There have been many changes over the past year in the membership of Burstow Parish Council. We started this year by co-opting 3 new Councillors – Phil, Joe and Emma. Phil became my Vice –Chair when Fiona left and Andrew Gilbert joined us. Sadly Diana Brown died in the New Year and Bob Locke, who had expressed an interest in becoming a member, joined us in March. We are drawing to the end of the Council Year, a natural time for change and sadly, this year, after many years working for the community, Joyce Davies has decided to retire. Mike Amos has decided to step down due to ill health and Emma Thornton has also left. I will come back to this later. When these positions are filled – we are advertising for new councillors at the moment and have three prospective candidates - it will mean that in the last 12 months 7 out of 11 councillors will be new which will make for a dynamic, motivated new team. Jeannie, as our clerk, has achieved her CILCA –one of the stipulations required for the Council to attain The Power of Well Being Status– congratulations! So, along with the training in that field all Cllrs will have had or will be getting- BPC will be in a position to move forward!

 

As a Council we believe in training – with all Councillors encouraged to do the new Cllrs training course – and those needing extra, the Chairmanship course. The Surrey Association of Town and Parish Councils, a body that represents our interests and that has helped us in the past, provide training courses. I represent BPC on the Management Committee and am Vice Chair and also sit on the Joint Liaison Committee – with other members from Surrey, West and East Sussex. This enables us to know how we can improve or help our community as we are directly in contact with people who can make a difference and are able to keep up to date. We also represent other outside bodies – Trevor and Tracey are on Gatcom, along with District Cllr Alan Jones, so we are kept informed of changes at the airport, Mike has been helping us with the Tandridge Access Group and we are all part of the ‘hub’ group, under the auspices of County Cllr Michael Sydney, which we hope will enable the Lingfield ward Parishes to work together with County to have certain works devolved to us – exciting! Next month we are all to receive further training on planning matters from Bob Evans, Director of Planning at TDC – so we do try!

 

 

Well Centenary Hall has continued to be improved. You will note the new ceiling in this Burstow Hall and these wonderful, modern efficient lights!   It will be nice not to have to replace the loose tiles and flickering tubes! So with the new blinds and the effective, almost instant heating, this room and the Outward Room have become great assets, not only in being pleasant places to be in, but the increase in bookings for training, weddings and meetings bring in good revenue, with more bookings over the year. The Margaret Paveley Room has had the floor re-covered with acoustic lino – more hygienic for a playgroup and easier to clean. Added to that we now have a new set of tables that are easier to manipulate and we have replaced the doors to this hall. Our latest addition is this screen, which with the microphone make hirings more attractive. As a meeting place, Centenary Hall has hosted a lot of meetings this year.

 

Mark Rowley, Surrey’s Chief Inspector of the Police, came to Burstow to meet with representatives of all the Parish Councils from the eastern side of Surrey, to explain his vision of changing the dynamics of the Police in Surrey. The Outwood Room was also used to host a question and answer meeting between representatives of the local Parish Councils and David McNulty, chief Exec of Surrey CC – paying the first visit to this far-flung area of Surrey in one hundred years!

 

 Our hall was also chosen as the venue for the Clerks Networking Day – there were over 70 people for a day of lectures with exhibitions – and it was deemed to have such good facilities, it has been booked for at least two more! Our number of Weddings has increased, as have parties – along with our usual Clubs, Bowls, Karate etc. We are very proud of the hall – and it creates additional revenue for the Parish.

 

The gardens around the hall have been renovated. The wishing well garden was completely re designed and looks even better in this its second year. This will be due to the care of Darryl, our caretaker, who is in charge of watering! – Yes, sometimes we don’t get enough rain! We purchased some wonderful plants and shrubs that were used to restock the village garden and the other beds around the Hall. I came back from holiday last year to find that an appeal in the Parish News had borne fruit and Chris Gilbert offered to tend the garden – now known as ‘Chris’s Garden’ – a fantastic surprise- and we are really grateful – I hope you all enjoy it – thank you Chris! I did, at the same time encourage Andrew, her husband, to join the Council so the parish really gained! The Garden survived the winter very well with just some of the delicate plants needing re-stocking. We hire a firm to keep the beds around the hall in pristine fashion – the first stage in the Tidy Village Campaign! For this we are actively trying to start a ‘Tidy Village’ working group – or a better named group if anyone can think of it –We hope to have willing volunteers to neaten areas of the Parish – particularly around the four entrances of the village – we have a novel idea which can involve the children – so watch this space!

 

Whilst on green matters, one of the agenda items at the Annual Meeting, next Tuesday, is the re-opening of part of the Keepers Corner Site and the creation of some allotments. This will be more accessible to those who live outside the Smallfield Settlement, as it is centrally located to the Parish as a whole, and it will be good to have this facility. This would only be the northern part of this plot of land – as the ‘secret garden’ aspect of this lovely piece of wilderness would be really missed.

 

In June last year, we had a very successful Village summer Party. The weather was, again, kind to us. We had a wonderful day with approximately 2000 visitors of all ages, the festivities culminating in performances from the Boulter Brothers - a really good blues band. The day proved worthy of all the hard work. This project – now in its fourth year shows how well the Council, along with a really good, dedicated team of villagers, can truly make a difference. We were very fortunate to have Fiona Day as the instigator of this event. She and Simon are event organisers by trade and have just moved to Herefordshire but she has left us with the foundations to continue with the summer party – and also with Annie Foley, who worked with them and Sandra Martin, Fi’s friend – both of whom I would be lost without. I would like to thank them and all our other helpers – in particular John Freebody, Wendy Boyden, Di and Jilly, Tony Page and Disco Dave! Thank you all. This year we had another band booked when it dawned us that the 12^th June is the first England Match of the World Cup. Thinking on our feet, we cancelled the band and hired an 8 x 5 meter inflatable screen, asked the inflatable games to stay till 9.30pm and will be screening the game! Please put the date in your diary – we hope it will be a really good family day – for those worried we will have the police and security around – but I think it will so obviously be a family, Village party, anyone wanting to spoil that will not be about! I don’t know if you realise that Burstow Parish Council have underwritten all the Parties we have had. These were a direct result from wishes from the first Burstow Day that we improve the well being of the area by providing an event where the Parish/ Village as a whole could come together and celebrate the fact that we are a viable community– I think you will agree it has done that!

 

The community and the council can also work together in other ways. A retrospective planning application was submitted to Reigate and Banstead for the waste site in Perrylands lane- the only entrance and exit being through Broadbridge Lane, a country lane not suitable for the traffic a waste site would generate, not to mention the effect the lorries had already begun to have on the whole area. Together with the District and County Cllrs and the residents of Broadbridge lane, we sent a letter to all residents who would be directly affected notifying them of the application – which had only been posted to about 5 housed. The outcome was a large number of justified objections, stating those points that have bearing on decisions, which were heard at the planning meeting at Surrey County Council and the members refused it. The firm has appealed against the enforcement order, but all our objections, maps etc will all be seen by the planning inspector, so we can hope the correct outcome occurs. We are not here as a council to be obstructive or Nimbyish – but when things are clearly too much, we will do all we can to help our residents.

 

It was at this point that we signed up to Parish Online which is a service enabling us to access, change or add to the map of our parish, which for planning purposes – and just interest -is very useful and will be more so when we get used to it! Owning our own maps allows us to put things in perspective!

 

We have extended the Skate Park so that is more than its original size. The area is well used and is regarded as a recreational centre of excellence and it is something we, as a parish should be rightly proud of. Jon Twig of the Surrey Youth Development Service will be using the area for the annual “Jam” – as he did last year. This is an extremely popular day with all who attend – Youths from all over Tandridge compete with skateboarding, basketball/football; have a bar-b-que and the whole area comes alive! The Youth bus has been re-started after a year off, and that is also welcome as it provides something for youngsters to do and is very popular. We are moving up the priority list for rebuild at the Plough Road Playground but Tandridge DC’s Amenities have been refurbishing the site.

 

We have a had a year of full attendance for the computer classes and Terry Creek, our tutor, has agreed to do a series of ‘advanced’ courses which will be two week – four hours- of intensive tutoring on each of three themes – Microsoft Excel, Word and Digital Photography. I’m signing up for two of those. This will add to the excellent basic course that so many people have had – Terry is an excellent teacher! If you would like to join up please see Jeannie later. This is yet another example of the Council working together with the Community – in this case Burstow `Primary School who make the Computer Suite available for us to use.

 

We have continued with our meetings for the Community Café – It is a very popular wish – we are trying to set up a trial – and perhaps the sure start centre could be our answer – there will be more about that tonight.

 

The Vehicle Activated Signs have been moved around and we have bought brighter, bigger ones. The one in Chapel road unfortunately could not be installed because of the position of the wires above and the state of the lamppost! Surrey has been informed as they have been told about the rotting metal signpost at the junction of chapel road and Churchill Road – we wait in hope!

 

On the communication front, we are about to have a meeting with the editors of the Parish News, Denis and Barbara Rudd, to see how we can work together to get the magazine on the web site – and we need to do more to the site to make it more popular and used as a community asset. Any help from anyone will always be greatly appreciated! We also have on the agenda a plan to deliver to all residents a publication explaining all our plans, explaining who we are so that we as a council may raise our profile to all those who think we are part of the church – i.e. vicar of Dibley!!

 

 

Well the first of the ideas on the table at the moment is to: -

 

·        Screen a monthly film in Burstow Hall – i.e. a Cinema Club-on a Saturday evening when public transport is non-existent! Then

·        We hope to trial the Community Café – there are very committed people behind this plan.

·        Provide new allotments - I have talked about already;

·        We want to sort out the pond in Broadbridge Lane and

·        See if together Residents, Councillors and Surrey CC can work to provide what we need by furthering the ‘hub’ work

·        Improve the appearance of the Parish so we can be proud of where we live.

·        It would be good to ‘de-clutter ‘the signage etc around the village.

·        We hope to continue with our plan to combine with Burstow School to have a community pool – this is a long term plan

 

 

Fiscally the Council is doing very well. We have managed to put money into Capital Reserve Funds to build up enough Capital to allow us to achieve what we are proposing, and we continue to be successful with grants! Jeannie, our Responsible Financial Officer, has spent this morning preparing the books for Audit with the firm who mentor our accounts package – a really hard working day – that always seems to fall on the same day as the APM! We will be presenting the Annual Return to Council for acceptance next Tuesday and will be able to publish figures then. We are achieving a good income, which allows us to spend it on the community – which is our aim – as there is no reason for us to be here unless we are able to contribute to improve the lives of all residents and Parishioners of Burstow Parish.

 

Liz Cutter

 

Chair