have the broadband service that we get -they are still on dial-up. A scheme has been put to tender in the Official Journal of the EU to provide broadband in this phase one area by 2015 and to provide 100% cover at 2Mbps elsewhere. More interestingly for us they propose to arrange “superfast” broadband in the whole of both counties by 2018 (This meaning up to 30Mbps). The tender is to be let by mid 2012. Your village broadband champion is Peter Watkins. As the Government money is not enough, GRCC did a survey to find out the demand to encourage the investment by the proposed providers. This survey stage is now complete. Thanks to all those who answered it. Across the two counties there were about 10,000 responses. Is your broadband running very slowly compared to previous experience? You may have exceeded the bandwidth allowance from your supplier. Contact them first. This can easily happen if you start looking at online TV or downloading music and you only have a budget service. If you ordinarily have difficulty streaming pictures, this is to be expected, as you need about 4  times our normally available bandwidth for this to be reliable. Planning Committee Success The sign right, which has been at the entrance to the village for a couple of years has at last come down. The occupiers of the field sought retrospective permission for the sign in June 2010. At the CDC Planning Committee meeting on 14th December (2011!), our chairman, Karen Mogridge, managed to persuade the committee that the sign was too large, too much and not needed. Karen pointed out that within about 50 metres of this sign are already 3 brown direction signs to the site, which has a sign on its entrance gate as well. The sign has been considered an eyesore by many since it was erected without planning permission. The site has permission for a building for the cycle hire centre, now being built. It is on stilts as the EA thinks it might flood! When opened, all other structures must be removed and no other use of the building is permitted. February 2012- The sign is now down, but the refusal has been appealed. April 2012- Inspector agrees with SKPC  The next meeting of the Parish Council is on Monday 11th June at 7.30pm in the Village Hall. To contact the Parish Council call the Clerk, Mrs Muriel Watkins on 861614 skpc@somerfordkeynes.org.uk Annual Parish Spring Clean Saturday 14th April  Thanks to the large number of people who turned up to clean up the parish. The highlight this year was a cash register with some money still in it, which is now in the hands of the law. As usual, the village itself was pretty clean, but the hedges and ditches elsewhere were full of the thoughtless discards of the takeaway generations. There was even a kitchen cupboard door, and a good bike tyre. Most of those who made it back got a hot dog or two. Shorncote was cleared for the first time, but too few hotdogs were left for Johnny! Click the flag to go to the Diamond Jubilee page The Annual Parish Meeting on Friday 27th April, was attended by 33 electors, the Parish Council, District and County Councillors and the ThamesWey Canoe club, who made a lively presentation. Phillipa Low, Head of Planning at CDC explained the new planning regime in a 20 minute slot. Yet a new Local Plan is needed, which will take until at least 2014. The District and County Councillors explained what they had been doing. Brief presentations on the Parish Plan and on the PC accounts completed a busy evening. The audience was very loth to leave! At the Annual Parish Council Meeting on Monday 14th May, Sarah Powell was elected the new Chairman, and Karen Mogridge Vice-Chairman. Minutes will be published on the council publications page a few days before the June meeting.