KINGSLEY PARISH COUNCIL
MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL PARISH MEETING HELD ON
TUESDAY 3 MAY 2005 AT 8.00PM in the Kingsley Centre

Present: Cllr C R Neville Chairman
Cllr S Carryer Vice Chairman
Cllr M Pethybridge
Cllr R Seeckts
Cllr A Blaber

In attendance: Cllr J Filer County Councillor
Cllr W Womack District Councillor
F Witney Clerk to Council
P Susans Whitehill & Bordon CAB
C Curtis Whitehill & Bordon CAB
Inspector T Tipping Alton Police
51 members of the public

05/13 Chairman’s Opening Remarks
Cllr Neville welcomed everyone to the meeting including the guest speakers and thanked those attending for a fantastic turnout.

05/14 Apologies for absence had been received from
None

05/15 Approval of the Minutes of the meeting held on the 29th April 2004
These had been approved at the meeting on May 27th 2004.

05/16 Matters arising there from:
None

05/17 Finances to the year ended 31 March 2005
Draft accounts had been prepared by the Clerk and circulated to Councillors before this meeting. Cllr Neville commented that he was delighted to say there was a balance of £12,460.69 at the end of the year. There were no questions raised. A final set would now be prepared for signature at the Annual General Meeting in May and subsequent audit.

05/18 Presentation by Whitehill & Bordon CAB
Mr Paul Susans, a member of the Trustee Board of Whitehill & Bordon CAB, spoke about the work of his organisation. The CAB gives professional advice and assistance to local people on a wide range of matters including housing and homelessness, benefit entitlements, coping with debt and unemployment, etc. The office receives about 9,000 enquiries a year and the advice given is free, confidential, professional and impartial. He spoke about the challenges facing the organisation ranging from increasing legislative and e-government requirements to difficulties in recruiting voluntary advisers. Costs rise with inflation and there is now a requirement that the office be supervised by a waged employee at all times. He said that the organisation can only exist with funding from local councils and others, who must judge the service and benefit provided by it to the local community.
Mrs Curtis spoke about the ability of the organisation to change lives. Debt problems are a particular issue in the area arising from loss of a job or getting into difficulties with credit card repayments and these can lead to family breakdown with the cost to the community this causes. She provided information about opening times of the office and a case study of someone facing bankruptcy and how they had been helped. She asked the Council for their continued support.
Cllr Womack commented that he had been associated with CAB at another office and the organisation was very deserving of support. Cllr Neville said that the Council was determined to continue to support CAB although our funding needed to be split between both the Whitehill & Bordon office and the Alton office which sometimes made our funding appear less than that provided by other villages to only one office. He thanked Mr Susans and Mrs Curtis for speaking to the meeting about their work.
Cllr Neville then explained that the order of the remaining items on the agenda would be changed.

05/19 Chairman’s Report
Cllr Neville gave the following report:
The year 2004/05 has been a year of satisfactory progress for the Parish Council.
Our dreams and plans for a new playground were realised and one sunny Sunday last July I had the pleasure of opening the new playground with the help of Sandra Durrant. It was a very happy occasion with a much enjoyed barbeque lunch at our pub afterwards. My thanks to all those involved have been well recorded so I will not repeat them tonight. Suffice it to say that I personally get a great deal of pleasure from seeing it in frequent use whenever I’m passing. However let us not be complacent as less than a year later one bright youngster said recently to our Parish Clerk “Can we have a new playground please, we are bored with this one”.
HCC have carried out the traffic calming we agreed and have enhanced the gateway signage at both ends of the village and created two crossing points. How effective these measures are is almost impossible to judge but I work on the principle of something is better than nothing so our thanks to HCC. Shortly we will spend the major part of our meeting discussing the traffic issues of our village.
At the beginning of the year, I asked Shirley and Margery who jointly look after St Nicholas to try and raise its profile and usage. They have made a very good start and I hope will achieve further progress in the coming year.
As you have heard, we now have a healthy set of accounts which is something I was determined as Chairman we should achieve. We now have some money behind us with which to support our future projects. Now we have achieved this situation we have made no increase to our £10,000 precept for this coming financial year.
Planning has again been a major part of our work. We failed to stop the expansion of Tarmac. We succeeded in helping to stop the continued expansion of operations at Bordon Sandpit at Sleaford. We have appeals outstanding on Old Park Farm, Malthouse Barn and Southview.
As promised we have taken our first tentative steps to try and improve our communication with the village with the publication of our first two newsletters. The response from villagers has been somewhat limited but I said before we started this activity that it will take awhile for it to have a real effect.
Over the coming year, we will try and concentrate on a 30mh speed limit if that’s what we agree shortly, create our Village Design Statement and continue to improve village communications.
So at the end of my third year as Chairman, my sincere thanks
To all my fellow Councillors for all their hard work on behalf of the village over the year
To Sid and Malcolm for continuing to keep Upper Green and St Nicholas Churchyard in beautiful condition
To County Councillor John Filer for his unfailing support with all sorts of matters.
To District Councillor Warwick Womack for a second year of excellent support and advice with numerous matters.
Finally and most importantly thank you Frances for a superb first year as our Parish Clerk. Your reliability, attention to detail, immaculate accounts and many wise words are deeply appreciated by me and all the Councillors.

05/20 Report from the County Councillor:
Councillor John Filer, said he was delighted to attend for the last time before his retirement. In 12 years he had enjoyed himself greatly and learnt so much and appreciated the warmth and hospitality shown to him by Kingsley. He highlighted three areas:
HCC was a very large organization employing some 35,000 people, investing £200m pa and with expenditure of £1.3m pa. He commented that its size sometimes meant that people found it difficult to talk to the Council.
Traffic – a serious issue to be discussed later in the meeting. Part of the problem is a constant striving for growth, even though unemployment in Hampshire is only about 1%. Growth is partly what causes increasing traffic problems and other damage to quality of life.
The growth of government. He questioned the need for more regional government, especially given that SEERA is not a directly elected body. He felt SEERA should not be dictating housing levels to an elected body such as HCC. He commented on the difficulties of achieving abolition of regional government, even though the majority of elected members of it felt it should be. Too many layers of government mean that people do not know who is meant to be doing what and so decisions do not get taken.

05/21 Report from the District Councillor
Councillor Warwick Womack also highlighted three areas in his report:
Planning. He commented that he was ashamed of the recent problems in the EHDC Planning department, and that having been discovered it was allowed to carry on. He said that planning was one of the biggest issues in the area, and not just in his ward. He referred particularly to the recent decision to allow 220 houses in Lindford which had been rejected by the North Area Planning Committee but passed by the full Council. He commented on the impact such a development would have on traffic in the area, such as at Sleaford traffic lights. There was a need for more affordable housing and brownfield sites from MOD land in Bordon would be an obvious possibility once the army moved out, again with a consequent traffic impact in the area. EHDC has organised a working party to try to plan for the effects of the army’s departure which is due to happen in 2007 but may be deferred.
Licensing. He explained about the move of responsibility for licensing from the magistrates courts to the District Council and that he was Chairman of the new Licensing Committee. He expected that there would be a huge volume of applications from August to October putting a great strain on the Council.
The Citizenship programme run by EHDC. He spoke about the value of this programme in putting young people into contact with local government, introducing concepts of citizenship and what it means to be responsible.

05/22 Traffic
Cllr Neville thanked Inspector Tipping for coming to the meeting to listen, speak and answer questions. He reminded those present of a meeting about five years ago when this topic had been discussed with the local police and a very negative response from them had helped to shove the issue back into oblivion. He felt that police attitudes, especially the policy of “blood on the roads”, had changed since then and the need to pursue a 30mph limit in the village was becoming ever more urgent with the increase in lorry traffic and the numbers of children now using the new playground. He commented on how frightening he found it to be passed by lorries at 40mph particularly on the narrow stretches of pavement along the main road.
He said he felt it was important to avoid an overly aggressive approach that might damage our case and that patience and perseverance would be required. He said that the argument made previously that we could not have a 30mph limit because 40mph could not be properly policed did not stand up – there was no reason not to have a 30mph limit because at the least it would send out a message about appropriate speed through the village.
Inspector Tipping then addressed the meeting. He said that he was aware of the traffic issues in various local villages, and had attended meetings in Selborne and Worldham. His attitude was that he would enforce whatever the limit was. He encouraged everyone to put pressure on the County Council to achieve what they wanted and cited the instance of Stairs Hill, where the limit had been reduced from 60mph to 30mph, as an example that it could be done. He said that pressure should be put on the head offices of companies operating the lorries to influence their drivers, who could usually be identified if reported. Companies have to follow up reported incidents involving their drivers and drivers need to keep their HGV licenses. He also said that unfortunately whenever the police did take enforcement action on speed, locals were the main offenders. He advised exerting influence through your own contacts and actions – drive slowly yourself to slow the traffic down.
Cllr Neville asked the meeting whether they wanted a 30 mph speed limit and the response was loudly “yes”. He then asked for views from the floor.
Alison Stonard commented that the turning from the B3004 into Sickles Lane was very dangerous and that Sickles Lane should also be subject to a 30 mph speed limit since it was used by a lot of horse riders, pedestrians, cyclists and Sports Club members. Cllr Neville said this could be put on the agenda for the next Council meeting for discussion.
Iris Clifton recounted a dangerous incident on East Worldham hill involving overtaking on the double white lines. This had been reported to the police but nothing had been done. Inspector Tipping gave his word that all reported incidents are followed up, even if the person reporting it does not always hear the outcome. So long as the registration number is available, at the least, the police can write to the driver or the Transport Manager of their firm who themselves can face prosecution for operating practices that encourage speeding.
Carol Verrier commented that she felt unable to let her children cross the road to use the playground
Nick Roach endorsed the 30mph limit but felt that physical calming might be necessary to achieve it, such as pinch points and maybe a chicane. Cllr Neville said that this might be hard to achieve on this type of route but said he thought the type of sensor signs in use at places like the Golden Pot might be a good idea, hence the importance of having financial reserves so that we could contribute to the funding of it if asked by HCC.
Janette Francis said that there used to be a 30mph limit in the village about 40 years ago when there was much less traffic than now and that a bypass had been promised over 30 years ago.
Maureen Comber questioned why it was so difficult to get a 30mph limit when government guidelines were that there should be a 30mph limit in all villages. Cllr Filer answered that this was precisely because it was a guideline and not a requirement.
Neil Swan said that since there could be little cost associated with changing the signs, he could not see why it was such a big issue to change the limit. Cllr Neville replied that there was a long legal process to go through to get the speed limit changed. Inspector Tipping said that there would have to be a hearing etc., that people would object and there would be debate about the positioning of signs with good practice being to have an easing down from the national speed limit through to 50mph before coming down to 30mph. All this complicated the process.
Alison Stonard commented on the illogicality of having a 40mph limit in Frith End and then up again to 60mph from Sleaford back into Kingsley. Cllr Neville said this point should be made to HCC when a meeting was arranged with their transport officers. Cllr Filer commented that there were few properties in the Sleaford area, hence the 60mph limit, and that it had taken 9 years to get the speed restriction at Frith End.
Paul Beresford endorsed the 30mph limit and asked whether there were objections to having speed cameras in the village. Cllr Neville said he believed that the policy was to put them in places where accidents are more likely. Inspector Tipping said he believed they were effective in slowing down traffic but that there were none in place other than on ‘A’ roads in Hampshire and that it would be a struggle to get one here.
Alison Stonard commented on the danger posed to the playground from a speeding vehicle leaving the road and asked whether some form of netting could be put up along the roadside at Upper Green. Cllr Neville repeated that no form of fencing could be put up on Common land with permission from the OPDM.
Sandra Durrant asked if we could pursue a proper crossing by the playground. Cllr Neville said that HCC had been reluctant to do this at the time that the crossing points were agreed because their view was that infrequently used crossings were actually dangerous because drivers tended to ignore them. But he said that this could be raised again at a meeting with HCC especially now that the playground was there.
Gill Beresford asked if it would help the case for a crossing if a 30mph limit were in place. David Bugler said why not press for both. Cllr Neville said that we should and that ways of safeguarding Upper Green should be looked at again. In reply to a comment that stock netting might not be subject to the rules on fencing common land and that something was better than nothing, Cllr Neville said he thought that it would probably be easily vandalised and be a waste of money but that it would be looked at.
David Bugler suggested asking Tarmac to back the campaign for a 30mph limit or make a contribution to paying for a crossing.
Tim Scrivener asked whether a 30mph limit would make the village more at risk of development. Cllr Neville said it should not be relevant as planning was constrained by the Local Settlement Boundary which should make development on a Greenfield site virtually impossible.
Inspector Tipping was asked what the police could do to enforce a 30mph limit if it was achieved. Inspector Tipping said that policing in this area was mainly by consent and that the traffic section was not big because he had taken the decision to put more resources into community policing. The public need to help in enforcing it by observing the limits themselves and reporting any infringements. Having said that, he commented that the police were now starting to re-use their radar equipment and had done so recently in Worldham – he warned that no quarter would be given on speeding or crossing the white lines there. He said to focus on getting the limit and said he would like to have the problem of trying to enforce it.

05/23 Village Design Statement
Cllr Neville said, in view of how late it was, discussion of this would be deferred unless anyone especially wanted to briefly speak about it.

05/24 Matters raised by local residents
No matters were raised.

05/25 Date of Next Meeting – April 2006
Cllr Neville thanked his wife and Cllr Carryer for organising the refreshments. He also thanked Cllr Filer for all the help he had given to the village over the last 12 years and wished him well in his retirement.

There being no further business, the meeting closed at 10.00 pm