The Offords
Community Website

OFFORD CLUNY AND OFFORD DARCY PARISH COUNCIL.

2008 was a very eventful year for our Parish Councils. I remember that Amalgamation came up on a number of occasions over the years I have been a Parish Councillor and was always met with outright objection by the two Parish Councils and their communities. There were a  number of predicable reasons not to unite when there were less new people in the villages.

Eventually common sense prevailed as prejudices declined and more new people moved into the expanding villages. If there ever was a direct benefit to our community of the A14, it was the need to answer “why do we have two Parish Councils for one community?”. Because of the bureaucratic difficulty of ratifying actions with the separate Parish Councils, Grouping, which is the route to full Amalgamation in 2010, took effect on May 6th 2008. This was  20 years after I first served as a Councillor for Offord Cluny,  taking the place of Ted Randell. When I started, the Agenda was half a page, the minutes were typed on one side A4 sheet,  the accounts were simple, we did not spend much money or charge households very much and the majority of  meetings were over before 9pm!   Now we have a raft of various rules and regulations, we cannot save us all money by  repairing council property voluntarily, and the new council precept is almost 20 times the precept set for Offord Cluny in 1988.

By the end of 2008 our new Parish Clerk had worked with us all from May to reconstruct the council, making it easier to discuss the 3 main areas of council business in committee, and then approving the actions in full council.  Now we have the A14 on the agenda, the Wind Turbine  Application may or may not be off the agenda, and The Parish Plan is our next big project that we require considerable community input to achieve.    We also hope to have a fuller Annual Parish Assembly in the middle of 2009 which should also involve more local organisations reporting on their achievements and activities for the past year. This is not to be confused with the AGM of the Amalgamated Parish Councils, which takes place in May each year. Details will be circulated in a future issue of Out & About.

Wishing everybody a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2009.

Liam Small

Chairman

Offord Cluny and Offord Darcy Parish Council

Parish Council Matters