The Glaven Valley Benefice WIVETON PARISH COUNCIL
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Annual Report to Parishioners

Wiveton's Annual Report to Parishioners was held on the 19th May 2009 in the Parish Room, attended by our County Councillor plus a very heartening twenty members of the public. The National Trust's Head Warden David Wood also came along and gave an excellent Power Point presentation covering the problems of disturbance to wildlife sites by people and dogs and how this might be mitigated in the future.

This was very well received. However, there are always several aspects to such things and while nobody wants to see damage to these sites, local people, i.e. those who were born here or have lived here all their lives have a very real feeling that year on year their traditional freedoms are being fenced out. In legislative terms, it is quite indisputable that birds are now more important than people along this coast.

The now ceased tradition of 'Point Sunday' that I knew as a child, where village families would, complete with children, dogs, and a variety of fishing equipment decamp to 'The Point' for the day for picnics, games, and low tide sailing and fishing, would almost certainly be problematic today.

This year Norfolk Wildlife Trust put up notices on Cley beach saying ' Kite Flying is prohibited on this beach. It can disturb the birds on the reserve'; what might be next, wind breaks that flap, children who run or make too much noise, people like me who sneeze unexpectedly? Clearly a more common sense balance between people and wildlife needs to be struck.

So we are fortunate that our National Trust managers and wardens locally are determined to achieve this, hence the presentation.

Chairman's Report 19. 05. 2009
The Parish Council has met on 8 occasions during the past year. We do not meet in July & August, and we also missed September due to the clerk being in hospital. However, we did meet as soon as she was available in early October. We do not meet in December. It might seem that we missed quite a few meetings but for many years, bi-monthly meetings were sufficient to cope with all Wiveton Parish business, and frankly, if it were not for the mountains of bureaucratic junk mail that we now receive they still would be.

Bus Stops
Late on a Friday afternoon in June last year, a large 'workshop' container arrived on the 'Green' Richard Allen noted this and raised the alarm, as it seemed certain that it meant work would begin on the Monday, constructing bus stops of the same new urban design as those then under construction in Glandford and Letheringsett. I spoke to John Rarnm and we made the decision to blockade the Green first thing Monday morning to prevent this from happening. To my surprise, almost the whole Parish Council turned up to do this. After making our position clear to the workmen they left to get on with something else.
This standoff was followed by some correspondence with County Hall. Our main concern, apart from the fact that we did not want bus stops of that design, was that there had been no consultation, they were just going to come and do it without a word. They did subsequently write and apologise for this but still wanted to go ahead with the construction, which as well as the two stops either side of the road, included a tarmac footway across our Green. There is no doubt that they meant well and we now have their assurance that they will do nothing in future without consultation.

The Green
We are aware that there are mixed views on the present use of the `Green' and the numbers of cars that are sometimes parked there. However, we believe the majority, even among those who have these concerns, accept that we need the pub and that their customers along with Churchgoers and others should be accommodated. The task therefore would seem to be to try achieve this while at the same time retaining an area that has grass and looks like a village green.
At first glance, these two goals might seem to be mutually exclusive, so it's perhaps no surprise that we have taken a while to come up with what we think is a sustainable solution. The exposed and most used areas are to be taken up and a firm level base of hardcore put down, a layer of soil will be laid over this onto which a plastic mesh membrane will be laid, a further thin layer of soil will then cover this and be seeded. This method seems to be quite effective in places where intense wear and tear by vehicles is a problem. The two entrances will have concrete sets, which employ the same principal, having spaces in them for grass to grow. The hope is that this system will give us a 'Green' that will be able to cope with all the traffic, it now gets and still be green.
The work is being undertaken in two stages, the first which is under way will, when completed, be left fenced off all summer for the grass to become established; the remainder will be completed in the autumn. Any over-spill car parking necessary will be accommodated on our land by the Langham Road junction, hopefully it will withstand such usage but in any case it will be repaired by the contractor as things progress, or if necessary at the end of the work. You will have seen the temporary entrances that have been made; these along with some small notices will hopefully direct people safely from their cars to the pub without them having to walk along the road. We would have preferred not to use this area but to expect the pub to pay for this work while at the same time taking a 50% cut in takings due to reduced parking, seemed unreasonable. They in return have said that they will make the situation clear to their customers in order to try and keep car numbers down.

Traffic Calming Signs
Also at this time we erected our 'Slow You Down' signs, these resulted in an unwanted rash of publicity; picked up by FOND (Friends of the Norfolk Dialect), led to TV and radio coverage and into many of the National papers, and of course it also got us noticed by NCC, who quickly told us that we must take them down. However, we thought it very unlikely that they would be prepared to brave the sort of publicity that would have followed if we didn't and they did, so we dug our heels in. With much help from Derek Baxter (who also supported our position regarding the bus stops) we eventually got an informal communication that said that they could stay.

A149 Footway
Toward the end of last year, we received correspondence from NCC Highways informing us that they wanted to replace the footway alongside the A149 from Friary Farm entrance in Blakeney to Wiveton Hall entrance. For footway read 'pavement of tarmac and concrete curbing', we therefore asked to meet with them to discuss how it might be constructed in a more sympathetic and rural style. They were quite willing to do this. In the 1990s when I was still on Blakeney PC we had a confrontation with Highways over the `pavementation' of this path which resulted in a change of 'Highway Policy' for these types of footway. Fortunately we have a copy of this policy document called 'The Environment and the Highway Corridor', and were able to use it to persuade them to keep as much of the grass verge between the road and the path as possible, and although it would have been good to have kept all the grass verge we are very happy with what they have done and think that in a year or two, it will look quite natural. We have written to thank them for a job well done.

Planning
We almost got through the year without any contentious planning applications then at the very last moment one popped up. The application for a large (for the plot) house and two-storey garage is, if judged by the amount of correspondence we have received, contentious. The application is seriously at variance with several fundamental policies in the new LDF and also with our Village Design Statement.
We have objected to the application and have pointed out the extent to which the application fails to comply with the relevant policies in these two documents. This, along with the considerable response they will have received from Parishioners ought to be enough to ensure this application is refused, hopefully in favour of something more suitable for this part of Wiveton.

Affordable Housing.
We have made some progress with this. It appeared that BNHS were actively looking at Wiveton with a view to building, so heading them off at the pass so to speak, Mary Wakelin contacted John Seymour (Chairman of BNHS) and arranged a meeting. George Harcourt also attended, as did I. This was a very productive meeting and identified a suitable area and was quickly followed by a site meeting to examine what might be possible in more detail. BNHS need to get into partnership with another housing association in order to make a project like this work but John Seymour is quite confident that this can be accomplished. We are awaiting his reply.
In the new LDF, Wiveton is designated as 'Countryside' where no new building is allowed; however, it is possible to get around this for affordable housing with what is described as an `Exemption Order', the draw back with this is that there is no allowance within such an order; for any private housing and most affordable housing is facilitated on the back of private development. Whether there will be any opportunity to create the capital needed for such a build without it remains to be seen.

Care Line Scheme
Our Care-Line scheme continues to operate successfully. One parishioner has been using it for about a year and is very reassured by having it, and we are also in the process of setting it up for another. This is paid for by the Raulf Greenaway Trust, for which we are most grateful. I would add that we are also very grateful to all those people who are willing to be on the call list. This is an excellent scheme but would not be possible without them.

Village Party
The Village Street Party is a bi-annual event and as the last was in 2007 this is a party year. It was unanimously agreed at the meeting that we should stage another but that it should be a bit earlier than in previous years, so early July now looks most likely.

That concludes my report for 2009, except for me to thank the council for their support, their loyalty and their hard work, also our clerk for the same. I must also thank our District and County Councillors, in particularly Mr Derek Baxter who has been an excellent councillor for us and who is sadly stepping down at the coming election.

Godfrey Sayers

Chairman, Wiveton Parish Council