Annual Parish Meeting – 16 th June 2016

Our Annual Parish Meeting took place on 16th June in the Village Hall. Although the meeting is organised by the Parish Council, it is not a Parish Council meeting – it’s a much more relaxed and social event. The evening started with some wonderful home-made refreshments kindly provided by Judy and Alan Bishop and Sharon and Wayne Whitaker which were very well received. Next up was Parish Council Chairman Jonathan Hills who went on to thank the parish’s contractors and many other people who invest their own time, equipment and money to help keep the parish for all of us. There were too many to list them all here, but included were; Alan Gosling, for providing the diesel to run our tractors; Plummer Electrical for their help with village events and lighting and David Gollifer for all of the work he does to keep our footpaths in good shape.

We then heard from representatives of some of the groups who benefitted from Parish Council grants. This included groups such as the Luncheon Club, Bentley In Bloom, St Mary’s Church, Parish Magazine, Youth Club, Youth Football Club, Pre-school, Carnival, Village Show & the Village Hall. It was really good and very humbling to hear how appreciated the grants (and the provision of toilets for village events!) are, and what a difference the grant system ultimately makes to the people in the parish.

A new event for this year’s meeting was our Village Resident’s Awards. The premise of this is to offer thanks from the parish to some of those individuals who really make a difference to others through their own efforts. As this is the first year we have had these awards, nominations were made through the Parish Council’s Public Engagement Group, with one recommendation coming from a member of the parish. We are hoping to continue this at next year’s meeting and between now and then, we’d love to have more nominations from the parishioners. So let us know who you think should be awarded and why. This year the awards were for:

Mary Maskell & Carole Allington - for the Parish MagazinePeter Harry - for his transport efforts, including the train station refurbishment & saving the busesDoug Gibbs - for the bus shelter (as requested by a member of the parish)Judy & Alan Bishop for their efforts with the post office, feral cats and many other thingsLynda McWilliams - for everything she does, but particularly the Village of the Year entries and organisation

Finally, a big thank you to our Parish Council Clerk, Kevin Harkin, whose diligence, effort and good humour makes so many aspects of the Parish Council run so well.