The past year has again been a year of transition for the council. We have still not been able to fill the roles of Chairman and Clerk on a permanent basis. The Clerk role is currently undertaken on a temp basis by Glenn McGill with help from Councillor Maureen Marshall. Glenn cannot continue doing this, so our search is becoming more urgent. Once the clerk role is filled Glenn would consider becoming a councillor for the Parish. If anyone can help or know of anyone else that could take on this please let Glenn know asap. Once the above is settled we will aim to appoint a permanent Chairman as opposed to sharing the role as we do now. The payment for the clerk’s role has now been increased to £500p.a and will be reviewed on a regular basis.
Now the annual update:
Over the course of the year, the Parish Council has supported most planning applications within the Parish boundary. An important criterion for the Parish Council is to support appropriate development for the parish.
The Community Speed Watch team continues to undertake regular deployments on Hilton Road. We are very grateful to the dedicated team of volunteers who regularly turn out to support this initiative. It would be good to see more members of the local community participating in this activity for the benefit of the whole village. The VAS sharing with Potto and Crathorne has now been in place for a year and it has been a revelation to see the figures produced from both Seamer Village and Tame Bridge deployments. These figures are passed onto the local police with the hope and expectation that more deployments of the speed van at Tame Bridge and Speed Motorcycle in Seamer will happen. Updates will be given at the Parish Meetings where possible.
Our contractor, Philip Wood continues to do a good job in keeping our greens and verges looking neat and tidy and his efforts have been much appreciated by the villagers. We will continue to try and ensure the village remains a pleasing and attractive place to live. Steve Burton, our parish gardener, (funded by the Community Fund), continues to work hard on maintaining the flower tubs, sign gardens and the Village Hall Garden, as well as assisting with bulb planting. We will again be asking villages to support Steve with watering the tubs through the summer.
The involvement of a group of residents who help remove litter and rubbish within the village is appreciated and Hambleton District Council for regularly collecting this for us.
Over the course of the year, time has also been devoted to dealing with various issues and suggestions made by residents. Regular reports about the work of the Parish Council are placed in the Grapevine magazine, the noticeboards and on the village website.
The Community Fund continues to support the village with events in the village. Over the last year we have seen Christmas and Easter events as well as a very entertaining magic night. The big event of the year was the Jubilee Celebrations. Funding was provided by the Community Fund and the Parish Council would like to thank all those who helped organise what was a very successful event for the village.
An ongoing project over the last few months has been the planning of a bus shelter for the school children. This is being funded by the Community Fund with an additional grant from the Council from Councillor Bridget Fortune who continues to support village projects whenever she can. Despite heroic efforts by Glenn and Bridget this has not yet been installed due to contractor availability. The number of hoops required to be jumped through has been unbelievable but hopefully this will be concluded soon and the installation actioned.
Work is also in progress to install an additional Defibrillator in the Parish and should be installed in the next couple of months.
We have also had a survey of the pond carried out to move forward with a maintenance plan to try and prevent the weed growth which happens every year. A contractor has also visited on our behalf to look at the possibility of installing a solar powered air pump to try and help to control the weed growth. We are awaiting costings presdently.
The council is keen to hear from residents re projects and ideas to be supported by the Community Fund. All ideas are welcome and an application form can be found on the village website.
This year’s Christmas tree was funded by the Parish Council and will be every year going forward. Unfortunately, our previous benefactor Walter Pattison MBE can no longer support this but we are very grateful for all his generosity in the past.
We would like to thank all the Parish Councillors for their time, work and interest they give to issues in Seamer and Tame Bridge and for the support, advice and interest shown by our District Councillor and County Council representatives.
Expenditure for the year:
Current Business Account
Income including Precept: £10791.06
Expenditure: £9597.38
EOY Balance: £2466.78
Reserve Account
Income: £339.01 (inc grass cutting contribution from NYCC)
Expenditure: £326.26 (tfr of above to business acc)
EOY Balance: £2910.80
Community Account
Income: £12542.99
Expenditure: £3239.80
EOY Balance: £31909.53