MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF TANGLEY PARISH COUNCIL
HELD ON MONDAY 13th JULY 2015 AT 7PM
AT TANGLEY PARISH VILLAGE HALL
OPEN FORUM
13 Members of the public were present and Rod Mason, TVBC Animal Welfare Officer.
Roly Clarke advised the meeting that the Cango bus service timetable has been changed and
that the option to phone and book the bus has been stopped. The route has been altered from
a rolling route (stopping where people have requested a pick up) to a fixed route. The route
is now very long and convoluted calling at most of the local villages north of Andover. The
route is also very illogical and ends at the out of town Tesco instead of stopping at the
hospital/railway station. The timetable only allows for 1.5 hours in Andover. Cllr. Tim Rolt
(HCC) has drawn up a petition to be presented to the county and Roly asked if the parish
council would be prepared to sign it.
Max Hannaby-Lee asked why the idea of having a skateboard ramp was not being
progressed. He asked what the balance of support/opposition was with regard to the
skateboard ramp and requested a copy of the survey results. He said that there were not
enough facilities for older children in the parish and his children did not enjoy tennis or
cricket and that the hard-standing area was too small to scooter or roller skate on.
Debbie Smith said the parish council should cater for what teenagers do nowadays which is
skateboard and ride scooters and not worry that these weren’t things done in the past. She
said she has to travel to take her boys to a skate park and is then worried about leaving them
in town as there is a rough element there and her boys are known not to be town residents.
The owners of Freshfields at the entrance to The Close said their son had benefitted from
being outside skateboarding and riding his scooter rather than sitting inside but he was not
able to do these activities in the parish. It was pointed out that one of the downsides of living
in a village is that people regularly have to drive to get to the facilities they wished to access.
Lawrence Leask produced a copy of the original 2010 Sport England grant application and
insinuated that items proposed in the application had not been provided. Lawrence Leask
continually criticised the cost of creating a mound slide on the field and produced quotes for a
free-standing slide. He asked why, if money could be raised for a slide, money was not being
made available for a skateboard ramp. The Chairman asked whether Lawrence Leask was
actually criticising the cost of the mound slide or using this as an excuse to continually
undermine the role of the Parish Council. After a heated 10 minute discussion on the same
subject The Chairman called an end to the discussion and Lawrence Leask was asked to
refrain from further comment.
Chris Pitt asked what could be done to enforce HCC to adhere to their vegetation cutting
schedule as they had not come out to cut back path 8 which was supposed to have been done
in June. He advised that the HCC Rights of Way Team are only responsible for cutting back
anything growing out of the ground. The Parish Council is ultimately responsible for
ensuring footpaths are cleared but not for actually carrying out the work. He asked if
landowners were responsible for cutting hedges bordering footpaths as for highways. Chris
Pitt would like the Parish Council to re-think how our footpaths are maintained in future to
keep them open.
Richard Thorpe advised that the old grain dryer site in Hatherden now has planning
permission. He asked if the 30mph speed limit sign could be moved back towards The Fox
beyond the corner and whether 30mph could be written across the road at the entrance to the
30mph limit as in Wildhern. Roly Clarke said there was no speed limit at the top of Wildhern
and he questioned why the 30mph limit did not extend to the end of the village.
Dr Christopher and Pamela Wharton stated that they are very concerned about speeding in
Hatherden. They asked if sleeping policemen could be placed across the road and whether
we could have the smiley face speed indicator signs showing passing traffic’s speed as
deployed in Charlton. They said that this type of flashing sign appeared to be very effective.
School parents need warning about speeding. With no visible presence of a lollipop man
outside the school there is nothing to slow speeding cars. Parishioners are also guilty of
speeding. Richard Thorpe who is an ex-highways policemen, said that the perception of
speed is not always what people think and that large 4X4’s quite often appears to be
travelling faster than they actually are, enforcement doesn’t usually help and engineering is
the only effective way of slowing traffic. On average 40% of people travel at 42mph in a
30mph speed limit statistically.
Andrew Waller asked if we could get speed humps or a chicane installed and it was stated
that this had been discussed previously but local farmers objected as they couldn’t get their
tractors through the villages.
Lawrence Leask asked if we could re-visit the idea of having Speed Watch for our parish
which is the system where parishioners have speed guns and stand out on the edge of the road
and record speeding motorists who are informed of their ‘crime’ by way of a letter which is
apparently also sent to their insurers. This scheme comes with the smiley face signs but is
expensive. It was discussed that the speeding problem is quite often caused by people
passing through out parish from Vernham Dean and other villages and maybe we should try
and get Vernham Dean and Hurstbourne Tarrant, our partner parishes in the SLR signs, to
come in on the cost of Speed Watch. Lawrence Leask advised the meeting that funding is
now available for this scheme. Lawrence Leask has volunteered to become a Speed Watch
monitor for the scheme and said he had 3/4 other parishioners who had agreed to help him.
Rod Mason, TVBC Animal Welfare Officer, advised that he used to be the local dog warden
and a request had been made by the Village Hall Committee for him to attend the meeting
due to dog fouling on the playing field. He gave a full explanation of his role and
responsibilities and said that we need to appoint a representative for the parish to report any
dog related issues we may have and that training would be given to this person as part of a
pilot scheme to work with local parish councils. He offered to attend our produce show and
have a stall to raise awareness of the problems caused by irresponsible dog ownership. He
stated that there are powers for enforcement and for fining regular offenders.
35/15 PRESENT
Brian Comley (Chairman), Martin Thomson, Steve Kershaw and Graham Marchant were
present. The Clerk was in attendance.
36/15 APOLOGIES
There were apologies from David Eldred, Peter Giddings (TVBC) and Timothy Rolt (HCC),
37/15 MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING
The minutes of the meeting held on 2nd March 2015 were approved and signed. The minutes
were proposed by Graham Marchant and seconded by Martin Thomson.
38/15 MATTERS ARISING
Having sought legal advice from HALC on how to deal with the Chairman's statement about
the skate board ramp and whether it should be withdrawn because it was an expression of his
personal views and had not been approved or ratified by the council, a vote was taken by the
parish council to support the statement and by a majority decision it was decided that the
statement would not be withdrawn.
39/15 HIGHWAYS
It was reported that the ‘school’ sign outside Flint House in Hatherden was obscured by the
overgrown hedge and the owners of Flint House should be asked to cut the hedge back.
The manhole covers which are at intervals up the middle of the road in Hatherden have still
not been properly raised following the re-surfacing of the road and are both noisy and
unstable. The one outside the turning to Goddards Lane is particularly bad and urgently
needs replacing. Cllr. Tim Rolt will be asked to chase this up with HCC Highways.
It was agreed to replace the stolen SLR sign immediately with Westcotec who were the
original suppliers and to replace the batteries in the second sign as the insurers have now paid
out in full. It was felt that any Speed Watch scheme we may obtain in the future would be in
addition to our current SLR signs. The Clerk will provide the specification for the SLR
batteries to The Chairman who may be able to obtain more cost-effective replacements.
40/15 FOOTPATHS
Path 8 (Patchington House) has still not been cut back by the HCC Rights of Way Team as
advised by Chris Pitt in the Open Forum session. It was suggested that the path may remain
more passable if the height of the bordering hedges was reduced. The Clerk was asked to talk
to Johnny Capes and the Dennis’s whose land borders the path to see if this could be
achieved. They would also be asked if they could maintain Path 8 on a regular basis.
Path 14 (Conholt) – it is unclear whether HCC has removed the fallen tree yet as nobody at
the meeting had recently walked this path.
41/15 PLANNING
There is no up-date on the development of the two new houses in The Close with regard to
permitted development rights. A new planning application for Dowlands Farmhouse was
received after the meeting agenda was finalised so this could not be reviewed at the meeting
but it was decided that as the application was unlikely to attract any local opposition it would
not be necessary to convene a separate meeting to review this. No comment will be filed
with TVBC concerning this application.
42/15 FINANCE
The Clerk advised that a parishioner had made an approach to BDO LLP for information
concerning an invoice for digger hire and the formation of the sports committee. The Clerk
has compiled the list of documents requested by BDO but advised that the Parish Council
would be charged an hourly rate of £117 to satisfy this request. It was initially envisaged by
BDO that the matter would require 2 hours work – a total of £234 + VAT. The parish
council felt that it was regrettable that having answered queries relating to this at the last
meeting and having carefully explained that the sports committee funding was separate to
that of the PC, it now had to spend precious financial resources and administration time
answering the same query.
The Clerk advised that the bank balance is £13,842.65 after all cheques and payments had
been reconciled to the last bank statement. The bank reconciliation was signed by The
Chairman as a true account. The following cheques were then approved and signed:
000847 - £321.54 – Clerk’s Salary - May (retrospective)
000848 - £321.54 – Clerk’s Salary - June (retrospective)
000849 - £ 24.10 – TVBC Election Costs
000850 - £321.54 – Clerk’s Salary – July (post-dated 31/7/2015 due to holiday)
43/15 VILLAGE HALL
W G Sykes, Chartered Surveyors, have been approached to carry out a survey on the village
hall as agreed at the January meeting but are reluctant to do so as we queried their invoice for
the survey done for the tennis court. The Chairman said he had received a quote from
another surveyor and would forward this to The Clerk but it was questioned whether a survey
was actually needed and whether in fact there really was a problem with the village hall roof.
44/15 PARISH IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMME 2015/16
The Chairman and The Clerk met with Nicholas Bennett in The Close to follow up on his
request at the last meeting for play equipment and a footpath around the green area in The
Close. He has not come back with his proposals.
The Playing Field Sports Committee met on Wednesday, 8 July 2015 to discuss finalisation
of the mound slide and what alternatives to a skate board ramp could be provided to satisfy
the needs of older children in the parish. An outdoor table tennis table was discounted as it is
usually too windy to play on the one recently installed in Vernham Dean. A large tripod
cargo net was discussed by they are very costly. It was decided to explore the cost of a zip
wire as the one in Hurstbourne Tarrant is very popular and it is something that has come up
on both the survey for the tennis court and the more recent survey for a skateboard ramp.
Kit Malthouse MP has convened a meeting in St Mary Bourne on 24 July 2015 to discuss
rural broadband. Chris Pitt has kindly offered to attend and a copy of our original bid to
BT/TVBC has been sent to Kit Malthouse so that he is aware that 15% of our parish will not
be part of the Phase 2 up-grade. Apparently we now have a fibre optic cable in Hatherden.
A rota will be drawn up for weekly inspection of the defibrillators and The Chairman asked if
there was any news about the progress regarding installation of the final unit in Hatherden. A
better form of LED lighting needs to be sourced to light the unit on the roadside outside The
Fox in Tangley.
Steve Kershaw asked Lawrence Leask if he could provide the names of all the plot holders on
the allotment site in accordance with the terms of the TAG lease. Steve Kershaw said the
annual rent of £50 was not paid by the due date of 31 May 2015 and as there appeared to
have been a reluctance to do so it was felt that, for the purpose of clarity, the PC should write
to all plot holders in future. Steve Kershaw stated that the PC needed to make sure that the
facility, although small, was better utilised.
He further requested minutes of TAG meetings but Lawrence Leask advised that minutes
were not kept and that there are now only 5 plots occupied by 4 people. Steve Kershaw
wanted to know who was liable for the water rates bill and felt the parish council should be
kept better informed.
It was suggested that Max Hannaby-Lee should be asked to make a new notice board to go on
the bus shelter in Hatherden by the school as the one currently there is in a very bad state of
repair. The Clerk will ask him for a quotation if he is happy to undertake the work.
45/15 CORRESPONDENCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
Following receipt of the letter from BDO LLP, our external auditors, questioning the
authorisation of an invoice for digger hire and the procedure employed for forming the
Playing Field Sports Committee, The Chairman stated that The Clerk had the Parish
Council’s full support over this matter.
The Village Hall risk assessment register was not presented to the Chairman to be signed as
Steve Clark is currently in hospital.
The meeting finished at 9.21pm
The next meeting of Tangley Parish Council will take place on
Monday, 7th September 2015 at 7pm at Tangley Parish Village Hall.