THE September 8 meeting of Newton St Cyres Parish Council was attended by eight Councillors, the Parish Clerk, the Mid Devon District Councillor Graeme Barnell, and one member of the public.

Shortly before the start of the meeting, the death of Queen Elizabeth was announced. It was decided to continue with an abbreviated meeting but also to express our sadness at her death.

The Parish Council issued this notice of condolence:

“Newton St Cyres Parish Council expresses our great sadness at the passing of Queen Elizabeth II who has dedicated her life to us, her people. Our sincere condolences go out to King Charles III and his wider family. The Queen ruled with love, compassion and dignity and was our longest serving and much-loved Monarch.”

The Old School Site

Planning permission for this development has now been granted by Mid Devon District Council. Both our Mid Devon councillor and our Chair of the Parish Council spoke at the planning meeting in favour of a crossing.

However, the councillors accepted the Planners recommendation that a crossing was not essential for the development to proceed and the s106 money would go toward affordable housing with a sum of £10,000 set aside for the development of a public space within the village. Both the Council and our District Councillor will continue to campaign for some sort of crossing at this point.

Neighbourhood Plans

The Parish Council has been given a grant of nearly £10,000 to formulate our neighbourhood plan. The steering group has met and is planning a number of public meetings over the next few months to gather views from all parishioners.

Please come along and have your say. This is one of the few ways we can have input into the larger-scale plans currently being drawn up by Mid Devon District Council.

MDDC is currently forming its own plan (more details can be found at https://www.middevon.gov.uk/residents/planning-policy/plan-mid-devon/ ) and this currently includes substantial housing development in the Creedy valley between Exeter and Crediton.

Resilience

We have a very active group planning for emergencies within the village. This includes a network of flood wardens, who will warn residents of any imminent risk of flooding. The group currently needs a new chair. If you can help with this, please contact the Parish Clerk or Graeme Barnell, the District Councillor, who is currently the chair. It is not an onerous role but is vital to the safety of the village. Graeme is also collaborating with the owners of the woodlands that make up the catchment of the Shuttern Brook. These act as a reservoir to protect against flooding and it may be possible to enhance their role.

After this very dry summer, we are looking to add fire risks to our resilience plan. A complaint was received from a member of the public that it was inappropriate to let off fireworks during such dry weather, as happened both before and after the fire in farmer Browne’s fields. We are passing this complaint onto the relevant organisation with our comments.

We have received a grant of £1,500 to buy walkie-talkie radios for our volunteer wardens so that action concerning an emergency, no matter what, can be better coordinated.

Road Warden Scheme

More than 100 hours of minor road repairs have now been carried out by our volunteer road wardens, led by Nick Gillon.

Parishioners have contacted the Council to express their thanks, and we too are very grateful for their hard work. Another benefit from their activity has been improved communication with Devon County Council, who have now committed themselves to patching the entrance to Station Road in due course.

Environmental Issues

The wildflower areas on the village green looked great this summer. Although some parishioners had some reservations at the start of the project, feedback is now very positive. Indeed, other Councils have now cited us an example of good practice! Thanks go to the Newton Environmental Wellbeing Group (NEW) for doing such good work.

The Parish now also has a community allotment at our allotment site. Volunteers are making a start clearing the land and hope to be growing food to give away free to villagers by next year. NEW is again taking the lead in this.

Traffic Issues

The Stagecoach bus service has deteriorated to such a significant extent that it has left people stranded with no way home.

We would encourage all parishioners who are experiencing problems with their service to complain using this link: https://www.stagecoachbus.com/help-and-contact/forms/feedback-form .

Stagecoach receives a grant from Devon County Council to run this service and is patently not providing the required standard.

Meetings with Devon County Council over its proposed support of the Boniface Trail have been less than productive.

Currently DCC is considering a cheaper alternative to a purpose-built path, using signposted routes along “quieter lanes”.

This does not fulfil our requirement as they will avoid village centres and be totally unsuitable for pedestrians as well as not particularly safe for bicycles since these routes are largely used by heavy farm machinery.

We will continue to campaign for the purpose-built trail.

The next meeting of the Parish Council will be held in the Parish Hall on Thursday, October 6 at 7pm. Members of the public are welcome. Alternatively, if members of the public wish issues to be raised in council meetings, they can contact councillors in the usual way. There is also a Parish Surgery at the Coffee Mornings held on the second Saturday of the month in the Parish Hall.

The Community Allotment

The Parish Council and the Newton Environmental Wellbeing Group (NEW) are proud to announce the setting up of a community allotment at the village allotments site.

Currently the allotment is rather overgrown but by next year it should be providing free food for the village. Not only that, but areas will also be set aside to encourage biodiversity and to provide a pleasant place for people to enjoy the environment.

NEW is taking the lead in this project but it would be great to have as much community involvement as possible. There are many ways to help. If you can spare some time, however little, or however unskilled, we would welcome you with open arms.

Maybe you have some functional garden equipment that you can donate to the project. Sadly, electrical items are unsuitable – there are no sockets at the site! Perhaps you have spare seeds or plants that you can donate, or perhaps you would prefer to buy some plants or seeds.

To find out more, please contact David Harris on: [email protected] .

Let’s make this project a stunning success for the village. In this uncertain time, free food can only be a good thing.

Liz Ouldridge