Agenda item

To receive any questions relating to items on the agenda from members of the public and replies thereto.

The Chairman read out the following statement from Susan McGeever:

Halberton Parish Council seeks to look after all its parishioners throughout this large, historic, and predominantly, rural parish.

The newsletter is delivered to all households and issues raised are dealt with expediently - speeding concerns at Lucombe Park, uncut verges, dirty bus shelters, potholes, parking issues at Mid Devon Business Park, disruption caused when the A361 is closed, concerns over AD plants or solar panel farms or the ability to walk to work at Hitchcocks from both Uffculme and Willand.

Halberton Parish Council considers all planning applications based on the 'material planning considerations' and is not adverse to raising questions, asking for conditions or requesting that an application is called in. Ultimately though, it is MDDC Planning Officers and Planning Committee who make the decisions.

In addition, Halberton Parish Council has reached out to its neighbours on issues that affect the combined area such as standardised speed limits throughout.

Last year, the District Boundaries Commission Review, saw Uffculme and Willand ask for changes particularly in relation to the parish of Halberton. The Boundaries Commission rejected these requests on the premise that it would unbalance the numbers.

A year later, the Parish Boundary Review committee is asking for the same changes. So before making your decision ask yourselves: Who was on the Parish Boundary Review committee?

Does the number of responses reflect the majority of the population of the three parishes (6534)?  And, how many of those responses came from residents within the parish of Halberton?

Would MDDC Planning Officers or the Planning Committee have come to a different conclusion on any planning application if Uffculme or Willand Parish Council had objected?

Will the next step be to invoke Clause 61 of the District Boundaries Commission Review?

Having considered the questions above, if the Council is mindful to adopt one of the three Options put forward, I for one would hope that those individuals who specified they wished to remain in the Parish of Halberton will be allowed to do so.

Ian Batchelor, Chairman of Halberton Parish Council stated:

It’s been ongoing for a number of years where neighbouring parishes have been wanting to exert an influence and create a degree of control over our parish and we would like to retain as much of that parish boundary for historical reasons and for the fact that we feel serve all our parishioners very well. The boundary commission and committee that was set up a little while ago, I’ve made representations to with written reports to show how well we have performed but to no avail, it seems to have been that amendments have been put in place to allow chunks of the parish to go.

If we look at it in the same way, how would certain Members feel if say Hemyock would disappear to Somerset? Just because we feel that there is a more general pull for people in Hemyock to go towards Wellington, is that a good scenario? I don’t think it would be, because we want to retain our boundaries as they are, not what people would like them to be, there’s enough of that going on in the world as it is.

We worked and were pragmatic and happy to succeed certain areas of the parish where boundary lines cross through housing estates or Mid Devon Business Parks and were quite pragmatic to allow those. But the overall expansion of neighbouring parishes taking parish land which is not with consent I feel that the Committee should look at that and bear that in mind when they are voting on the amendments that are taking place.

The Chairman stated that written responses would be provided.