Parish Council AGM – May 2024
Cllr Nick Dargan
The Team
12 months ago we introduced the Portfolio Management model to allow councillors to focus predominantly on one aspect of PC activity, as well as participate on a wider scale where relevant and feasible. This has worked well and provided greater focus in certain areas.
We’ve also had some ‘joiners’ and ‘leavers’ on the council, so the current make-up of portfolio holders looks like this:
Planning – Francis Hilton
Health & Safety – Hazel Spiers who is also Vice Chair
Yarningale Common – Martin Fairlie
Communications – Claire Hammond
Recreation Area – the newest member of the team Sam Evans
We are still looking for one more Councillor to join us and take a lead role in our approach to meeting SDC’s challenge on promoting actions towards Net Zero in the parish – please reach out to either myself or the Clerk – Ken Flood – who is still keeping us on our toes through the many tasks and activities that come with the Clerk role and also that of RFO.
Headlines from the last year
As is always the case with royal occassions, our village celebrated the Kings Coronation though a fabulous array of activities and commemorative events, within which the PC were delighted to play a small part.
We’ve also expanded our relationship with Friends of Yarningale Common, who continue to push forward the Biodiversity agenda in the area and deliver on a number of fronts including several initiatives to clear and make safe the public footpaths, overgrowth management to ensure road sign visibility and cleanliness as part of a general approach to improved road safety, and much more besides. Look out for regular updates from Councillor Fairlie.
The recreation area continues to be an important part of the council planning where we now have a ROSPA certified play area, the Kings Garden, thriving sporting and recreational activities, and the Pavilion. The latter being subject to the formation of a comprehensive plan, to facilitate use by the wider village community with all the necessary infrastructure, policies and management oversight in place. More to come on this.
We have also been successful in securing funding from Stratford DC’s Climate Change Fund and Net Zero Hub for a feasibility study. A full brief on this will be given at the July PC meeting.
C.H.A.R.G.E.
Climate Emergency, Net Zero and Energy Security are much talked about topics and yet policy and practical solutions are far from clear. As a consequence, there is doubt, confusion and uncertainty relating to how, when or what we should all do to be prepared for changes to our existing fossil fuel usage.
The councillors and I are mandated by Stratford District Council to promote action towards Net Zero within the parish. However, as we are also residents, we witness first-hand the challenges our community faces in relation to the practicality of a potential transition away from the oil and LPG domestic heating to an alternative green/renewable energy sources.
In our view, the best way we can serve you is to seek ways to help remove the confusion and mis-information surrounding this topic. To this end, we are pleased to announce a new parish group called CHARGE (Claverdon Harnessing Alternative Renewable Green Energy).
CHARGE is being set up as a Community Interest Company, independent of the parish council but CHARGE has requested the CPC Chair should be a board member for governance and close ties to the Neighbourhood Plan etc. The catalyst for CHARGE is the success of Friends of Yarningale Common in communicating and raising the profile of localised biodiversity alongside the parish council and recognition of the need for a wider dialogue about renewable energy in our community.
Ian Bowater (who sends his apologies for not being able to be here this evening) will head up CHARGE having had experience of renewables from a new build perspective and contributed to other community renewable projects. Ian has volunteered to develop CHARGE to enable it to be a forum for ideas/discussion, a pooling of experience and ultimately raise greater awareness of the potential renewable solutions that you the community will consider. It has no commercial affiliation and neither does it aim to prescribe or promote specific actions. It’s aim is to communicate and share ideas to enable us all to be prepared for what may one day be a government mandated requirement.
In the coming weeks, the CHARGE initiative will be introduced in more detail with invitations to everyone to participate and thereafter there will be regular communication via newsletter, Parish news, meetings and on social media. If anyone here is keen to contribute their experiences, thoughts or ideas and be part of CHARGE please let me know and we will put you in touch.
The councillors and I are committed to assisting our community to contribute to meeting Net Zero goals and I hope you are agree that by focusing our energy on a practical, independent initiative to generate real and supportive information is a pragmatic approach and one which I hope you will be keen to support.