BURY PARISH COUNCIL

The Annual Meeting of Bury Parish Council to be held at Bury Village Hall, Brookfield Way, Owls End on Wednesday 2nd March 2016 at 7:30 p.m.

AGENDA

AM0316.01 APOLOGIES

AM0316.02 COUNCILLORS INTERESTS

AM0316.03 MINUTES OF ANNUAL MEETING 4TH March 2015

AM0316.04 MATTERS ARISING

AM0316.05 PARISH COUNCIL ACTION 2015/16

AM0316.06 REPORT FROM HUNTINGDONSHIRE DISTRICT COUNCIL

AM0316.07 REPORTS FROM LOCAL ORGANISATIONS

AM0316.08 DATE & TIME OF NEXT ANNUAL MEETING

AM0316.09 ANY OTHER BUSINESS

AM0316.10 CLOSE OPEN MEETING

The Annual Meeting of Bury Parish Council held atBury Village Hall, Wednesday 2 nd March 2016 at 7.30 pm.

Present Cllr.J.Prestage ChairpersonCllr.P.Hazell Vice-ChairpersonCllr.D.Wakefield Cllr.K.PrestageCllr.R.ScantleburyCllr J.Hayes Cllr.A.JohnstoneCllr.P.Levi

D.Cllr. P.Bucknell C.Cllr. M.Tew

Ms. Jo McGlashan Ms. S Harding Mr & Mrs L Walton Mrs. K. Hazell Mr. P.Brindley

Clerk C.Johnson

AM0316.01 APOLOGIES Apologies were received from Cllr.Turner.

AM0316.02 COUNCILLORS’ INTERESTS

To receive from Councilors’ declarations as to personal and or prejudicial interests and the nature of those interests in relation to Agenda items. No interests were declared.

AM0316.03 MINUTES OF ANNUAL MEETING 4 th March 2015

The minutes of the above meeting were approved

AM0316.04 MATTERS ARISING

There were no matters arising.

AM0316.05 PARISH COUNCIL ACTION 2015/16

A report on the actions taken by the Council were presented by the Chairman, see appendix No.1 below.

AM0316.06 REPORT FROM HUNTINGDONSHIRE DISTRICT COUNCIL

A report was presented to the Council by D.Cllr.P.Bucknell, see Appendix No.2 below

AM0316.07 REPORTS FROM LOCAL ORGANISATIONS

The Clerk has received reports from the following village organisations:

Bury Carpet Bowls Club Bury Playgroup Ramsey Abbey WI

Bury Residents Charity Bury Table Tennis Club Ramsey Senior Citizens Club

AM0316.08 DATE & TIME OF NEXT ANNUAL MEETING

The next Annual Meeting will be held on Wednesday 1st March 2017 at 7.30 pm at the Village Hall

AM0316.09 ANY OTHER BUSINESS

.AM0316.10 CLOSE OPEN MEETING

The Chairman declared the meeting closed at 7.55p.m.

Appendix 1

Chairman’s report 2015 – 2016Your council has been stable, comprising of 9 members and we have met officially 11 times in the committee room of Bury village hall – our minutes are on the village web-site. We have this year been extremely well supported at our meetings by members of the public, and we do listen to their views.

During the current year the street lighting saga returned to haunt us as the County Council now want to switch them off after midnight! However we were again able to use one of our street light columns to supply the power for our Christmas lights. Your council, with significant help from David Wakefield and his team who put up and took down the lights, delivered a stunning display which was switched on by the High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire Victor Lucas, ably assisted by the Bury School choir, with refreshments provided by Tushi of Bury village stores and technical expertise from Terry Robins. There was unanimous approval of the lights.

There have been several planning applications with the development of the RAF Upwood site turning into a saga and the USAF clinic site into a disaster, almost literally. We will continue to try to work with the developers of the clinic site but their track record to date has been to studiously ignore both us and the planning department at HDC.

We have found it increasingly difficult to influence planning decisions so it is with some relief that the village has started the production of its Neighbourhood plan. This carries significant weight in any decision making process concerning the village. We are very grateful to Jeremy Mumford for taking the lead. We will continue to support him but it is essentially a village initiative so when he comes calling please respond positively.

It was great to see so many villagers at our open meeting in September when we were able to collect your views not only on the Neighbourhood plan and its potential contents but also the design and siting of the MUGA and the problem with parking in Grenfell Road.

Our proposed solution is with the Cambridgeshire County Council highways department for consideration. This was formulated following an amazing response to our short questionnaire when we had over a 90% response of which over 90% were in favour of increased parking restrictions. This view was also supported by the police.

We are expecting a decision shortly on our application for local Highway Improvement Initiative funding for a traffic calming scheme in Owls End in the vicinity of Bury school: if successful this will be implemented in 2016/2017

We continue to be ably supported by our county councillor and 2 district councillors, our thanks and gratitude to Michael, Peter and Angie for all their hard work.

Both our local newspapers, the Informer and the Reporter, include our monthly reports and publicise our events such as the Christmas lights switch on.

I would like to thank my council for all their support and good humour, the Bury Residents charity for making this room available to us, our village handywoman, Stephanie, for keeping the play areas tidy and Mr. Badcock the gardener/handyman for the cemetery – it has never looked so good.

Finally my heartfelt thanks to Chris, the parish clerk, who works tirelessly and continues to keep us all in order.

Appendix 2

Report from Bury Carpet Bowls Club

Bury Carpet Bowls Club meet Wednesday evenings and Friday afternoons. We have 40 members at the moment. Membership fees remain at £20 a year. We have club competitions running throughout the year, a Memorial Day in May and a dinner dance at Christmas. Teams also go monthly to a competition for over sixties at Littleport. This year we have sent £250 to the Woodlands Centre for Cancer Care, a result of raffles and a collection in lieu of Christmas cards. We thank the Prish Council for their continual support.

Mary Dockerty

Report from Bury Playgroup – For Bury Parish Council Meeting 2/3/16

Bury Playgroup Offers care to children aged 2 - 4 years 11 months. Children attend a minimum of 2 sessions per week and sessions are offered to all ages every morning between 9.05am -12.05pm and Tuesday afternoons 12.05pm -3.05pm. As of January we also offer a sessions exclusively for pre-school aged children (3 -4 yrs.) on Thursday afternoons.

We spoke to you at your meeting last summer and at that point out forecasted numbers were looking very low and possibly unsustainable into 2016. There were a number of reasons we had identified for this most notably an increase in the numbers of working parents and therefore the need for longer childcare hours and a new Government initiative to offer free childcare for more hours than we are open (meaning families would be unlikely to choose Bury Playgroup).

You may recall we were considering a number of options to encourage both new children and for current children to attend more sessions.

Our new treasurer (appointed in October) has worked hard at modelling and analysing our financial position and actually realised that with the reserves we had we would be able to trial opening for more sessions to see if this would encourage more children as we hoped.

We are very pleased to report that opening on a Thursday afternoon means we are at break-even point across the week (some sessions are still loss making) which is real achievement from where we were in September 2015.

The 2 days we offer the longer opening hours are our busiest days’ which has confirmed to us that the longer hours are definitely popular amongst families in the area.

In addition we have a number of marketing initiatives going on, we have an open day on the 9th March to which we welcome anyone with children / grandchildren under 5 to attend so you can see what we do and how we do it! We are also regularly featured in the Ramsey Informer and talking to Ramsey Neighbourhood News too.

The Thursday opening has not been easy and is restricted to pre-schoolers because we have to move location from this hall to the Church hall once a month because of another group using this hall already on the 1st Thursday of the month.

We are very grateful to John Hayes and the church for working with us to help secure their hall but it is an additional cost and not an ideal solution as our staff are walking children in all weathers up and back to the hall during that afternoon - can you imagine doing it this lunchtime for example! With current numbers of children it is possible but if we get to the numbers we need to break even on that session then we would need to look at it again.

To further bolster funds, we also now have a fundraising subcommittee (As of October 2015) who are planning lots of events including a health and well-being event next week and a shopping event in June. They are full of enthusiasm and ideas which is great.

We are very keen to continue to work with other groups within the Bury Community so please do not hesitate to contact us: Fiona Cameron, Chair of Bury Playgroup:buryplaygroupchair@aol.co.uk / mobile 07813 116461

Many Thanks

Fiona Cameron

Report from Ramsey Abbey WI to Bury Parish CouncilMarch 2016

Ramsey Abbey WI enjoyed another successful year with some exceptionally good speakers, including a demonstration on how to tie a scarf, a slide show through the seasons of Wimpole Hall, the history of the tulip and Keukenhof Gardens. The entertainment for our Annual Cream Tea was The Merrymakers a singing group who kept us foot tapping and singing along with their popular songs. September was Members Afternoon when a group of our ladies gave talks about their own experiences during World War Two. Tea was accompanied by a cake made to an original recipe from that time. A former Chef gave us a talk entitled ‘What’s that smell in the kitchen’ which was a hilarious account of his life working in top class restaurants.

Fund raising was a cake stall at Ramsey Thomas A Beckett Church Fete which, as always, was a success.

We have a well attended monthly Book Club where we discuss the book we have just read and put the world to right.

We also have a monthly Lunch Club where we try out local restaurants. We try to alternate between a special venue and say a Pub lunch so there is something for everyone. Once a month we all gather at a member’s home for Tea and Chat which is always well attended. We also hold a coffee morning on a monthly basis at local venues again very well attended.

We now hold a craft club once a month, and support the Federations Spring and Autumn quizzes.

In November we held our AGM when Kate Temprell resigned as President and Karen Prestage took over. Jenny Macro resigned as Secretary and Kate Temprell took over. The Treasurer remains the same.

Kate Temprell President Ramsey Abbey WI 2012 - 2015Great to be back representing the face of the W.I. as Abbey’s President. The Christmas festivities began with an excellent and well attended lunch at the Golf Club which was followed at our December meeting by an enthusiastic speaker and proponent of exercise in chairs for body and mind. Reminding us how important it is to keep our bodies and minds active as we get older.

Voting on possible national resolutions for the May AGM in Brighton took up considerable time in January followed by a very informative power point presentation from Magpas.

February saw us taking a trip down memory lane when Richard Hyde with his irrepressible good humour and enthusiasm chatted about how Hyde’s the retailer spanned across 4 generations. We had a bumper attendance.

March 4th will see members donning their marigolds when to celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday they will be supporting the national initiative “Clean for the Queen” and will be cleaning the 3 “Bury” signs into the village

Karen Prestage current President Ramsey Abbey WI

Bury Table Tennis Report Annual Report March 2016 By Roger Albone – Club Organizer Bury Table Tennis Club was established in 2012, meeting every Friday evening (except the first Friday of the month) in the Bury Village Hall. Starting at 7.30pm till 10pm. The aim of the club is to promote a healthy life style through sport. The club currently has 27 members. Membership to the club is open to all ages and abilities. There is no membership fee, only an entrance fee of £2.50 per week and for Under 16’s £1.50 per week. This includes refreshments. The club offers the first week FREE. Of these 27 members we have a regular attendance of around 15. The Club currently caters for a wide age group with our youngest member being 12 years old and our oldest being 80+ years old. On club nights there is on average 4 tables set up, the club has a friendly and social atmosphere so you can choose who you want to play with or against, plus if you prefer to play Singles or Doubles. The club also has a Table Tennis Robot which is used to practice returning different variety of shots, but the main emphasis is on having fun. During the year the club has held 3 in house competitions. A Men’s Singles Tournament, A Ladies Singles Tournament and a Double Tournament. The club has also been able get a team together to enter into the Peterborough Table Tennis League Winter Season 2015-16. This year the club has been able to move our equipment into our own dedicated club store. We have also been fortunate enough to have 2 tables donated to us by Ramsey Chaos Youth Centre. Over the coming year the club aims to continue to increase the membership of the club. To encourage the younger generation to take up Table Tennis or to continue on from what they have learnt in school. The club is looking for a number of local companies to come forward and offer the club sponsorship, so the club can purchase some professional surrounds/divides with the sponsor’s logo/name on them.

Re: Bury Parish Council Open Meeting

You asked for Village Organisations to submit a report of activities during the past year. Here is the report from Ramsey Senior Citizens Club – Meetings:– Mar 2015 to Feb 2016.

March• This month we were entertained by Rita Smith from Abbey Antiques, Ramsey.   She

gave a very interesting talk on the seaside and brought along many items we had all forgotten about. 

April• This month we were entertained by Christine and Susanna, two ladies who play

the accordion and go under the name “Take Two”.May

• This month we were entertained by our old friend Dave Walters. What a treat – besides being a lovely singer he is also a great raconteur.   We really enjoy his visits

June• This month we had a visit from “Dogs for the Disabled”, Cambridgeshire

Supporters group.• Group activities cover Cambridgeshire and the surrounding area.  One of active

partnerships within this group – Andy Lees with his dog Rufus,  came along to tell us how Rufus has helped Andy to cope with day-to-day activities.

JulyToday we were entertained by the Bury School choir.What a treat, the choir was larger than usual as many of the older children came along and sang some of the songs they had learned  when they joined-up with other local school choirs to form  one large choir.  They sang medley of different songs – accompanied by backing tracks.July is the month  we  serve ice-cream and jelly after our afternoon tea.  We needed the extra treat this afternoon as the weather was very warm.

August No MeetingSeptember

• Our September meeting was well attended and we were entertained by John Pilbeam on his guitar.  John sang lots of old songs, some rock and roll and a few George Formby numbers  – while playing on his ukulele.

October• This month we held our Harvest Festival meeting.  The short service was taken by

Mrs Val Stewart from the  Great Whyte Baptist Church, Ramsey.  Val gave a very interesting talk on seeds and discussed how important they are in our day-to-day life.  She brought along her “seed tray” and a basket full of assorted seed pots. 

• The members were very generous in their offerings and the sales table was filled with all kinds of “goodies”.   Tea was served early to give us plenty of time to auction them all off.  Richard Hyde is our regular auctioneer and he soon had members bidding for the items on sale.  This is one of our two fund raising events so all proceeds will go into Club 

November• This month we were entertained by four  delightful catwalk models showing-off

their lovely outfits – which all came from Carousel,  Great Whyte, Ramsey. •

December• This was the special meeting of the year – our Christmas Dinner.  Fifty-eight sat

down to a two course traditional Christmas dinner provided by Housdens of Chatteris, our regular outside caterers.

• After a lovely meal and a few glasses of wine/orange juice we were entertained by a lovely group called The Merry Makers.  Everyone enjoyed the day and went home very happy.

•

• The Committee along with two volunteer drivers

• Our thanks go to  Ramsey Town Council, to the Rotary Club of Ramsey and to Mrs Marks family for helping to sponsor this event.  We are so grateful for their continuing support and wish them all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all their friends in Ramsey Senior citizens

• Our next meeting will be in February 2016February

• Hurrah! we had eight new members join the Club this afternoon. The write-up in the local Ramsey and Warboys  Informer newspaper has certainly helped to boost our membership.

• We were entertained by The Court Players.  A group of local Thespians who perform Radio Plays in a recording studio setting. The plays are written and directed by Robin and contain sound effects. The play performed this afternoon was called “They’re Coming Lad!” –  a play about the Home Guard.  It was very funny and all our members seemed to enjoy it.

Please let me know if you require any further information.

All events can be viewed on our website : https://ramseyseniors.wordpress.com

Yours Sincerely

Ina HartleyChairwomen 01487 711649