Village Meeting October 2017

A village meeting was held on Saturday 7th. Ocober as a follow up to the village questionnaire and survey undertaken earlier this year.

Notes taken at the meeting are appended below:

Bob Trickey noted there was a poor turnout and commented that we should have put something on the noticeboard.

Member of Public (MOP) ? commented that we could make more use of the village magazine (as Ryhall do).

It was noted that the Nextdoor App only reaches 20 households although there are about 70 Essendine people registered.

Precept

IC explained that the precept was increased to cover costs for maintenance of play area before it was known that we had some funding towards this. 5K has been put in a protected fund for future remedial works and £500 per year will be added to this fund. On this basis the precept should be reduced next year by around a third. BT noted that the government are putting a cap on precept/council tax.

A MOP commented that local families who use the play equipment might consider raising funds for its upkeep. Another MOP commented that we all have to pay for things such as schools that we all do not necessarily access. Introductions by IC and new Parish Councillors.

Gigaclear

IC read out the responses from Gigaclear and Bob Trickey was very helpful in providing much information to the meeting attendees. In relation to the cost GC say they perform bench marking to ensure they are comparable with other providers. BT confirmed that he had looked at costs for other providers that morning and that this was indeed the case.

In relation to outages GC agreed that they have not been happy with the reliability of some of their network components. BT commented that often problems are due to issues with wifi rather than the GC infrastructure.

In relation to the lack of competition GC state that it is their intention to have retail service providers and although they have about 10 operators selling over the network they are not household names as they are not yet at a scale sufficient to attract the large retail providers. BT confirmed that this is the case.

BT explained how to overcome the wifi issues using a powerline and brought examples along to show people. He also offered to help people who were having problems.

Survey

BT asked about the results to the survey. IC explained that he has only seen one copy of the results and has not been able to get hold of it.

The former Station Hotel

BT has applied for SH to become a community asset but application was rejected. PC intend to write to the administrator of the late owners estate to request that the site be secured.

Other business:

The chair of the local scouts group asked for volunteers to do talks to or help out with the cubs/scouts.

There was some discussion about the lack of community spirit and how this could be improved. IC also asked for people to consider becoming parish councillors.