This was the first meeting of the new council after the election of 5 May 2011.
The first real business was to co-opt two members, one for Icklesham and one for the Beach, because too few people stood for election in those wards. Mr Nick Warren, who stood in the District election, was co-opted for Icklesham ward. Mr Peter Turner, defeated in the Winchelsea election, was co-opted for the Beach. Mr Turner has been a councillor in the past. In 1999, he stood for election in Winchelsea, was defeated and co-opted for Icklesham. On that occasion, he was also made chairman on the same night, although he did not remain on the council for the full term.
The new clerk, Steve Foreman, has hit the ground running and has already made big strides in sorting out the administrative confusion and backlog of work at Icklesham Parish Council. Among other things, he is proposing multi-year financial planning. This is obviously sensible and is envisaged in the council's own Financial Regulations.It was previously proposed by Winchelsea councillors but rejected by the council.
Most dramatically, the clerk has cut the fat out of the budget by placing £44,647 out of the total £111,386 (40%) into a reserve. We were not sure about this proposal at the meeting, as we regard 40% as an excessive percentage (see below). Upon consideration, however, we accept that this is probably a sensible move, as it should stop the money being frittered away in ways for which it was not budgeted. Nevertheless, it is a serious indictment of the budget-setting process at Icklesham Parish Council that 40% of the budget should in effect be frozen on only the second month of the financial year!
At the next budget-setting, reserves need to be reduced to a sensible sum. 40% is far too high. In the last financial year, only five budget items, totalling £3,506, went over budget. Over the previous four years, aggregate gross overspends ranged between £1,111 and £6,016. So reserves of £44,647 are way too high. Tax-payers' money should not sit in the bank account of the council!
The clerk is following guidance which suggests reserves should be 25-100% of annual expenditure.However, the guidance also suggests that the figure be based on an assessment of the risk of overspending (which the clerk is indeed intending to do). We think it questionable that any reserves need to be held against items such as insurance, salaries, electricity bills for footlights, etc, as these are fixed in advance. And as explained, analysis of previous budgets shows that the risk of overspending on other budget items is low, while the risk of an unexpected drop in income is virtually nil (revenue has been greater or lower than the budgeted amount by no more than about £70). It also needs to be borne in mind that Icklesham Parish Council has underspent its budget by 20-53% in recent years, so we already have massive de facto reserves.
Excess reserves should be returned to tax-payers next year by a reduction in the precept. Icklesham stood out from the 33 parishes of Rother this year by imposing a 21% tax increase, while 21 others froze or cut taxes, and the other 11 imposed modest increases of between £143 and £2100. Indeed, the £16,133 hike imposed by Icklesham was greater than the sum of all the other 11 increases (£11,000).
Interestingly, the Chairman justified this year's 21% tax hike by claiming that, because Icklesham Parish was composed of four villages, it was more expensive to run than other parishes. We agree that the size and diversity of Icklesham Parish creates diseconomies of scale (administration has to be quadruplicated). But that fact does not explain why tax had to be raised by 21% this year. There are four other parishes in Rother which are warded. Three of these other multi-village parishes froze their tax: one (Ticehurst) cut theirs by almost £14,000.
After the meeting, a member of the public commented on the fact that the meeting was attended by the Clerk and Deputy Clerk, and asked why Icklesham Parish was paying for the time and travel expenses of two clerks. Good point!
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Sunday, 3 April 2011
Tax increase 2011/12
Council tax bills have landed on door mats. The County and District Councils, as well as the Police and Fire authorities, have frozen their tax demands, in line with government guidance. Of the 33 parish and town councils in Rother, 21 have also followed the government by freezing or reducing their tax. Another 11 parish councils in Rother have increased tax by between £145 and £2,130. Icklesham Parish Council stands out by having imposed a hike of £16,133, considerably more than the 11 other parish councils put together (the 11 other parish councils which have increased tax have done so by a total of about £11,000)! Only Winchelsea ward councillors voted against this increase but were outvoted by councillors from Icklesham, Winchelsea Beach and Rye Harbour. Since 2003, Icklesham Parish Council's tax has quadrupled. However, it has always significantly underspent its budget.
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Icklesham Parish Council budget and tax 2011/12
Despite the worsening financial circumstances of many residents and calls for restraint from the government, Icklesham Parish Council has approved a 20.6% hike in its tax demand for 2011/12. Since 2003, our parish council tax has quadrupled from £19,000 to almost £95,000. On top of this, IPC has borrowed and spent £40,000 on Icklesham village hall.
Only Winchelsea councillors voted against the tax ramp. Perhaps as a consequence, all new projects for Winchelsea were cut. Only the other three wards will see new spending.
The tax ramp comes despite the fact that IPC has never yet managed to spend its budget. The current council (since 2007) has spent an average of just 71% of budgeted expenditures and a mere 65% of annual income. Thus, parish council tax has been one-third higher than necessary.
IPC carried over £42,000 of unspent funds from last year. The year before, over £55,000. And the year before that, almost £40,000. And these numbers disguise the true situation, because of the switching of sums during the year from projects included in the original budgets to new projects not envisaged when the budgets were drafted.
One argument made in favour of the tax hike was that the sums involved were small when considered per household. The average is about £65. In isolation, many people may consider such a sum to be small. But every penny of money taken from taxpayers should be taken for necessary and planned projects, not sitting idle in the council’s bank account until councillors get around to deciding how to spend it. Such sums must also be considered in the context of other tax bills facing residents, the increasing cost of living and the shrinking real value of wages and pensions.
Another argument to justify the tax ramp was the extra cost of elections this year. In fact, this adds just £6,000 to the bill. The real reason for the large increase is unjustified changes such as the increase in the contingency fund to £10,000.
We were also told that the Sussex Association of Local Councils has urged parishes to increase their budgets to make up for the cuts by the District and County Councils. Unfortunately, none of the planned spending by IPC will tackle areas where other councils have reduced spending.
2011/12 Budget (unless otherwise stated, changes are from 2007/08 to 2009/10)
Chairman’s allowance: £300 (unchanged). IPC is one of the few councils in Rother to pay this. Only introduced in 2005/06. At least, it has been reduced from £450 and is no longer paid to the chairman upfront but is claimed against expenses. However, this year, the chairman has used his allowance to buy flowers for a former councillor’s widow and lunch for a guide and his wife who took some councillors on a private tour. It has previously been used to buy leaving presents for retiring councillors and clerk, money which should have come from councillors’ own pockets
Clerks’ allowances: £1,300 (unchanged). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £251 a year or 19%.
Clerks’ travel expenses: £1,800 (+38%). Only the public sector pays employees to travel to work and IPC only has to pay because it prefers to employ clerks living outside the parish.
Clerks’ salaries: £23,376 (+10%). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £1,568 a year or 8%.
Training £1,200 (+140%). For new councillors next year, but the training budget has been underspent by an average of £925 a year or 78% (07/08-10/11). Yet IPC refused £150 for training for a Winchelsea councillor this year.
Audit fee: £1,000 (unchanged).
Clerks’ office expenses: £2,400 (unchanged).
Elections: £8,000 (+300%). This sum should have been accumulated gradually over previous years.
Hire of village halls: £400 (-20%). IPC continues to have to pay for hall hire in all wards other than Rye Harbour, despite making an annual grant to all the halls. The cost should be deducted from the grants (£6,000 next year) .
Insurance: £2,000 (unchanged).
Legal expenses: £1,500 (+100%). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £575 a year or 92% (07/08-10/11). A disguised contingency fund, as there is no regular legal work and free legal advice is given by SALC and NALC.
Subscriptions: £1,000 (+18%). Rise due to unnecessary new subscription to National Playing Fields Association.
Allotment maintenance: £1,500 (+33%). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £1,107 a year or 55%. Another disguised contingency fund: planned work is separately budgeted.
Bus shelter repair: £2,000. This budget item has been underspent by an average of £1,057 a year or 60%. Yet, some bus shelters have been in a poor state for a while.
Grass cutting: £8,000 (+14%). Largely Icklesham, Winchelsea Beach.
Playground maintenance: £1,500 (+33%). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £2,608 a year or 92%. It is unclear why the maintenance budget should be so large given that most playground equipment is new (IPC has spent over £52,000 on new playground equipment since 03/04 and has budgeted to spend another £9,500). Another disguised contingency fund.
Playground inspection: £400 (unchaanged).
Rubbish clearance: £2,500 (unchanged). Largely Winchelsea Beach.
Seat cleaning: £500 (new). We support this, having tried to get benches cleaned for several years.
Small works: £3,000 (unchanged). General contingency fund for repairs.
Streetlighting electricity: £1,900 (+6%). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £365 a year or 18%.
Streetlighting maintenance: £1,442 (unchanged). Carried over unspent from last year.
Tree maintenance: £1,500 (+200%). Seems a lot given that IPC has this year spent/budgeted £4,300 on a comprehensive programme of inspection and maintenance (proposed by Winchelsea councillors to stop the waste of money on sporadic ad hoc inspections, the reports of which kept getting lost).
Emptying dog bins: £1,200 (-60%). Winchelsea Beach. An exceptional and welcome cut-back.
Contingency Fund: £10,000 (+33%). This rise was justified on the basis of unsubstantiated advice. However, financial analysis suggests a figure of £4,000 would be more than adequate, as IPC has underspent its budgets by an average of £24,600 a year. IPC also has a separate £3,000 contingency fund for small works and several other items in the budget are disguised contingency funds. IPC also has an insurance policy to cover extreme events.
Pear Tree Marsh allotment: £1,800 (+80%). Clearing a blocked ditch. IPC has refused to roll over the unspent money in this year’s budget to clear the derelict areas in this allotment.
Direction sign, Icklesham: £500 (new). Unnecessary.
Cost of grant to Icklesham Memorial Trust: £3,118 (unchanged). This is the annual cost of paying back a £40,000 grant given to Icklesham village hall and funded by borrowing for 20 years.
Community noticeboard, Icklesham: £800 (new). Hardly a priority. There is no need given that there is a parish noticeboard and one on a bus shelter. In contrast, IPC refused to release £169 budgeted this year for a noticeboard on the Strand bus shelter for residents of Tanyard Lane.
Repair of Smeatons Lane, Winchelsea Beach: £1,000. Smeatons Lane is apparently owned by IPC and money has to be spent every year, £3,200 this year alone.
Fencing of Smeatons Lane, Winchelsea Beach: £4,000. Some £2,700 has already been spent replacing a collapsed fence along Smeatons Lane with posts to stop cars parking on council property. The new money is to install a new gate, fix the gate posts and replace the remaining fence. The gate, one gate post and remaining fence are not in need of replacement. This is unnecessary, particularly in current circumstances.
Fingerpost sign, Rye Harbour: £750 (new). To the lifeboat hut. No demonstrated need. Hardly a priority.
Gateway sign, Rye Harbour: £1,400 (new). An isolated and relativlely cost/ineffective speed calming measure.
Flagpole, Rye Harbour: £2,000 (unchanged). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £1,150 a year or 92% (03/04-10/11). Why is IPC spending any money on this flagpole?
Community noticeboard, Rye Harbour: £800 (new). Hardly a priority. There is no need given that there is a parish noticeboard and one at the shop. In contrast, IPC refused to release £169 budgeted for a noticeboard on the Strand bus shelter for residents of TanyardLane.
Youth projects: £1,000 (unchanged). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £1,000 a year or 67%. No projects planned. Another disguised contingency fund. Yet a request for money for a youth project in Winchelsea this year was refused.
Donation fund: £1,000 (unchanged). This budget item has been underspent by £333 a year or 40%.
Grant to Rye Community Transport: £1,500 (unchanged).
Grants to churches: £1,200 (+20%). Money towards maintenance of churchyards, but IPC does not know how much the churches spend. Each gets 25% whereas the cost differs widely between churches. When the grant was divided pro rata with costs, other wards objected to St Thomas’s receiving a larger share.
Grants to village halls: £6,000 (+50%). When IPC had a fund to which village halls could apply, they rarely bothered. Now money is given out each year whether or not the village halls need money, and IPC does not ask how the money is spent. There is no justification for increasing this sum by so much, if at all.
Grant to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve: £300 (unchanged). This has become an annual grant. Rather generous in current circumstances.
New bins: £500. For other wards. Yet IPC refused to reinstate money for a larger waste bin to replace the overflowing one by the public toilets & recycling bins.
Local Action Plan: £1,500 (new). No specific projects. Another disguised contingency fund.
New playground equipment: £2,500. IPC has spent over £52,000 on new playground equipment since 03/04 and budgeted to spend another £9,500. It has never assessed need, does not know how many children there are in each ward and what age. It is poor financial planning to concentrate expenditure in this way.
Total Expenditure: £111,386
Only Winchelsea councillors voted against the tax ramp. Perhaps as a consequence, all new projects for Winchelsea were cut. Only the other three wards will see new spending.
The tax ramp comes despite the fact that IPC has never yet managed to spend its budget. The current council (since 2007) has spent an average of just 71% of budgeted expenditures and a mere 65% of annual income. Thus, parish council tax has been one-third higher than necessary.
IPC carried over £42,000 of unspent funds from last year. The year before, over £55,000. And the year before that, almost £40,000. And these numbers disguise the true situation, because of the switching of sums during the year from projects included in the original budgets to new projects not envisaged when the budgets were drafted.
One argument made in favour of the tax hike was that the sums involved were small when considered per household. The average is about £65. In isolation, many people may consider such a sum to be small. But every penny of money taken from taxpayers should be taken for necessary and planned projects, not sitting idle in the council’s bank account until councillors get around to deciding how to spend it. Such sums must also be considered in the context of other tax bills facing residents, the increasing cost of living and the shrinking real value of wages and pensions.
Another argument to justify the tax ramp was the extra cost of elections this year. In fact, this adds just £6,000 to the bill. The real reason for the large increase is unjustified changes such as the increase in the contingency fund to £10,000.
We were also told that the Sussex Association of Local Councils has urged parishes to increase their budgets to make up for the cuts by the District and County Councils. Unfortunately, none of the planned spending by IPC will tackle areas where other councils have reduced spending.
2011/12 Budget (unless otherwise stated, changes are from 2007/08 to 2009/10)
Chairman’s allowance: £300 (unchanged). IPC is one of the few councils in Rother to pay this. Only introduced in 2005/06. At least, it has been reduced from £450 and is no longer paid to the chairman upfront but is claimed against expenses. However, this year, the chairman has used his allowance to buy flowers for a former councillor’s widow and lunch for a guide and his wife who took some councillors on a private tour. It has previously been used to buy leaving presents for retiring councillors and clerk, money which should have come from councillors’ own pockets
Clerks’ allowances: £1,300 (unchanged). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £251 a year or 19%.
Clerks’ travel expenses: £1,800 (+38%). Only the public sector pays employees to travel to work and IPC only has to pay because it prefers to employ clerks living outside the parish.
Clerks’ salaries: £23,376 (+10%). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £1,568 a year or 8%.
Training £1,200 (+140%). For new councillors next year, but the training budget has been underspent by an average of £925 a year or 78% (07/08-10/11). Yet IPC refused £150 for training for a Winchelsea councillor this year.
Audit fee: £1,000 (unchanged).
Clerks’ office expenses: £2,400 (unchanged).
Elections: £8,000 (+300%). This sum should have been accumulated gradually over previous years.
Hire of village halls: £400 (-20%). IPC continues to have to pay for hall hire in all wards other than Rye Harbour, despite making an annual grant to all the halls. The cost should be deducted from the grants (£6,000 next year) .
Insurance: £2,000 (unchanged).
Legal expenses: £1,500 (+100%). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £575 a year or 92% (07/08-10/11). A disguised contingency fund, as there is no regular legal work and free legal advice is given by SALC and NALC.
Subscriptions: £1,000 (+18%). Rise due to unnecessary new subscription to National Playing Fields Association.
Allotment maintenance: £1,500 (+33%). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £1,107 a year or 55%. Another disguised contingency fund: planned work is separately budgeted.
Bus shelter repair: £2,000. This budget item has been underspent by an average of £1,057 a year or 60%. Yet, some bus shelters have been in a poor state for a while.
Grass cutting: £8,000 (+14%). Largely Icklesham, Winchelsea Beach.
Playground maintenance: £1,500 (+33%). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £2,608 a year or 92%. It is unclear why the maintenance budget should be so large given that most playground equipment is new (IPC has spent over £52,000 on new playground equipment since 03/04 and has budgeted to spend another £9,500). Another disguised contingency fund.
Playground inspection: £400 (unchaanged).
Rubbish clearance: £2,500 (unchanged). Largely Winchelsea Beach.
Seat cleaning: £500 (new). We support this, having tried to get benches cleaned for several years.
Small works: £3,000 (unchanged). General contingency fund for repairs.
Streetlighting electricity: £1,900 (+6%). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £365 a year or 18%.
Streetlighting maintenance: £1,442 (unchanged). Carried over unspent from last year.
Tree maintenance: £1,500 (+200%). Seems a lot given that IPC has this year spent/budgeted £4,300 on a comprehensive programme of inspection and maintenance (proposed by Winchelsea councillors to stop the waste of money on sporadic ad hoc inspections, the reports of which kept getting lost).
Emptying dog bins: £1,200 (-60%). Winchelsea Beach. An exceptional and welcome cut-back.
Contingency Fund: £10,000 (+33%). This rise was justified on the basis of unsubstantiated advice. However, financial analysis suggests a figure of £4,000 would be more than adequate, as IPC has underspent its budgets by an average of £24,600 a year. IPC also has a separate £3,000 contingency fund for small works and several other items in the budget are disguised contingency funds. IPC also has an insurance policy to cover extreme events.
Pear Tree Marsh allotment: £1,800 (+80%). Clearing a blocked ditch. IPC has refused to roll over the unspent money in this year’s budget to clear the derelict areas in this allotment.
Direction sign, Icklesham: £500 (new). Unnecessary.
Cost of grant to Icklesham Memorial Trust: £3,118 (unchanged). This is the annual cost of paying back a £40,000 grant given to Icklesham village hall and funded by borrowing for 20 years.
Community noticeboard, Icklesham: £800 (new). Hardly a priority. There is no need given that there is a parish noticeboard and one on a bus shelter. In contrast, IPC refused to release £169 budgeted this year for a noticeboard on the Strand bus shelter for residents of Tanyard Lane.
Repair of Smeatons Lane, Winchelsea Beach: £1,000. Smeatons Lane is apparently owned by IPC and money has to be spent every year, £3,200 this year alone.
Fencing of Smeatons Lane, Winchelsea Beach: £4,000. Some £2,700 has already been spent replacing a collapsed fence along Smeatons Lane with posts to stop cars parking on council property. The new money is to install a new gate, fix the gate posts and replace the remaining fence. The gate, one gate post and remaining fence are not in need of replacement. This is unnecessary, particularly in current circumstances.
Fingerpost sign, Rye Harbour: £750 (new). To the lifeboat hut. No demonstrated need. Hardly a priority.
Gateway sign, Rye Harbour: £1,400 (new). An isolated and relativlely cost/ineffective speed calming measure.
Flagpole, Rye Harbour: £2,000 (unchanged). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £1,150 a year or 92% (03/04-10/11). Why is IPC spending any money on this flagpole?
Community noticeboard, Rye Harbour: £800 (new). Hardly a priority. There is no need given that there is a parish noticeboard and one at the shop. In contrast, IPC refused to release £169 budgeted for a noticeboard on the Strand bus shelter for residents of TanyardLane.
Youth projects: £1,000 (unchanged). This budget item has been underspent by an average of £1,000 a year or 67%. No projects planned. Another disguised contingency fund. Yet a request for money for a youth project in Winchelsea this year was refused.
Donation fund: £1,000 (unchanged). This budget item has been underspent by £333 a year or 40%.
Grant to Rye Community Transport: £1,500 (unchanged).
Grants to churches: £1,200 (+20%). Money towards maintenance of churchyards, but IPC does not know how much the churches spend. Each gets 25% whereas the cost differs widely between churches. When the grant was divided pro rata with costs, other wards objected to St Thomas’s receiving a larger share.
Grants to village halls: £6,000 (+50%). When IPC had a fund to which village halls could apply, they rarely bothered. Now money is given out each year whether or not the village halls need money, and IPC does not ask how the money is spent. There is no justification for increasing this sum by so much, if at all.
Grant to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve: £300 (unchanged). This has become an annual grant. Rather generous in current circumstances.
New bins: £500. For other wards. Yet IPC refused to reinstate money for a larger waste bin to replace the overflowing one by the public toilets & recycling bins.
Local Action Plan: £1,500 (new). No specific projects. Another disguised contingency fund.
New playground equipment: £2,500. IPC has spent over £52,000 on new playground equipment since 03/04 and budgeted to spend another £9,500. It has never assessed need, does not know how many children there are in each ward and what age. It is poor financial planning to concentrate expenditure in this way.
Total Expenditure: £111,386
Monday, 11 January 2010
Council meeting on 11 January 2010
Public Questions opened with the now traditional contribution by a member of Winchelsea Corporation. There was only one in attendance this month and, as this was Jurat Spencer, the topic was naturally the timetable at Winchelsea station.
The big event of the night was the budget. It had been agreed, at the last meeting, that the budget would be £99,085 and the precept £77,500. But it was not to be. Cllr Bronsdon argued that it had been agreed formally in November to include £1,000 for youth projects and that the decision at the December meeting to delete this (because there is no actual youth project to be financed) had been improper. He wanted the £1,000 re-inserted. Readers will recall that Cllr Bronsdon had repeatedly challenged the Chairman at the last meeting over cuts in the budget. Despite both the Chairman and the Clerk stating that no formal decision had been made in November and despite the lack of a youth project, the rest of the Council (excluding Winchelsea councillors) reversed their December decision and reinstated the £1,000. So, the budget is now £100,084 and the precept £78,500. Of course, the increase in the precept will not worry Cllr Bronsdon personally: being a resident of Rye, he will not pay Council Tax in Ickelsham Parish.
An application was made by Icklesham School for £3,000 for a canopy and play equipment. This has apparently been required by Ofsted! Some councillors felt that such requirements should be financed from the education budget. There was also doubt about whether the Council had the power to make such a grant, given that the school is not a community facility. The school claim that the playground will be open to the community, but this seems doubtful given the restrictions on access imposed by schools these days. In the end, the Council made a grant of £1,000.
A proposal to create another plot at the Pear Tree Marsh allotment (to address the waiting list) was deferred at the insistence of non-Winchelsea councillors. One objection was from Cllr Merricks, who was convinced that there was an oak tree in the middle of the plot! And she also objected that she had not had time to visit the site and that the proposal had simply appeared on the agenda. Quite where she thinks proposals should appear, other than on the agenda, is unclear.Cllr Bronsdon objected to an additional plot on the grounds that there was no water supply at Pear Tree Marsh.
Cllr Merricks was also the author of a curious resolution insisting that nothing should appear on the Works Programme that had not been authorised by the Council. When asked for an example of such unapproved work, she cited work at the Cricket Field allotment. In fact, this had been discussed by the Council in May 2009 (Minute 09/106). In the end, the Council instructed the Clerk to add the date and minute of the meeting against each item in the Work Programme.
But Cllr Merricks is not the only one who has difficulty following Council business and is unwilling to keep her own records. Cllr Stanford, whose lapses of memory have already forced the Council to buy a recording system, proposed that the Clerk keep a book of Council policies for reference. In fact, given that the policies of the Council are adopted in the form of decisions, this record exists already in the form of the Minutes and the Council's Decision Book. However, Cllr Stanford is not prepared to read the Minutes and was unaware that a Decision Book existed. But she and other councillors were unwilling to accept a proposal that the Minutes should be made easier to consult by limiting them to recording only the essentials of a meeting, such as decisions, and that the Decisions Book should be published. Instead, the Clerk has been lumbered with another unnecessary task.
All in all, this meeting was a messy affair. The Chairman once again lost control of the meeting and his failure to enforce Standing Orders allowed incoherent, multilateral arguments to break out, as well as permitting Cllr Stanford to resume her habit of making snide asides and pulling faces whenever Winchelsea councillors spoke. In a classic performance, she moaned and griped about three amendments to the Minutes by Cllr Comotto, asking the gallery why these amendments were not sent to the Clerk in advance of the meeting, while ignoring the Clerk's reply that the amendments had been sent in advance and ignoring the fact that she is happy enough to table amendments at meetings (she tabled five as recently as November). Later on, Cllr Stanford had another pop at the Clerk, while standing in for the Chairman, for failing to have a document to hand.
No one could accuse Cllrs Moore, Sutton and Thompson of any rudeness. They once again contributed absolutely nothing to the meeting. How can they suffer in silence?
Postscript. It was revealed that the Chairman had tapped his allowance for £80 for flowers for the widow of the late former councillor, Michael Alford, and two donations to charities. Once again, councillors have chosen to ignore the advice of SALC, that such donations should come out of the pockets of councillors, rather than be passed onto to tax-payers.
The big event of the night was the budget. It had been agreed, at the last meeting, that the budget would be £99,085 and the precept £77,500. But it was not to be. Cllr Bronsdon argued that it had been agreed formally in November to include £1,000 for youth projects and that the decision at the December meeting to delete this (because there is no actual youth project to be financed) had been improper. He wanted the £1,000 re-inserted. Readers will recall that Cllr Bronsdon had repeatedly challenged the Chairman at the last meeting over cuts in the budget. Despite both the Chairman and the Clerk stating that no formal decision had been made in November and despite the lack of a youth project, the rest of the Council (excluding Winchelsea councillors) reversed their December decision and reinstated the £1,000. So, the budget is now £100,084 and the precept £78,500. Of course, the increase in the precept will not worry Cllr Bronsdon personally: being a resident of Rye, he will not pay Council Tax in Ickelsham Parish.
An application was made by Icklesham School for £3,000 for a canopy and play equipment. This has apparently been required by Ofsted! Some councillors felt that such requirements should be financed from the education budget. There was also doubt about whether the Council had the power to make such a grant, given that the school is not a community facility. The school claim that the playground will be open to the community, but this seems doubtful given the restrictions on access imposed by schools these days. In the end, the Council made a grant of £1,000.
A proposal to create another plot at the Pear Tree Marsh allotment (to address the waiting list) was deferred at the insistence of non-Winchelsea councillors. One objection was from Cllr Merricks, who was convinced that there was an oak tree in the middle of the plot! And she also objected that she had not had time to visit the site and that the proposal had simply appeared on the agenda. Quite where she thinks proposals should appear, other than on the agenda, is unclear.Cllr Bronsdon objected to an additional plot on the grounds that there was no water supply at Pear Tree Marsh.
Cllr Merricks was also the author of a curious resolution insisting that nothing should appear on the Works Programme that had not been authorised by the Council. When asked for an example of such unapproved work, she cited work at the Cricket Field allotment. In fact, this had been discussed by the Council in May 2009 (Minute 09/106). In the end, the Council instructed the Clerk to add the date and minute of the meeting against each item in the Work Programme.
But Cllr Merricks is not the only one who has difficulty following Council business and is unwilling to keep her own records. Cllr Stanford, whose lapses of memory have already forced the Council to buy a recording system, proposed that the Clerk keep a book of Council policies for reference. In fact, given that the policies of the Council are adopted in the form of decisions, this record exists already in the form of the Minutes and the Council's Decision Book. However, Cllr Stanford is not prepared to read the Minutes and was unaware that a Decision Book existed. But she and other councillors were unwilling to accept a proposal that the Minutes should be made easier to consult by limiting them to recording only the essentials of a meeting, such as decisions, and that the Decisions Book should be published. Instead, the Clerk has been lumbered with another unnecessary task.
All in all, this meeting was a messy affair. The Chairman once again lost control of the meeting and his failure to enforce Standing Orders allowed incoherent, multilateral arguments to break out, as well as permitting Cllr Stanford to resume her habit of making snide asides and pulling faces whenever Winchelsea councillors spoke. In a classic performance, she moaned and griped about three amendments to the Minutes by Cllr Comotto, asking the gallery why these amendments were not sent to the Clerk in advance of the meeting, while ignoring the Clerk's reply that the amendments had been sent in advance and ignoring the fact that she is happy enough to table amendments at meetings (she tabled five as recently as November). Later on, Cllr Stanford had another pop at the Clerk, while standing in for the Chairman, for failing to have a document to hand.
No one could accuse Cllrs Moore, Sutton and Thompson of any rudeness. They once again contributed absolutely nothing to the meeting. How can they suffer in silence?
Postscript. It was revealed that the Chairman had tapped his allowance for £80 for flowers for the widow of the late former councillor, Michael Alford, and two donations to charities. Once again, councillors have chosen to ignore the advice of SALC, that such donations should come out of the pockets of councillors, rather than be passed onto to tax-payers.
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Parish Council meeting, 14 December 2009
This was the second meeting to discuss the budget for 2010/11. The previous meeting, in November, saw an apparently collective determination by councillors from other wards to refuse to cut anything from the draft budget except proposals for Winchelsea (Pear Tree Marsh car park and Strand bus shelter) and attempts to block agreed projects for Winchelsea included in the current budget (Strand noticeboard and new bench).
Public Questions
The December meeting started with the now regular political expedition by members of the Corporation. Jurat Spencer berated councillors for their "demeaning and disruptive" behaviour at the last meeting.
Jurat McKinna complained about the recent petition by Winchelsea residents against the Council's expropriation of the Remembrance Sunday wreath-laying ceremony in Winchelsea. He criticised Winchelsea ward councillors for "politcising" Remembrance, and asked how a petition could be democratic, if it was not shown to people who did not wish to sign it! He also demanded to know how many people had not been shown the petition and how many had refused to sign.
Cllr Comotto pointed out that the wreath-laying ceremony in Winchelsea had been made into a political issue by a resolution tabled by Cllr Bronsdon of Rye Harbour to substitute elected ward councillors by the parish council Chairman (but only in Winchelsea). Jurat M admitted that he was unaware of this fact and had the good grace to apologise.
However, his complaint about the petition started a hare running through the thicket that is Icklesham Parish Council. Jurat M seems to have confused petitions with referenda, where it would indeed be undemocratic not to allow every voter to have their say. To be fair, such confusion is not that surprising for a member of an organisation that last flirted with democracy some five hundred years ago. No one really knew how to unravel such a convoluted misunderstanding of the democratic process. Even councillors who were inclined to support Jurat M as a matter of principle were unable to work out how to do so without looking ridiculous. In the end, as Cllr Drew pointed out, anyone opposed to the object of a petition can always organise their own. But for the information of Jurat M: it is estimated that 6,787,257,692 people were not shown the wreath-laying petition!
Budget
After the starters came the main course. A draft budget of £113,503 was put before the Council. This would have required a Precept (the parish council tax on residents) of £91,160, an increase of 31% over the current financial year.
Some councillors argued that such an increase was perfectably acceptable, given that it was equivalent to a mere £10 extra a head. Winchelsea ward councillors felt that, in current economic circumstances, a reduction would be more appropriate and that, in view of the Council's chronic and substantial underspending of its budget, any increase could not be justified. It was noted that strong opposition to an increase in the Precept had been expressed by Winchelsea residents in response to the budget consultation.
Winchelsea councillors suggested that the Council should conduct a a line by line review of the draft budget and then, if the total was too high, repeat the exercise until the budget was cut to an acceptable figure by rejecting or deferring expenditures which were not priorities.
Other councillors objected on the grounds that everything in the draft budget was a priority. This seemed to the Winchelsea projects which the Council had refused but did include £750 for a sign saying "Rye Harbour" to be put up on the outskirts of Rye Harbour. Such a sign should be erected by the County Council but they have refused. Interestingly, whenever Winchelsea has asked the parish council to do something that another body has failed to do, Rye Harbour councillors are at the forefront of objections that the parish council should not assume the functions of other bodies.
Winchelsea ward councillors expected, once again, to be simply outvoted by councillors from other wards, but the desire to automatically oppose anything suggested by Winchelsea councillors had to compete with the complete apathy of several councillors (some never spoke for the whole meeting) and the commonsense shown by Cllr Lyward of Winchelsea Beach, who felt that the Council, like other organisations in the current climate, should trim its sails.
£500 for new bins was axed, after the discovery that no one had asked for bins. £1,450 was cut from playground equipment, having been wrongly included in the first place. Amazingly, £150 was shaved from the Chairman's Allowance. £650 was cut from training, £2,155 from grants to churches for grass-cutting, £500 from the Council's own grass-cutting bill, £1,000 from the maintenance fund for repairing Smeaton's Lane in Winchelsea Beach (only just repaired at a cost of over £5,000) and £1,000 from the youth projects fund (because there are no actual projects). Winchelsea councillors offered to defer projects worth £3,010. Regretably, however, the Council refused to budget £1,750 for a communal shed requested by the plot-holders of the rejuvenated Cricket Field allotments. In total, some £13,660 was trimmed from the draft budget.
As it was, even these modest cuts were too much for Cllr Bronsdon. The breaking point for Cllr Bronsdon (who, as a resident of Rye, will not pay the Precept he was so keen to increase) appeared to be the cutting of the Chairman's allowance. This item has become a sacred cow for some councillors; a symbol of the Council's authority over tax-payers. The cut was proposed by the Chairman, after it was pointed out that, since this allowance had been drawn down as needed, rather than being taken in one lumpsum upfront, expenditure had never exceeded £144, suggesting that the budgeted sum of £450 was too much. Cllr Bronsdon objected and tried to wind back all the cuts, claiming that, as the Council had formally approved most of the budget items at its previous meeting, these could not therefore be cut or deleted at the current meeting (this presumably excluded the increase from £1,000 to £2,000 which Cllr Bronsdon was seeking for the flagpole at Rye Harbour).
The Chairman disagreed, explaining that the budget discussion was informal and no formal votes had been taken at the previous meeting, a point substantiated by the Assistant Clerk, who taken the minutes. Despite being over-ruled, Cllr Bronsdon (a former Chaiman himself) persisted in objecting and the exchange became increasingly heated. Was this the demeaning and disruptive behaviour feared by Jurat S? Obviously, the mentoring organised for Cllr Bronsdon by the Monitoring Officer has not been entirely successful.
Another little upset was caused when it was noted that the first Chairman to take an allowance (Cllr Merricks of Icklesham ward) had taken the whole amount upfront and refused to account for how it has been spent (although one year, she did claim that she had spent the money on gifts for retiring Councillors and Clerk). That councillor retorted that the Council had agreed that she did not have to account for it. She had therefore broken no rules. But then, no MPs have broken the rules with their allowances!
Surprisingly, the decision to cut the grants to churches for grass-cutting to £1,000 in total from £3,150 this year did not excite any objections. The reason appears to be that the £1,000 will be split equally, whereas the £3,150 was divided in proportion to the cost of grass-cutting for each church (so, Winchelsea got £2,000, Icklesham £500, Rye Harbour £400 and the Beach £250). Cllrs Merricks and Stanford were incensed last year because Winchelsea was getting more than other wards, even though their grass-cutting bill was bigger. Indeed, Cllr Stanford claimed that the resolution put to the Council had been for equal shares and would not accept the word of the Chairman and Clerk. As a result, the Council ended up spending over £900 on a recording machine. This time around, Cllrs Merricks and Stanford seemed happy that the churches in their wards were getting an equal share of a smaller cake than a smaller share of a larger cake.
An interesting digression from the main discussion was provided by Cllr Merricks. She had prepared a list of the expenditures put forward for each ward into the draft budget and calculated each ward's share of the total. These shares had then been compared with the proportion of voters in each ward. The logic of Cllr Merricks' arithmetic was that each ward should get a share of the budget in proportion to its share of the voting population of the parish. Given that Winchelsea councillors had proposed more projects than other ward councillors, the aim seemed to be to cut spending on Winchelsea and support the case for another £3,000 to be spent on Icklesham (specifically, on an outdoor shelter at the school).
Cllr Merricks arithmetic was dubious. She had forgotten to include several expenditures proposed for wards other than Winchelsea, had removed from the Icklesham village total the cost of the loan taken out by the Council last year to make a grant to Icklesham Memorial Trust (about £3,200 a year), and had included in the Winchelsea total a ward councillor's training request. She had also mistakenly assumed that the Precept is paid only by voters (in fact, all residents pay) and had ignored the fact that Winchelsea pays a larger Precept per head than other wards because assessments are based on property value and are not per capita. Significantly, Cllr Merricks did not do the calculations for the current financial year, when Icklesham ward received a grant for its village hall of £40,000 from the Council plus £6,000 for relaying the car park outside the village hall. Taking this into account and calculating the shares of expenditures which could be attributed to specific wards, Icklesham ward took 83% of spending, leaving the Beach with 8%, Winchelsea with 5% and Rye Harbour with 4%.
As it was, Cllr Merricks' arithmetic was largely ignored. But it did help by focusing discussion on £5,000 requested by Winchelsea councillors at the previous meeting for the provision of a water supply and the clearance of Pear Tree Marsh allotment (a project approved two years ago but one of the many still to be completed or even started). This sum had been agreed but it appeared to have been subject to a provisio that, when it came time to spend the money, it might be diverted to other wards. As Cllr Merricks' arithmetic showed the money as a sum for Winchelsea, Winchelsea councillors pressed the Council and secured agreement that the money will be dedicated to Pear Tree Marsh.
More than anything else, the discussion demonstrated that the fundamental difficulty that Icklesham Parish Council has with the budget process. Only a minority of councillors participate actively, if at all, in the discussion. Some resent having to go through the draft budget line by line and a few even believe that it should all be done by the Clerk. Most see the budget, not as a set of planned expenditures, but as set of contingency pots from which money can be drawn when the urge to do something arises later in the year.
In the end, the Council agreed a budget of £99,843 and a precept of £77,500, which represents an increase of almost 12%. More could have been removed from the draft budget, including the rest of the Chairman's allowance and £4,000 for Icklesham Recreation Ground drainage (an unnecessary project which will have consumed £36,000 against an original budget of £15,000). Councillors were assured that the Council will not underspend its budget this year, but even the estimated carry-over from this year is £20,793 (about 30% of the current precept).
Budget consultation
Before the budget debate, Winchelsea councillors attempted to inform the Council of the results of the budget consultation in Winchelsea, where 102 residents had responded by the time of the meeting to a questionnaire distributed to each household. However, there was absolutely no interest in what residents thought and no other councillors mentioned the views of their wards in the rest of the meeting. Public consultation appears to have fallen out of favour with Icklesham Parish Council as quickly as it was taken up.
Public Questions
The December meeting started with the now regular political expedition by members of the Corporation. Jurat Spencer berated councillors for their "demeaning and disruptive" behaviour at the last meeting.
Jurat McKinna complained about the recent petition by Winchelsea residents against the Council's expropriation of the Remembrance Sunday wreath-laying ceremony in Winchelsea. He criticised Winchelsea ward councillors for "politcising" Remembrance, and asked how a petition could be democratic, if it was not shown to people who did not wish to sign it! He also demanded to know how many people had not been shown the petition and how many had refused to sign.
Cllr Comotto pointed out that the wreath-laying ceremony in Winchelsea had been made into a political issue by a resolution tabled by Cllr Bronsdon of Rye Harbour to substitute elected ward councillors by the parish council Chairman (but only in Winchelsea). Jurat M admitted that he was unaware of this fact and had the good grace to apologise.
However, his complaint about the petition started a hare running through the thicket that is Icklesham Parish Council. Jurat M seems to have confused petitions with referenda, where it would indeed be undemocratic not to allow every voter to have their say. To be fair, such confusion is not that surprising for a member of an organisation that last flirted with democracy some five hundred years ago. No one really knew how to unravel such a convoluted misunderstanding of the democratic process. Even councillors who were inclined to support Jurat M as a matter of principle were unable to work out how to do so without looking ridiculous. In the end, as Cllr Drew pointed out, anyone opposed to the object of a petition can always organise their own. But for the information of Jurat M: it is estimated that 6,787,257,692 people were not shown the wreath-laying petition!
Budget
After the starters came the main course. A draft budget of £113,503 was put before the Council. This would have required a Precept (the parish council tax on residents) of £91,160, an increase of 31% over the current financial year.
Some councillors argued that such an increase was perfectably acceptable, given that it was equivalent to a mere £10 extra a head. Winchelsea ward councillors felt that, in current economic circumstances, a reduction would be more appropriate and that, in view of the Council's chronic and substantial underspending of its budget, any increase could not be justified. It was noted that strong opposition to an increase in the Precept had been expressed by Winchelsea residents in response to the budget consultation.
Winchelsea councillors suggested that the Council should conduct a a line by line review of the draft budget and then, if the total was too high, repeat the exercise until the budget was cut to an acceptable figure by rejecting or deferring expenditures which were not priorities.
Other councillors objected on the grounds that everything in the draft budget was a priority. This seemed to the Winchelsea projects which the Council had refused but did include £750 for a sign saying "Rye Harbour" to be put up on the outskirts of Rye Harbour. Such a sign should be erected by the County Council but they have refused. Interestingly, whenever Winchelsea has asked the parish council to do something that another body has failed to do, Rye Harbour councillors are at the forefront of objections that the parish council should not assume the functions of other bodies.
Winchelsea ward councillors expected, once again, to be simply outvoted by councillors from other wards, but the desire to automatically oppose anything suggested by Winchelsea councillors had to compete with the complete apathy of several councillors (some never spoke for the whole meeting) and the commonsense shown by Cllr Lyward of Winchelsea Beach, who felt that the Council, like other organisations in the current climate, should trim its sails.
£500 for new bins was axed, after the discovery that no one had asked for bins. £1,450 was cut from playground equipment, having been wrongly included in the first place. Amazingly, £150 was shaved from the Chairman's Allowance. £650 was cut from training, £2,155 from grants to churches for grass-cutting, £500 from the Council's own grass-cutting bill, £1,000 from the maintenance fund for repairing Smeaton's Lane in Winchelsea Beach (only just repaired at a cost of over £5,000) and £1,000 from the youth projects fund (because there are no actual projects). Winchelsea councillors offered to defer projects worth £3,010. Regretably, however, the Council refused to budget £1,750 for a communal shed requested by the plot-holders of the rejuvenated Cricket Field allotments. In total, some £13,660 was trimmed from the draft budget.
As it was, even these modest cuts were too much for Cllr Bronsdon. The breaking point for Cllr Bronsdon (who, as a resident of Rye, will not pay the Precept he was so keen to increase) appeared to be the cutting of the Chairman's allowance. This item has become a sacred cow for some councillors; a symbol of the Council's authority over tax-payers. The cut was proposed by the Chairman, after it was pointed out that, since this allowance had been drawn down as needed, rather than being taken in one lumpsum upfront, expenditure had never exceeded £144, suggesting that the budgeted sum of £450 was too much. Cllr Bronsdon objected and tried to wind back all the cuts, claiming that, as the Council had formally approved most of the budget items at its previous meeting, these could not therefore be cut or deleted at the current meeting (this presumably excluded the increase from £1,000 to £2,000 which Cllr Bronsdon was seeking for the flagpole at Rye Harbour).
The Chairman disagreed, explaining that the budget discussion was informal and no formal votes had been taken at the previous meeting, a point substantiated by the Assistant Clerk, who taken the minutes. Despite being over-ruled, Cllr Bronsdon (a former Chaiman himself) persisted in objecting and the exchange became increasingly heated. Was this the demeaning and disruptive behaviour feared by Jurat S? Obviously, the mentoring organised for Cllr Bronsdon by the Monitoring Officer has not been entirely successful.
Another little upset was caused when it was noted that the first Chairman to take an allowance (Cllr Merricks of Icklesham ward) had taken the whole amount upfront and refused to account for how it has been spent (although one year, she did claim that she had spent the money on gifts for retiring Councillors and Clerk). That councillor retorted that the Council had agreed that she did not have to account for it. She had therefore broken no rules. But then, no MPs have broken the rules with their allowances!
Surprisingly, the decision to cut the grants to churches for grass-cutting to £1,000 in total from £3,150 this year did not excite any objections. The reason appears to be that the £1,000 will be split equally, whereas the £3,150 was divided in proportion to the cost of grass-cutting for each church (so, Winchelsea got £2,000, Icklesham £500, Rye Harbour £400 and the Beach £250). Cllrs Merricks and Stanford were incensed last year because Winchelsea was getting more than other wards, even though their grass-cutting bill was bigger. Indeed, Cllr Stanford claimed that the resolution put to the Council had been for equal shares and would not accept the word of the Chairman and Clerk. As a result, the Council ended up spending over £900 on a recording machine. This time around, Cllrs Merricks and Stanford seemed happy that the churches in their wards were getting an equal share of a smaller cake than a smaller share of a larger cake.
An interesting digression from the main discussion was provided by Cllr Merricks. She had prepared a list of the expenditures put forward for each ward into the draft budget and calculated each ward's share of the total. These shares had then been compared with the proportion of voters in each ward. The logic of Cllr Merricks' arithmetic was that each ward should get a share of the budget in proportion to its share of the voting population of the parish. Given that Winchelsea councillors had proposed more projects than other ward councillors, the aim seemed to be to cut spending on Winchelsea and support the case for another £3,000 to be spent on Icklesham (specifically, on an outdoor shelter at the school).
Cllr Merricks arithmetic was dubious. She had forgotten to include several expenditures proposed for wards other than Winchelsea, had removed from the Icklesham village total the cost of the loan taken out by the Council last year to make a grant to Icklesham Memorial Trust (about £3,200 a year), and had included in the Winchelsea total a ward councillor's training request. She had also mistakenly assumed that the Precept is paid only by voters (in fact, all residents pay) and had ignored the fact that Winchelsea pays a larger Precept per head than other wards because assessments are based on property value and are not per capita. Significantly, Cllr Merricks did not do the calculations for the current financial year, when Icklesham ward received a grant for its village hall of £40,000 from the Council plus £6,000 for relaying the car park outside the village hall. Taking this into account and calculating the shares of expenditures which could be attributed to specific wards, Icklesham ward took 83% of spending, leaving the Beach with 8%, Winchelsea with 5% and Rye Harbour with 4%.
As it was, Cllr Merricks' arithmetic was largely ignored. But it did help by focusing discussion on £5,000 requested by Winchelsea councillors at the previous meeting for the provision of a water supply and the clearance of Pear Tree Marsh allotment (a project approved two years ago but one of the many still to be completed or even started). This sum had been agreed but it appeared to have been subject to a provisio that, when it came time to spend the money, it might be diverted to other wards. As Cllr Merricks' arithmetic showed the money as a sum for Winchelsea, Winchelsea councillors pressed the Council and secured agreement that the money will be dedicated to Pear Tree Marsh.
More than anything else, the discussion demonstrated that the fundamental difficulty that Icklesham Parish Council has with the budget process. Only a minority of councillors participate actively, if at all, in the discussion. Some resent having to go through the draft budget line by line and a few even believe that it should all be done by the Clerk. Most see the budget, not as a set of planned expenditures, but as set of contingency pots from which money can be drawn when the urge to do something arises later in the year.
In the end, the Council agreed a budget of £99,843 and a precept of £77,500, which represents an increase of almost 12%. More could have been removed from the draft budget, including the rest of the Chairman's allowance and £4,000 for Icklesham Recreation Ground drainage (an unnecessary project which will have consumed £36,000 against an original budget of £15,000). Councillors were assured that the Council will not underspend its budget this year, but even the estimated carry-over from this year is £20,793 (about 30% of the current precept).
Budget consultation
Before the budget debate, Winchelsea councillors attempted to inform the Council of the results of the budget consultation in Winchelsea, where 102 residents had responded by the time of the meeting to a questionnaire distributed to each household. However, there was absolutely no interest in what residents thought and no other councillors mentioned the views of their wards in the rest of the meeting. Public consultation appears to have fallen out of favour with Icklesham Parish Council as quickly as it was taken up.
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Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Precept to increase by 12% next year
At its meeting on 14 December 2009, Icklesham Parish Council fixed a budget of £99,843 for the financial year starting on 1 April 2010. This means a precept (the tax levied by the Parish Council on residents) of £77,500 compared with £69,414 in this current financial year (the additional £22,343 in the budget will be financed mainly by £20,793 of unspent money likely to be carried over from this year).The budget discussion and the rest of the Council meeting are described in another posting. The budget (with previous year's figures in brackets) is:
Expenditures
administration
23,800 Clerks' costs (23,600)
4,750 other admin expenses (4,750)
2,000 insurance (2,000)
2,000 elections fund (0)
500 training fund (1,000)
1,500 newsletter, website fund (1,500)
300 Chairman's allowance (450)
7,500 contingency fund (7,500)
750 legal contigency fund (750)
current
7,000 grass cutting (7,000)
5,500 rubbish & dog bin collections (5,200)
2,500 street lighting in Winchelsea (2,500)
1,400 playground maintenance fund (900)
1,000 allotments maintenance fund (1,000)
1,000 Smeatons Lane maintenance fund (5,000)
500 tree maintenance fund (4,500)
3,500 fence repair fund (3,500)
4,500 other repairs, cleaning, small works fund (4,421)
capital projects
3,118 cost of loan for Icklesham Memorial Hall grant (3,118)
4,000 Icklesham Recreation Ground drainage maintenance (0)
5,000 new playground equipment in Winchelsea Beach
2,000 new playground equipment in Rye Harbour
2,000 Rye Harbour flagpole maintenance (1,000)
750 new sign for Rye Harbour
175 new bin by Strand bus shelter
5,000 Pear Tree Marsh allotment project
1,000 donations fund (1,000)
4,000 grants to village halls (4,000)
1,000 grants to churchyards (3,150)
1,500 grant to Rye Community Transport (1,500)
300 grant to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve (300)
99,843 total expenditure (108,092)
income
20,793 unspent funds carried over from previous year (36,364)
2 interest (7)
148 rent (148)
1,400 allotment rents (1,400)
77,500 precept (69,414)
99,843 total income (107,333)
Expenditures
administration
23,800 Clerks' costs (23,600)
4,750 other admin expenses (4,750)
2,000 insurance (2,000)
2,000 elections fund (0)
500 training fund (1,000)
1,500 newsletter, website fund (1,500)
300 Chairman's allowance (450)
7,500 contingency fund (7,500)
750 legal contigency fund (750)
current
7,000 grass cutting (7,000)
5,500 rubbish & dog bin collections (5,200)
2,500 street lighting in Winchelsea (2,500)
1,400 playground maintenance fund (900)
1,000 allotments maintenance fund (1,000)
1,000 Smeatons Lane maintenance fund (5,000)
500 tree maintenance fund (4,500)
3,500 fence repair fund (3,500)
4,500 other repairs, cleaning, small works fund (4,421)
capital projects
3,118 cost of loan for Icklesham Memorial Hall grant (3,118)
4,000 Icklesham Recreation Ground drainage maintenance (0)
5,000 new playground equipment in Winchelsea Beach
2,000 new playground equipment in Rye Harbour
2,000 Rye Harbour flagpole maintenance (1,000)
750 new sign for Rye Harbour
175 new bin by Strand bus shelter
5,000 Pear Tree Marsh allotment project
1,000 donations fund (1,000)
4,000 grants to village halls (4,000)
1,000 grants to churchyards (3,150)
1,500 grant to Rye Community Transport (1,500)
300 grant to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve (300)
99,843 total expenditure (108,092)
income
20,793 unspent funds carried over from previous year (36,364)
2 interest (7)
148 rent (148)
1,400 allotment rents (1,400)
77,500 precept (69,414)
99,843 total income (107,333)
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