I attended the Alderley Edge Parish Council's monthly meeting on Monday 7th November, along with 25 members of the public which is quite unusual.
Since then I have reported on some of the issues raised at the meeting, including plans to build a car park on land currently occupied by the Heyes Lane allotments which are protected by a covenant.
I also reported on the planning application which has been submitted on behalf of Friends of the Park for the change of use of the bandstand in Alderley Edge Park to create a cafe.
This was discussed during the Planning Committee meeting during which councillors decided to recommend refusal "on the grounds of the impact of potential construction and the fact that there are no mains services. The Parish Council would also like more information on who "friends of the park" are."
Other issues discussed at this month's Parish Council meeting include banners being placed on the railings alongside the parade and park. Cllr Mary Maczkowiak raised the issue and stressed her concerns that the banners distracted drivers and could result in an accident, she was particularly concerned about banners being placed opposite the Heyes Lane junction. Cllr Matthew Lloyd agreed with Mary Maczkowiak that there should not be any banners, saying "It looks scruffy whatever the banners are".
The Parish Council then took a vote whether to remove all banners or make exceptions for banners from charities and some community events. They voted in favour, by 4 votes to 3 votes, of allowing selected banners.
Cllr Matthew Lloyd has put together a brief for a Parish Council website which will be "a professionally run website providing an independent voice for the Parish Council". A budget of £3000 has been allocated to communications, which has not yet been spent, so if the council agrees this will be spent on building the website.
The minutes of this month's Parish Council meeting are now available, click here to read about all the local issues covered.
The Alderley Edge Parish Council meet once a month. All meetings are open to the public and are held in the Council Chamber at the Festival Hall. Dates and further details for the forthcoming meetings can be found in our events section.
Comments
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Eddie Stobart are a major distributor for Tesco are their vehicles deliver to the front of Tesco on a daily basis .
Better still, with over 13,000 unique browsers in this last month alone, isn’t this a better place for Parish Councillors to show interest and become properly involved in the community they serve? With so many visitors, they could be better known for their good deeds; even in the wider community and all for free!
Perhaps we, the community, should question why the Parish Council have decided to spend our money to satisfy their need to have an ‘independent voice’.
BTW and re the minutes of this month’s PC meeting; Mr. Keegan is a Friend of the Park and I am not sure why he didn’t disclose this to his fellow Councillors. A ‘senior moment’ perhaps?
Susan is quite right in pointing out that this website does the best job in getting people to engaged with village issues and it's doesn't cost the tax payer anything. I do wish it would correct my spelling !
I find it frustrating that the councillors don't use this site to get involved with discussion.
I helped my friend do last week and I am by no means an IT geek. Total cost including domain name and hosting £17!
The council is more than aware of what a fantastic asset to the village a vibrant community website such as alderleyedge.com is and a key consideration in the design of the parish council website is that it should not attempt to 'compete' with this site. However, I think it is important that the parish council has a professional looking, well maintained presence on the web which the councillors can use to communicate directly with the village.
In my opinion the likes of contact details for all council members, annual reports, financial accounts, budgets, meeting agendas, meeting minutes, register of members’ interests etc etc should all be readily available and permanently archived on a parish council web site.
As to how that is done I would strongly suggest the Parish Council takes a look at wordpress.com as pointed out by Malcolm. Over 30 million sites have already been setup on wordpress.com - the vast majority of which are done by people without any technical knowledge. A professional site could be put together without making a dent in the £3k - and in probably less time than it would take to write a brief and run a tender process!