In preparing this report I was reminded that I’m now in my 19th year of serving on this Council, and as its Chairman for over eight years. This has been both a privilege and, at most times, a great pleasure. Over this period there have been some vast changes in both our community’s needs and aspirations, our local environment and the way in which our Council has had to respond to the greater demands and responsibilities placed upon it by our ever changing society.
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I am proud that over recent years we have built an extremely efficient, cost-effective and caring organisation that compares more than favourably with any other elected representative organisation. Indeed a lot of the local Parish Councils would be delighted to have had the commitment, dedication and high degree of professionalism that we have offered to our community - particular as it has been free of any additional tax burden levied upon it ! The time and effort freely given by our members in maintaining our very unique and effective Council has been absolutely superb and I’m indebted to them for another year of their considerable help and support.
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Once again throughout the last twelve months we have endeavoured to maintain the very high standards of service we have previously set ourselves. We have held all of the required Council meetings together with some additional special ones to meet specific needs, arranged several public consultation meetings, and our members have attended numerous seminars, representative meetings etc.
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A key exercise that is currently underway is that of the formulation of our Neighbourhood Plan. I cannot stress too much how important this is as it will, amongst other things, provide the framework and means of securing future investment into our community. The leader of our group dealing with this is David Hedges and he will no doubt be commenting on this in his report to you.
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My sincere thanks to all our members for their hard work, commitment and dedication throughout these exceptionally busy last twelve months. The efforts of our Planning, Environment and WAGG committees under the respective leaderships of Roy Beard, Vince Moon and Shirley Wicks, have been excellent. Their reports will once again demonstrate how extremely proactive and effective they have been on your behalf. Major planning issues have once again dominated our activities and Roy and his team will report on the work done. You will see that these have been extremely time-consuming exercises requiring a very high level of expertise and commitment by our planning and environment committee members, and very ably supported by David Hedges as our Press and PR Officer – he has provided a highly professional service which is much appreciated, and no doubt he will be mentioning his associated work with the local media and Spotlight. I am also very grateful for the help and assistance provided by Susan Hedges in providing a secretarial service at our meetings.
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However it is with considerable regret that I have to report to you that one of our key members will not be seeking re-election this year namely, Roy Beard. I cannot speak too highly of Roy’s contribution and suffice it to say that his guiding hand on these high profile planning issues has been significant and of the highest standard. We sincerely thank him for his considerable efforts and commitment on behalf of this Council and we will in due course be thanking him in an appropriate way ! Our thanks also to Janet Goodacre and Natalie Doncaster-Hughes who had to leave us during the year.
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I am delighted to welcome a new member, Kathy Geary, who has recently joined us and who will be taking over the secretarial duties as well as continuing to support our environmental initiatives.
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The help and assistance provided by our Ward Councillors has once again been considerable and much appreciated. The imminent local elections and our political neutrality precludes me from highlighting any particular services etc but suffice it to say that we are extremely fortunate to have six active and caring Ward Councillors.
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We continue to seek ways of supporting the younger element of our community and I have been delighted with our close and effective association with Cherry Lester and her team, and in particular with the work being done by Stuart Mathers and his colleagues.
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There are still many challenges ahead for the Werrington community and its environment but I’m confident that this Council will continue to meet these demands provided it gets the support it deserves.
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