Richard Mascall's Weblog

A Fair Day

Each year on the third Saturday in June, Warlingham has a fair, held at Blanchman's Farm Nature Reserve. Because of the timing I am often on holiday and so miss it, but this year I was around.

The Parish Council has a pitch which we use just to tell people we exist and what we do. One of the councillors had done a fascinating collage of photos of Warlingham's Green over the years with the oldest one dating back to the 19^th century. This drew in passers-by and we were then able to show them details of some of the things the Council does.

Badge of the Century

Last year I helped judge a competition in which local scouts designed a badge to mark their centenary. The winning entry was made into an actual badge and today I was most pleasantly surprised to be given one.

Opening The Funeral Shop

Rowland Brothers, the funeral directors, opened a shop in Warlingham today and, as chairman of Warlingham Parish Council, I was invited to open it.

Outside they had one of those "Dracula" style horse-drawn hearses but in chatting to the manager I learnt that it is possible to use a variety of transports. Indeed the form of funerals is ever-widening, including of course more environmentally friendly styles with, for example, wicker coffins.

The current head of the company is a Tony Rowland and he is the fourth generation to be involved. I also met the son and daughter, the latter telling me how they even sometimes arrange for people to be frozen, though this does involve a trip to the States.

Another Tree Gets Planted

It seems only the other week I was witnessing a tree being planted in Warlingham funded by the Parish Council (actually it was - see here) and today I was able to do it again.

Right at the north of the parish is a small cul-de-sac called Martin Close. An ornamental tree there was lost in a storm and the residents were trying to replace it. They first approached Surrey County Council but were rebuffed so then they asked the Parish Council if we could help. Fortunately we could, so today I went along with a fellow councillor to see them planting the trees.  (There were two thanks to the generosity of Knight's Garden Centre.)

No Half-Term on School Common

Here in Warlingham there was a chap called Richard Drake who was involved in representing local people for over 50 years between the late 50s and early 00s. In his time he was a parish councillor, a district councillor, and a county councillor. So after his retirement a tree was planted on School Common in his honour. Unfortunately this was in a year when there was a particular hot and dry summer, so the tree died.

The Parish Council decided to replace it and the people at Downloads Countryside Management Project came along today and planted a new one. One of my fellow councillors has promised to water it when required so we can still all hope for a long hot dry summer (unless we work for a water company, I suppose.)

Back On Parish Council

As mentioned in my entry of April 3rd, all the seats on Warlingham Parish Council were up for election. I stood again and am pleased to say I managed to win enough votes to get back on. The photo is of me after the count this morning.

Lanterns Lit, Trees Unlit (for the moment)

Today we had the annual Lighting Up ceremony to mark the switching on of Warlingham's Christmas lights. The snag was that there were no lights on the trees (they are being replaced, and the supplier cannot fit them until early December.)

Unfortunately the ceremony cannot be postponed because there is a children's parade and the children all have diary clashes between now and Christmas (don't we all know the feeling.)

But it did not really matter since all the other components took place. These included the Village Hall, the Church Hall, and the Guides Hut all hosting numerous stalls. Also there were roundabouts on the Green. And, above all, the children's parade, which Pam and I helped to marshall, went ahead and it was most spectacular. There were 85 large lanterns with lights inside.

Remembrance Sunday

I do not record many activities to do with the Parish Council in this blog but perhaps I should add this entry regarding yesterday's Remembrance Day event. There is a parade in Warlingham every year to mark the day, culminating with a ceremony on Warlingham Green. However this year there was the strong possibility that it might not happen, with the near demise of the local Royal British Legion. However, the Parish Council were able to step into the breach and helped ensure it took place. As usual, I laid a wreath on behalf of everyone who lives in Warlingham. What was particularly pleasing was the large number of school-children who took part.

Parish Council Grants

Yesterday I chaired the December meeting of Warlingham Parish Council. We normally have at least nine councillors attending but yesterday all eleven were present. Although this can prolong the meeting, the larger number must help better decision making.

We had a number of items which required a fair bit of time to discuss. One was our annual grant allocation. Most parish councils put money by in order to contribute to worthwhile local projects. Normally requests for funds exceed the money available so there needs to be some method of determining who should get how much. This takes place once a year but in the past the Parish Council has suffered because so often councillors have a connection with at least one of the applicants. This connection disqualified the councillor from taking part in the allocation because they might be influenced by their association with the applicant. Since councillors tend to be the sort of people who get involved with local groups, in the past the number of councillors eligible to take part has been dangerously low.

So last year I drew up a new procedure for considering the grants which allowed councillors to express their views on all the applicants other than those they had connections with. The procedure merges all these views in such a way as to allocate the money in line with councillors' opinions. That was the good news. The bad news is that this meant a relatively complicated process for the councillors to follow. This was worsened by my attempt to build into the procedure some encouragement to consideration of allocation criteria. For example, the council agreed that specific projects were to be favoured over general running costs.

When we came to carry out our new procedure this year, we found that the total of funds requested was actually smaller than the amount we had put by. We could have just given everyone what they asked for, but at least some of the councillors felt that some of the applications did not deserve the full amount requested. We could have simply carried out the procedure as previously agreed, but this would have meant at least one, and probably several, applications would have been given more money than they had requested, which we felt would have been undesirable.

So we decided to stick with our procedure, but to allocate only on the basis of the total amount requested (about £3,600 rather than the £4,000 we had put aside) and to cap any resulting allocation at the amount requested. Since some of the councillors had held back indicating their feelings on the various applications, there will now be a few days grace for them to think further.

We always said the only sure way of ensuring an effective and efficient procedure was to get something defined and to try it out, knowing full well this would identify details in the procedure which needed to be polished. Now we have done this, hopefully in future years everything will run much more smoothly.

SCAPTC Meeting

SCAPTC is the Surrey County Association of Parish and Town Councils. It has over 70 members, Warlingham being one of them. One major benefit is the half-price legal advice the Association provides. Unfortunately nowadays it seems only wise to take legal advice before deciding on one action or another.

Another potential benefit comes from the meetings the Association holds every four months or so and I attended one of these this afternoon. As usual, there was a guest speaker; this time it was a John Whitaker, Chairman of the Surrey Countryside Access Forum. This group was set up by Surrey County Council following the Countryside Rights of Way Act of 2000, which required such authorities to set up independent bodies whose role was to promote access.

I found this interesting although not that relevant to Warlingham, at least currently. But it is good to keep up to date with such subjects. Another item will be very useful to Warlingham, I am sure. This was the progress report on SCAPTC's production of material to assist councils in identifying new councillors. Although Warlingham is currently fortunate in having eleven people prepared to give up some (in some cases, a lot) of their spare time in order to be of service to their community, the experience in many other areas is that finding people who are willing to take on the commitment can be difficult. This might be the position in Warlingham in the future so the sooner we start to look for future potential councillors, the better.