North Nibley Parish Council Meeting

4th September 2024

It was a pleasure attending the Parish Council meeting last night along with Cllr Braun and Cllr Cohen last night.

After the normal formalities there was discussion on the progress of various activities councillors are working on. Talk of expanding the defibrillators out from the central area to Waterley Bottom etc. The embryonic idea of a cycleway to link up to the Wotton - Charfield Greenway. Tree surgery work in the churchyard.

Cllr Braun gave an update on SDC activity during August. Only one Licencing Meeting. Updated the Council on the StroudFunding scheme as detailed in the SDC Councillors' report.

Cllr Linda Cohen reported back on a number of Highways issues that she is helping with.

A planning application was discussed that had been through the pre-planning process (tick!). Everything seemed to be in order and the Council made no comment.

Much discussion on works required on the Churchyard and progress on the Play area.

More discussion on the '20 is plenty' scheme. Thoughts on slowing traffic. Cllr Cohen mentioned options and costs and issues using her experience at Kingswood.

I can't help thinking how much time, effort and money is duplicated on these issues in every town and village up and down the land. In Wales the Govt. bit the bullet and legislated a 20mph limit where people live and children play. It's not a blanket 'ban' as some would have you believe. It works. It saves lives.

The agenda moved onto Biodoversity Planning. A community meeting was suggested in the Black Horse on 22nd Oct (tbc). Cllr Braun suggested linking up with Wotton CAN.

The Council decided to migrate their IT systems onto a .gov domain name. This should offer a much more stable platform for e-mail, web-site updating and group collaboration.

Remembrance Day formalities discussed and agreed.

I was looking forward to hearing about the new Risk Management system that is being introduced. However, Cllr Cohen, Braun and myself had to leave the meeting to convine a 'street-meet' outside. It's tricky getting the three of us together in one place and we needed to discuss how we collaborate more to serve the community better. Bracing autumn temperatures kept this street-meet concise and to the point!