Icklesham Annual Parish Assembly 2013

The notice for the Annual Parish Assembly went up in Winchelsea yesterday (Tuesday). There should have been seven days’ notice, so it was outside the statutory notice period here, but I am told a notice went up within the time limit elsewhere in the Parish. However, the late notice is just a symptom of a chronic problem at Icklesham Parish Council when it comes to the Annual Parish Assembly.

Icklesham Parish Council has always treated Annual Parish Assemblies as just an extra Council meeting. In fact, they are supposed to meetings of the parish, ie residents (the statutory name is Annual Parish Meeting). This is made clear in NALC and other guidance. Residents are supposed to be given the opportunity to bring items to the agenda. While the Chairman of the Parish Council reports to the meeting on the activities of the Council, the main business is supposed to be about non-Council activities in the parish.

It is not easy to get this meeting right, but many parishes try and some succeed (Sedlescombe is a local model). Icklesham have made half-hearted and unimaginative attempts in recent years but have now reverted to type.

The next Annual Parish Assembly will feature just one external speaker (from social housing association Amicus) and three councillors --- parish councillors Warren and Stanford, and County Councillor Glazier. The audience will largely be other councillors and the occasional bored spouse (plus both parish clerks, despite the fact that this is not a Parish Council meeting). Apart from listening to other councillors, they will be treated to the Chairman reading out a dull and heavily sanitised version of events over the previous year.

To be fair, Icklesham face a fundamental problem with Annual Parish Assemblies. Being composed of four disparate and very different villages, it will always be a struggle to find items that will get residents to come out on a Monday evening, even in the village where the meeting is being held. And residents from other villages have to travel up to two miles for the pleasure of attending. Not even outrageous expenditure on refreshments has been able to tempt more than a handful. Winchelsea Town Meetings were able to get 60-80 residents to attend because they could focus of issues of relevance to residents.

However, it often appears that Icklesham do not want residents to turn up to Annual Parish Assemblies, in case they try to get involved, particularly if they are Winchelsea residents. Too many members of the public make the Council nervous. Thus, in 2010, when 14-15 Winchelsea residents turned up in response to the Council’s declared wish to consult on a proposal to turn off the streetlights in Winchelsea at midnight, the meeting rapidly fell apart. See the report on this meeting below.

Extract the blog on the Annual Parish Assembly of May 2010

'The high points of the evening were the discussions of the Council’s decision to ignore the results of a consultation on turning off the footlights in Winchelsea at midnight and its proposal to borrow up to £100,000, on top of the £40,000 that they have already borrowed.

On the question of turning off the footlights at midnight, the background is that, in November 2011, Icklesham Parish Council sent out consultation forms to all households in Winchelsea asking whether they would support, for economic and environmental reasons, turning off the 17 footlights at midnight.  The cost of fitting timers would be recouped in less than 18 months and then there would be an annual saving of some £750 a year (rising with electricity prices). Responses were received from 66 households (ie about 24% of the village). The result was 2:1 in favour of turning off the lights at midnight. However, at a subsequent Council meeting, one resident opposed to turning off the lights early attacked the consultation on the grounds that it may have been fiddled because residents had been given the option of returning their forms via ward councillors. The resident also argued that the consultation was not valid because it did not ask whether residents wanted more lights.

Councillors from other wards joined in, complaining that the consultation forms had given too much information to residents! The Chairman judged the rate of response to be too low. The Council therefore decided to ignore the results of their own consultation and bring the question to the Annual Parish Assembly.

When pressed about this decision, the Chairman simply repeated the excuse that the turnout was too low and that some residents were unhappy about the result. When he was asked whether the Council had a policy setting a threshold on the level of responses to consultations, he simply would not answer. He just kept repeating that the response was judged too low and that some residents were unhappy with the proposal. He continued in the same vein when it was pointed out to him that the response to the Local Action Plan, on which the Council are basing much of their spending, had responses from Icklesham, Rye Harbour and Winchelsea Beach of less than half the response rate to the footlights question! Nor was the Chairman any more forthcoming when the absurdity was highlighted of ignoring a consultation of all households in favour of the Annual Parish Assembly where less than a dozen residents usually turn up. 

By the time the Chairman was questioned on whether it was appropriate to ignore a clear vote in favour of a proposal because the losers objected to the result, he was sinking fast and proposed that the Council be asked to reconsider its decision to defer the question back to the Annual Parish Assembly! It had to be pointed out that, as the question had already come to the Assembly, this particular course of action could not be reconsidered.

A vote was taken and the result was 10:7 in favour of turning off the lights. At this point, I requisitioned a Parish Poll in order to ensure that the Council could not again ignore the balance of opinion among residents.  Cllr Stanford complained that this would mean that residents of other wards would have a vote on the Winchelsea lights --- putting her finger on the problem of having a parish composed of four separate villages. Cllr Bronsdon weighed in to express amazement that I was willing to have the Council spend money on a matter of principle and, for the first of many occasions during the evening, said how “sad” he was at my action.

Eventually, the Chairman agreed that the Council would be asked to accept the result of the consultation and the vote at the Annual Parish Assembly [they did not]. I therefore withdrew the requisition for a Parish Poll on the understanding that, if the Council once again tried to ignore the balance of opinion among residents, that I would convene a special Parish Meeting and requisition a Parish Poll again.’

 

2013 County Council election results --- Glazier scrapes it

The result for Rye and Easter Rother (which includes Winchelsea) is in.

candidate	party	2013		2009
		votes	share	votes	share
Keith Glazier	Con.	963	36.1%	1,572	52.8%
Mike MacKenzie	UKIP	884	33.2%	n/a
Nick Warren	Lab.	647	24.3%	407	13.7%
Peter Hillier-Palmer	LibDem.	171	6.4%	1,000	33.6%
turnout			36.0%		42.0%

So Cllr Glazier is re-elected but with his majority slashed from 572 to 79 and his share of the electorate down to 13%. He will at least be grateful that he did not down as much as the LibDems, whose vote collapsed from 1,000 to 171.

In the County as a whole, the Conservatives have lost overall control, although they remain the largest single party. UKIP made the best showing and Labour did well in Hastings.

party	2013	2009
Con.	20	29
LibDem.	10	13
Lab.	7	4
UKIP	7	n/a
independents	5	3

Unfortunately, the whole election has been marred by a very low turnout.

Icklesham Parish Council meeting 12 November 2012

A bumper turnout:  10 members of the public. However, several were there to ask the council to write in protest to East Sussex against the proposed downgrading of the Ridge Fire Station. Two others came on behalf of the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve about the Rye Harbour car park. There was also County Councillor Keith Glazier (‘see no evil’), District Councillor Nick Ramus (‘hear no evil’) and District Council Paul Osborn (‘speak no evil’) plus Malcolm Johnson from the District Council trying to offload the Rye Harbour car park and public toilets onto the parish council.
Rother has cut the grant it was making to Icklesham PC for a traffic gateway at Rye Harbour from £737 to £370. Cllr Osbourn claimed the credit for getting even this grant but Cllr Bronsdon was keen to award the credit to the Deputy Clerk (now that reminds me of an interesting story).
The council has secured its first serious grants, £23,000 and £5,000, toward the new £55,000 Icklesham playground. The council had previously been contemplating borrowing up to £100,000 to fund this and other playground projects. The first grant was the work of the departing clerk and the second was down to Cllr Warren.

The resignation of the Parish Clerk

This was the elephant in the room. Steve Foreman, clerk since 2011 has resigned. Nothing at all was said at the meeting but there was a certain tension in the room, as though certain councillors were anxious that someone would raise the issue.
Steve is the fourth clerk lost by Icklesham PC in six years. The reasons for Steve’s resignation will be the subject of a forthcomng blog. Suffice it to say for the moment that Steve, who retired from the Audit Commission before becoming clerk, proved himself to be exceptionally energetic and efficient. He has also been very conscious of proper procedure and the need for impartiality. This has not endeared him to certain councillors and he has been subject to unfair and improper criticism. His position has also been undermined by the inevitable failure of the chairman, Jim Horsman, to do his duty.
Cllr Stanford could not resist an opportunity to take a pointless pop at Steve over his report on discussions about the Rye Harbour car park and toilets, where he had referred to representatives of the residents. Cllr Stanford was keen to stress that the persons concerned had not attended at representatives. Thus a molehill became a mountain.

Parish bus service

This expensive and ill-conceived experiment has been canned, not by the council, but by Rye Community Transport, who became depressed at the low rate of use. The highest number of users was 42, in June. In October, just two people made use of the service. Of the 100 under-16s projected to use the service in the first five months, only four did so.
The last two passengers cost their fellow council tax-payers £311 each! But what is even startling is the fact that even if usage had hit the parish council’s target of 60 per month, it would still have cost council tax-payers £9.42 per person. It would have been cheaper to hire separate taxis for each person!
The report by Rye Community Transport makes for sober reading. It accuses Icklesham Parish Council of not properly researching the demand for a bus service and queries the value of the survey carried out by the Rother Voluntary Association. A sharp contrast was drawn with the way that RCT develops new services. Unfortunately, lack of solid research underlies virtually all Icklesham projects. The vast expenditure on new playgrounds has gone forward despite a complete lack of knowledge of the number and age of children in the parish.

Parish Office

The council is still determined to inflate its overheads by opening an office and appears to have approved the idea in principal. The latest suggestion is the sports pavilion at Icklesham, which the Icklesham Trust wishes to rebuild. This is rather more salubrious that the previous suggestion, which was the public toilets in Winchelsea, should they be rebuilt. Some councillors also see the pavilion at Icklesham as a way for the parish council to inject some money into that project but there may be some reluctance in the Icklesham Trust to have the council so intimately involved. However, the council’s proposal may anyway be derailed if Cllr (Peter) Turner persists in his suggestion that, if there is a parish office in the pavilion, the toilets should be open to the public. Cllr Warren doubted that Icklesham Trust would be happy with the idea. What is it about the parish office and toilets?
One cannot help but get the impression that this is just another chance for Icklesham Parish Council to waste more tax-payers’ money. Very few parishes have parish offices: why Icklesham? No good reasons have been put forward. Indeed, the idea has never been properly discussed. A parish office in Icklesham would simply serve Icklesham. How many residents are likely to travel the three miles from Rye Harbour, or even bother to come up from Winchelsea Beach or travel from Winchelsea? Most people will continue to phone or e-mail, if they need to contact the clerk (and few bother to even do that).
Something to watch if a parish office is opened: will the clerk(s) continue to receive the unusual perk of being paid to travel to work?

Rye Harbour car park
Rother want to shift financial responsibility for the car park at Rye Harbour (and possibly the public toilets) to the parish council. There is of course a basic economic flaw in the whole proposition. Offering the car park to the parish suggests that, either Rother is admitting that it is so incompetent that even Icklesham PC could do better (remember, this parish council felt that locking of the gates to the Pear Tree Marsh allotments was beyond it) or is Rother just trying to shift the cost from their budget to that of the parish because the latter is not subject to capping.
Parish councillors recognised that, if the council took over the car park, they would have to charge for parking, but no one raised the associated cost of ticket machines and employing staff to service the machines and enforce parking charges or also installing barriers. As Rother would also have to start charging if they were to retain control of the car park, why should Icklesham Parish Council get involved? All they will get is the flak.
Then, there are the public toilets. These cost about £20,000 a year to run and, sometime during the 99-year lease, will have to be rebuilt.
Rother have floated the idea of covering losses for the first few years on a sliding scale (eg 100% of year 1 reducing to 0% by year 5 or 10), but no mention has been made of the capital costs of installing parking infrastructure. Nevertheless, the Council agreed to the idea in principle.
A Rye Harbour resident in attendance expressed her concern about car park charges leading to parking congestion along the streets of the village. She asked for residents to be involved in any discussions, which does not suggest much faith in the representation provided by Rye Harbour councillors. But then Cllr Bronsdon of Rye Harbour believes he does not need to consult, on the grounds that, if voters don’t like what he decides, they can vote him out at the next election. There would be some logic in that, except that Rye Harbour rarely has contested elections in Rye Harbour, in part, because no resident can be bothered to stand (Cllr Bronsdon lives in Rye and Cllr Stanford in Winchelsea Beach).

Parish post boxes

Readers will recall that, during the debate over turning off the footlights in Winchelsea, a resident and member of the former corporation in Winchelsea, Mr John Spencer, questioned the integrity of Winchelsea ward councillors by implying that they would tamper with survey questionnaires (the first of the three ballots) given to them by residents to return to the council. Mr Spencer later accused Cllr Comotto of submitting a questionnaire on behalf of his under-age daughter and tried to see how other residents had voted by making a Freedom of Information request to see everyone else’s questionnaire. Cllr Stanford proposed that, because some residents (ie Mr Spencer) did not want to communicate with the council via their elected councillors, the council should set up post boxes in each ward. £400 was budgeted. The cost has turned out to be £160 per post box. Another well researched project!
Even Icklesham Parish councillors baulked at £640. The idea then rapidly unravelled. Councillors came to the conclusion post boxes were impractical. Where would they be installed, who would empty them, how often and so on? In the end, it was decided to place a box, which will be made by a councillor at no charge, inside Rye Harbour Stores to see if anyone uses it. That still means that £400 has been taken from tax-payers because councillors did not bother to think through another silly idea!
The council also missed a point of principle here. Although Mr Spencer apparently does not like the representatives who were elected to represent Winchelsea, even his personal friend and fellow jurat Cllr Turner, why should the council help him to circumvent his properly-elected representatives? Does any other elected body make special provision for voters who don’t like their elected representatives?
Cllr Stanford’s proposal for parish post boxes also begs the question as to why unhappy residents cannot phone, e-mail or send a letter to the clerk. Cllr Stanford said the post is too expensive and, of course, not everyone has e-mail. But is there someone out there who does not have a phone or e-mail, cannot afford a postage stamp, and dislikes all their elected councillors? Surely, it would have been cheaper for the council to buy Mr Spencer a book of stamps?

And yet more money wasted

Another £500 of council tax has been poured down holes in Smeatons Lane.
The council went ahead and spent £540 on allotment software (support and maintenance costs will be extra). There is a problem apparently with continuing to run a spreadsheet for some 50-60 plots.
At the insistence of Cllr Merricks, the council registered its playgrounds as part of the ‘Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Fields’, in order to stop itself building on them in the future. This is an utter waste of money. The clerk advised the council that it was unnecessary, because sufficient safeguards are already provided by the restrictive covenants on these pieces of land but he was over-ruled. No other parish in Rother has registered its playgrounds. Moreover, the council took the decision to go ahead without finding out the cost. Their decision was therefore illegal. Now, the council has discovered that its titles to Icklesham Recreation Ground and Harbour Field at Winchelsea Beach have not been registered at the Land Registry and it cannot find its deeds of ownership. Curiously, Cllr P Turner was supposed to have sorted all these out when he was chairman over 10 years ago.
The council has budgeted £2,000 to ‘refresh’ its Local Action Plan. Can £2,000 bring back something from dead? The LAP achieved response in most wards which were lower than the turnout in the election of Police and Crime Commissioners! It was of course also the cause of the complaint to Rother Standards Committee by other councillors against Winchelsea ward councillors, which the latter won earlier this year, when an appeals tribunal overturned Rother’s flawed judgement and dismissed the accusations.
On 26 November, the council will hold a special meeting to consider its budget for 2013/14. There is a question mark over the legitimacy of the meeting. Expect more whacky ideas on how to spend your money.

Cllr Sutton

The council wasted more time on a proposal by Cllr Sutton that the council should employ a maintenance man for a day a week to do small jobs around the parish at the bidding of individual councillors. The council already employs a maintenance man to do small jobs, although only as and when he is needed, and under the direction of the clerk. It is illegal for work to be commissioned by individual councillors, but why should the long-serving Cllr Sutton (proud alumni of Winchelsea primary school) know that? The reason why certain jobs in Winchelsea Beach appear not to be getting done is because Cllr Sutton does not report them to the clerk.
Ironically, Cllr Sutton is one of the reasons why councillors are no longer required to conduct monthly inspections of their ward --- a perfection occasion to report faults --- having admitted, after several years, that he did not know what he was supposed to be doing and that he therefore did not bother. This item should not have come onto the agenda.

Planning

Cllr Ramus welcomed a letter from Winchelsea Heritage expressing concern about planning enforcement at Rother, which is apparently a matter of growing concern on the Planning Committee.

Youth Club

One positive piece of news. Cllr Lyward has her youth club up and running in Winchelsea Beach. However, the skate park may have been put back on the agenda by the meeting to set up the club.

Postscript

Cllrs Austen and Chishick said nothing throughout the meeting, but Cllr Chishick had the excuse that he was abroad. Cllr Moore managed one contribution.

RC

Ickleshan Parish Council meeting of 12 March 2012

A fairly uneventful meeting but it still over-ran, finishing at 9:55pm, largely because of the unstructured nature of discussion (the Council still does not follow its own Standing Orders). As usual, no one in the audience, including District and County Councillors, lasted until the end.
There was grumbling from Cllr Bronsdon about the number of documents being issued by the Clerk, who is providing briefings on most agenda items. Some councillors find these documents helpful.
After the meeting, a member of the public commented on the fact that both the Clerk and Deputy Clerk attended the meeting and appeared to take notes. They asked why it was necessary to pay for two clerks.  

Diamond Jubilee road closures in Winchelsea

The Council did not, in the end, object to the proposed closures following the withdrawal of the objections made by Winchelsea Farm Foods.

Emergency contact signs

The Council was asked by the Winchelsea Emergency Group to purchase, for the grand sum of £54, three weather-proof signs giving details of key-holders for the Church, Court Hall and New Hall, to be fixed to these buildings for use by emergency services. These buildings are designated under the District Emergency Plan to act as reception or co-ordination centres for emergency services in a local civil contingency. The idea was suggested at a recent forum of village emergency groups because of concern that, if the emergency services arrived at an unsociable hour, they would not know who to contact to open up the buildings.
Cllr Merricks refused to believe that the bodies responsible for these buildings had been asked for permission, despite being told they had. But the Council anyway refused the request on the grounds that “Parish Emergency Plans have nothing to do with the Parish”.

Playgrounds

The Council continues its work on its £110,000 plan for additional playground facilities in the Parish. Of the £110,000, some £80,000 is for two new play areas in Icklesham Recreation Ground. The Council hopes to get grants for 25-50% of this sum. Also in Icklesham, the School is planning to ask the Council for a grant for a games area. A figure of £5,000 was mentioned, although no application has yet been made.

Risk assessment

The Council is required to assess the risks on its property. In most parish councils, regular inspections are done by parish councilors. In Icklesham Parish, most councilors have refused to do this or have claimed not to know how to. Consequently, the Parish Council has paid a professional company £900 to do an inspection and make recommendations. Regular inspections will now be carried out by the Clerk and Deputy Clerk.

Bus shelter at The Strand

It has been agreed to repair this shelter, which has recently been the target of repeated vandalism, by lining the interior with ply. In order to deter vandals, the interior will be opened up to public view by removing the glass panels at the front and some boards.
The Council wishes to put a pitched and tiled roof on top of a bus shelter in Main Road, Icklesham.
It has been promised that bus shelters and benches will be cleaned before Easter. This will be the first time the Council has ever done this (at least in Winchelsea), despite having budgeted for the work every year.

Cllr Glazier

Reports from District and County Councillors brought another complaint from Cllr Glazier about this blog, which he claimed was inaccurate in saying that he was reluctant to do anything for Winchelsea. Cllr Glazier stated that his “delivery” in Winchelsea has been as good as in any other parish.
He reported that he had recently been involved in trying to get something done about flooding in Tanyard Lane, something which Winchelsea ward councillors have been working to get done since 2008. Cllr Glazier has also promised to get something done about the rapid deterioration in the state of Winchelsea’s roads and pavements.
Cllr Glazier raised the issue of the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road and rehearsed the benefits for local jobs and housing claimed by the County and District Councils. His statement may be in response to the recent relevation through a Freedom of Information request, that the County has so far spent some £11 million on the road, largely on consultancy fees.

This blog

This blog also continued to exercise the Parish Council. The Council still dispute the statement in the report of the meeting of 9 January that, “The council now has an Asset Register. It should have had one years ago but only the current clerk has managed to produce one.” The Council claims that the Register was created in 2007. But the Council should always have had an Asset Register and was required to have one by law well before 2007. Moreover, the 2007 document was never finalized and signed off by the Council. In other words, it was still a draft until 2011. It was also still inaccurate (the Council claims it was not but had changed to reflect changes in assets: however, the inaccuracies were not about assets that had been acquired or disposed of since 2007).
It was decided that the Council would not respond to this blog. It will instead record its view in its minutes. Cllr Stanford was particularly forthright on this point, but then she believes that “responses in the public domain would lead to bringing the council further into disrepute”.

Noticeboards
The Council has received complaints --- one from an anonymous resident of Winchelsea, another from an anonymous ward councillor --- that non-community notices have been posted in the Parish noticeboard. The complaints were in fact manufactured. Surprisingly, the Council was not interested. 
Cllr P Turner (Winchelsea Beach) proposed that the Town Map be removed, on the grounds that everyone has SatNav. It was pointed out however that the map is also for the use of tourists and the proposal rejected.

Pear Tree Marsh allotments

The Council decided that this area should, once again, be made secure by being locked. Cllr Comotto stressed the need to regularise the residents’ parking on this land, which breached the covenant on the Council’s deed of purchase, as no other secure parking was available to residents of Tanyard Lane.

Welcome pack for new parishioners

The Council is to provide a page for inclusion in the welcome pack to be provided by Rother to all new residents. Cllr Sutton (Winchelsea Beach) felt it was vital that Winchelsea should be referred to as a town.

Record of Council meeting of 9 January 2012

We have received some complaints about this blog.

Cllr Glazier felt the references to him were "untrue, misleading and disrespectful" and "misleading, offensive and disrespectful".

The parish council objected that (1) the blog did not make it clear that it was not published by the council and that it represented only the views of the authors, (2) it did not offer the right of reply and (3) there were factual inaccuracies.

On (1), it appears that the notice displayed at the top of the blog went unnoticed. This says "The latest news on the activities of this Council from Winchelsea ward councillors, Ben Chishick and Richard Comotto. These are not necessarily the views of other councillors or the council."

On (2), the comments function was also unnoticed.

On (3), we were subsequently informed that: (a) the cost of the recording equipment was not £1,100 but £746, (b) the cost of the community noticeboards erected in Icklesham and Rye Harbour was not £280 (this was an extra cost of installation): the total was in fact £1,520! and (c) the Asset Register has been "maintained" since 2005/06, having been shown to councillors for comments in October 2005.

We apologise for the error on the cost of the recording equipment and accept that the council spent £1,520, not £280, on two community noticeboards. But on the Asset Register, we beg to differ. This was shown to councillors but was never seen again until the last meeting. Nor does it appear to have been finalised, given the corrections that were still necessary.

Icklesham Parish Council meeting, 9 January 2012

Winchelsea matters

County Cllr Glazier reported on the complaint received from Cllr Comotto and other residents of Winchelsea about the shanty town erected in the middle of Winchelsea by Southern Railway as part of the bus service replacing the train service while the Marshlink is closed. As usual, Cllr Glazier did not see what could be done. Cllr Comotto pointed out that East Sussex Highways Authority, which had issued the licence to Southern Railway to use the verge, felt that they had been misled. He asked that Highways therefore withdraw the licence. Cllr Glazier was not interested (as in most Winchelsea matters). However, the council agreed to write to Southern Railway to put forward the objections raised by residents.

After ten years, possibly longer, the council has finally appointed a contractor to clean bus shelters and benches! Actually, it appointed one last year but they were unable to do the job. The money for cleaning has been on the council's budget for more than 10 years but has never been spent.

The council finally agreed to take ownership from the Community Office of the four interpretation boards and two map boards in Winchelsea , while leaving the copyright with the Community Office. The council already insures and maintains the boards. Cllr Bronsdon was very unhappy about the copyright issue, muttering about "power and control".

The council rejected the attempt by the soon-to-depart PCSO to extend the Community Speed Watch to Icklesham and Winchelsea Beach. Cllrs Bronsdon, Stanford and Sutton were particularly hostile to the idea. Cllr Bronsdon was outraged by statements that Icklesham Parish Council did not support Community Speed Watch in Winchelsea. He was adamant that the council had always supported Community Speed Watch but not the use of speed guns, while Cllr Stanford said she supported Community Speed Watch but not the "community" bit. In other words, they support Community Speed Watch but not the Community or Speed Watch aspects! The chairman reiterated his fears that volunteers would be assaulted, ignoring the experience of Winchelsea and the rest of the country. Of course, in the past, he has been keen on Winchelsea volunteers coming to Icklesham, so it seems that his real objection is that he might have to do some work himself. Other councillors made it clear that they should not be called upon. In the end, however, there was not enough opposition to vote down the proposal and the decision was deferred until the Annual Parish Meeting.

Other wards

The council has received several complaints from residents of Winchelsea Beach about the lack of consultation about the decision to erect a row of bollards to keep vehicles off Harbour Field, which they thought were unsightly. This is the second set of complaints about lack of consultation by the council in Winchelsea Beach (the previous being about plans to erect a basket-ball hoop). The project had anyway come to grief because of the difficulty experienced by the contractor in fixing the bollards into the ground, which proved to be very stony and contains the foundations of Smeatons Harbour. The contractor also accidently severed a gas main, which was not on the plans of the gas company. Several residents attended the meeting to to ask for the restoration of a hedge. The clerk had the guts to admit that the bollards were the wrong option, given the nature of the ground, and the council had failed to consult residents directly affected. The council agreed to his proposal to switch to a hedge, protected pro tem by a stock fence.

Better consultation was pledged in the future. It will be interesting to see if future public consultations by the council come to much. When Winchelsea residents were consulted on turning off the footlights at midnight for financial and environmental reasons, although the response was 2:1 in favour and over 60 households responded, the decision was deferred for another consultation at the Annual Parish Meeting (where it will be easier for unrepresentative groups to influence the decision).

An illuminating debate broke out on proposals for Icklesham Recreation Ground. Cllr Warren has been organising consultations to decide what needs to be done. He believes public opinion is in favour of a childrens' play area. Cllr Merricks wants a hard surface, among other things, for hockey and badminton! Icklesham does not have and never has had a hockey team; and one supposes that badminton is still played indoors. One could have been forgiven for thinking that Cllr Merricks' agenda was to squeeze out the Icklesham Casuals football team. As in the past, she had a go at them for using the pitch in bad weather and only having one resident player (Cllr S Turner looked uneasy at this point, as he runs the Winchelsea Cricket Club, which also has only one resident player). No councillors did not seem worried by the fact that they are making plans for children with no knowledge of the number and age profile of the children for whom they are making plans!
A proposal has been made to buy high visibility vests for councillors to wear when they are out on council business and ID cards to prove who they are. The question was posed, where are councillors proposing to go that requires high visibility vests. The decision was deferred.

Two community noticeboards have been purchase at a cost of £280 [but see blog of 12 February] for Icklesham and Rye Habour. Readers will recall that a noticeboard to serve the isolated Tanyard Lane community in Winchelsea was rejected by the council.

The council now has an Asset Register. It should have had one years ago but only the current clerk has managed to produce one [but see blog of 12 February].

When the contract for grass cutting came up, one contractor quoted £4,646, some £2,900 cheaper than the nearest rival. Some councillors were suspicious and wanted to go for the next highest. All the firms quoting were confirmed as reputable. In the end, the council was persuaded to go for the cheapest quote. Those opposed fretted about the quality of service and wanted safeguards. But all the council has to do is ensure its contract is clear, inspect the work and withhold payment or repudiate the contract if performance is inadequate. Cllr Bronsdon continued to grumble about the anonymous system of tendering, even though it is laid down in council rules. Winchelsea costs just £203 to mow, just 4.4% of the total mowing budget. Icklesham costs £767 (16.5%), Winchelsea Beach £2,293 (49.4%) and Rye Harbour £1,382 (29.7%) .

Cllr Merricks proposed that the council spend £250 on registering the playing fields with the Queen Elizabeth II Fields Challenge in order to protect them in perpetuity. Cllr Bronsdon was unhappy with this on the grounds that it would stop them ever being built on! Other councillors were unconvinced that the protection offered was any greater than the covenants already on the fields. Further information is to be sought but it is not clear what else can be added to that already before the council.
The issue of rural superfast broadband came to the council. Cllrs P Turner and Warren had prepared rather good reports. It was a shame that many councillors appeared not to have read them. Councillors were asked, as individuals, to try to get residents to measure broadband speeds in their villages and pass the information, before the end of January, to East Sussex.

Disquiet over the conduct of council meetings

The meeting ran until 21:50, which meant it lasted 2 hours 35 minutes. This is becoming the norm. Best practice is that council meetings should last no longer than 2 hours, partly in order not to deter members of the public (remember how left-wing trade unionists in the 1970s used to stretch meetings out over hours in order to ensure that only militants would stay for important votes?).

There is some unhappiness about the duration of meetings but councillors seem inclined to blame the length of the agenda. However, the real reasons are weak chairmanship and the inability of councillors to work efficiently in plenary session.

The council does not follow the rules of debate set out in its own (recently re-issued) Standing Orders, which prescribe the order in which councillors should speak, the duration and rights of reply. Public questions are allowed to overrun, not least because, when several members of the public attend in order to support or object to a proposal, they are allowed to repeat themselves. One of the District Councillors is allowed to go on and on, even when it is plain that he has nothing new to say. Last night, the formal council meeting did not get going until 19:53. The chairman allows councillors unhappy with the outcome of a vote to re-open the debate after the vote has been taken: it is clear that some councillors try to change the sense of decisions. Last night, one councillor tried to substitute a different type of fence for the one agreed by the council. Another councillor insists on having the last word, even when the rules of debate leave that to the proposer of a resolution or amendment. And when that particular councillor feels she is losing the argument, she tries to talk over and down other councillors, as though she is trying to wear them down. Councillors are also allowed to open discussions on items put on the agenda for information only.

Another problem is that, although the clerk provides written reports, it is clear that some councillors do not read them and the council consequently wastes time going over what has already been explained.

A number of councillors simply cannot follow discussions. For example, last night, when councillors were asked to locate telephone cabinets in their villages as part of the rural broadband project, one councillor happily asserted that BT would provide that information if they were phoned and had done so to her husband. In fact, what BT had provided was download-upload speeds. Sometimes, the short attention span has serious consequences. Thus, the failure of a councillor to follow a budget discussion led to the council spending some £1,100 on recording equipment [but see blog of 12 February].

It is of course the job of the chairman to ensure that that the rules of debate are followed and that meetings run efficiently in other respects. He is patently not doing this.

RC