News from the Parish Council Chair (June 2026)

Dear Parishioners,

At the Parish Council Meeting at the beginning of May I was elected as Chair for the coming year. I step with some trepidation into the shoes of Chris Luke who has performed this role with distinction for the last eleven years. He leaves large shoes to fill and the Parish owes a great debt of gratitude to him for the immense amount of work he has done over this period.

My first task was to Chair the Annual Parish Meeting where we heard updates about village activities from a dozen different people, including Harriet Harris, the new Principal of the College. It was also something of a baptism of fire for our fairly new Parish Clerk, Jo Garvey who is making sure Parish Council business goes smoothly.

One thing that came out of the meeting, which we will be looking at in the months ahead, is how the Neighbourhood Watch scheme for the village can be updated. The original model for this grew up long before widespread use of email, messaging apps, and social media, which today provide more effective methods of disseminating information rather than by a series of phone contacts. However each of these alternative communication channels only reach a portion of the village, so we need to think how we can achieve good coverage while limiting the demands on individual Neighbourhood Watch coordinators.

New regulations relating to local government data management have made us change the way that the Council deals with emails. On the inside back page you will find that the email address for the Parish Council Clerk is now clerk@cuddesdondenton-pc.gov.uk and all councillors now have addresses of the same form.

Finally, a few words to record appreciation for all the work put in by those who organised the very successful fete on 9th May. The weather could not have been better and the whole event was, once again, a great success.

Best wishes,
Stuart Flockton