Parish Council Meeting January 2017 – Update

The first meeting of the Tattenhall Parish Council for 2017 was held at the Barbour Institute last night.

The Agenda can always be found online at the Website of the Parish Council.

That said, the Meeting was lively with updates on a multiplicity of issues such as hedges, leaves, the playground, dog fouling, flooding, the pond on the Redrow Development and parking within the village.

Our Ward Councillor, Mike Jones, who was in attendance, is still pursuing outcomes on some of these issues and Jean Dutton, Clerk to the Council, has also been busy in trying to extract responses from a variety of individuals on some of these contentious issues.

Whilst PC Gigg was not in attendance to give an update on the scant regard (by some) for legal parking and/or signage within the village, Michael Lester (Parking Services Supervisor at CWaC) has written to one resident to advise that a review of parking issues in Tattenhall will involve a drop-in session within the village in the near future (probably to be held at the Barbour Institute). CWaC is currently reviewing its 'Parking Strategy' and the period of consultation finishes mid February. Watch this space.

In this respect, one Parish Councillor expressed 'mild' concern that several consulation documents were sent out by CWaC over the Christmas period when, reasonably, individuals are very preoccupied (read into that what you will).

Importantly, the Parish Council continues to acknowledge that there is a fine line in reconciling the continuing vibrancy and vitality of our village centre on the one hand with any restrictions on parking on the other. No-one wants to see businesses on the High Street compromised because of parking restrictions and/or a very strict enforcement of the '10m rule' adjacent to a junction. The introduction of double yellow lines throughout the village centre could potentially be catastrophic.

There continues to be a need to educate and/or re-educate some members of our community, however, on what is lawful and what is not. Non-parking within the designated 'Bus Stop' area adjacent to the old village school on the High Street, for example, is one area which should reasonably remain sacrosanct in terms of safety and accessibility when boarding a bus during scheduled services. Collectively, therefore, our community needs to consider such issues against individual convenience.

On a positive note, and in terms of openness and transparency, the Parish Council has agreed to publish its draft minutes of meetings within 10 working days of any meeting and which will be watermarked 'DRAFT' throughout. This policy, regularly undertaken by other Parish Councils, was raised by a Tattenhall resident in a previous open forum.

Accepting that for some residents it is inconvenient to attend an evening Parish Council Meeting and that some residents might not wish to attend at all, then this move can only be viewed as progressive and mutually beneficial.

The draft Minutes will appear on the PC Website and we will include a link in future weeks.

(Tattenhall Online remains apolitical, this being a record of some aspects of the meeting held on 9 January 2017).