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| Parish Council Report |
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This is the first opportunity to write to you as the new Chair of the Parish Council. It is a great privilege to have been appointed by the 8 other parish councillors and to serve the village at local level, following 27 years serving the village on the District Council.
There were no elections for the Parish Council at the May elections as only Labour put forward candidates. On the one hand this may be a positive sign that the last Parish Council were highly efficient, but on the other hand, I believe that local democracy loses out when seats are not contested.
Being a Parish Councillor is a voluntary role and I am already aware of the dedication of my fellow colleagues to serving their community to the very best of their ability. There is no wage or large allowance attached, but the chairman does have an allowance of about £4 a week for various expenses such as travel and telephone.
The biggest issues we are currently addressing seem to be related to future development in the village. I have no doubt we are under attack as major sites of green belt are being either earmarked for thousands of houses or gypsy sites.The new parish council is committed to acting as a front line defence against proposals from the East of England Regional Assembly and St Albans District Council. Most of the village, but not all, are opposed to green belt being used for gypsy sites. Whitehorse Lane with four proposed sites, appeared in a consultants report. The Council say these proposals will be used as evidence in their Core Strategy Development plan.
I want to provide you with a short quote from the consultation document from St Albans Council on which comments can be made up until 10 September. "...all the sites identified require further work. It will be necessary to look into possible alternative sites such as Council owned land..". Now, I know that St Albans district Councillors have said that there are enough gypsy sites in the areas and they do not want to provide any more, but at the same time their consultation document is required to look into further sites. We will not be complacent, especially with target sites still a possibility in the London Colney green belt.
The same document is looking at future housing and most of the development sites are in our area or the South of the District. Both ends of Shenley Lane are possibilities of around 1,000 homes on each. Whilst green belt boundaries can sometimes be changed in order to provide protection to existing green belt, this can not be applied to green belt land where 1,000 homes are to be built. The Parish will resist such vandalism.
I am happy to retain the title of the village of London Colney, but not if it means we will lose public transport and lose out on new leisure and recreational facilities. You just need to look at some nearby villages to see the lack of regeneration and facilities. This is the issue being asked by the District Council. Do we stay a village or become re-classified as a town? Our job is to find out the tangible benefits of reclassification as we are unwilling to consider the issue if it simply means being used to meet the housing needs of the District.
And finally, we said thanks to Rosie Sanderson at a special reception to recognise her immense contribution to our village over the last 24 years. Rosie was a great asset to the Parish Council and helped many people during her years of service.
Malcolm MacMillan
Chairman of the Parish Council
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