THE year 2025/26 saw my first year as chair of Newton St Cyres Parish Council. My focus for this year was to strengthen links between the council, its parishioners, local organisations, and our other Councils, DCC and MDDC.

By doing this, I hoped to remove some of the problems that can affect everyone’s enjoyment of life in our village.

For most of the year we have suffered from a shortage of Councillors. At one point we were down to five Councillors when a full Council should have nine.

I am pleased to announce that we now have a total of eight Councillors. Jock Campbell, Russell Viner and Imogen Marshall have joined us.

Not only is it great to have more people to share the workload, but we are truly lucky to gain their impressive talents.

There is still one vacancy and we would welcome any applicants.

The highlights for me this year were two events held by the Council for local people. Our Volunteers’ Tea Party was a glorious event, with over 60 volunteers attending.

I would like to thank Nikki and Mark Chambers for welcoming us to their wonderful house and garden.

In September, we held a Sausage Sizzle at the Rec. for the pupils of Newton St Cyres School to celebrate the arrival of the new swings.

The pupils were a delight to be with, and not a scrap of litter was left behind! Many thanks go to the staff at the school who facilitated the event and also to Councillor Joss Rimbon-Whittaker whose hard work enabled both events to happen.

Our volunteers are a key part of the success of the Council. This year we have tried hard to provide more support for key groups within the Parish.

Our team of litter pickers, who keep our village free of litter, and our Neighbourhood Watch volunteers are now co-ordinated by Councillor Monica Herpoldt-Bright.

Our Road Warden Scheme continues to go from strength to strength. Huge thanks go to them for everything they do, particularly to Nick Gillon, the group’s coordinator.

They were instrumental in getting our roads passable again after the flooding earlier this year.

The Resilience group has been particularly active this year. Early in January, we had Snow Wardens out gritting paths and parts of roads.

Later, they were very active during the flooding. As ever, we could always improve on this and we hope to do so in the coming year.

One very positive outcome is that we have gained more volunteers to add to our resilience network. Welcome on board! Many, many thanks go to all our volunteers.

The Defibrillators at the Rec. and outside Belluno’s are part of our resilience brief. Both have been accessed this year, although they were not actually required in the event. Maintaining these is a key commitment for the Council.

We continue to work with local organisations, providing funds this year to the Parish Hall to help treat damp in one corner of the old section; to the Church for maintenance of the graveyard, to the Rec, for new seating and maintenance of the play equipment and to the Arboretum to cover insurance costs.

The new swings at the Rec. came from MDDC S106 money and we hope to apply for more from this fund to add more new play equipment.

Other groups we have worked with include NEW, The Friends of Newton St Cyres Station and Britain in Bloom.

One area where we work hard but see frustratingly little in the way of progress is in Roads and Transport.

We have had a lovely new bus shelter at Half Moon, and a gate on footpath 8, which replaces a particularly difficult stile. Both provided by DCC.

But Councillor John Dean has continually pressed DCC on the issue of parking and traffic outside our primary school and on the crossing at Tytheing Close with little to report.

It is a frustrating job, even with the support of Steve Keable, our DCC Councillor. These are such important issues that we will continue to work on them and I would like to report some progress in next year’s report.

Consultation on planning is another of our functions and we have commented on many small applications this year.

However, we are very concerned that the developers of the holiday homes next to Hanlon’s Brewery may not be complying with the regulations and we will continue to monitor them closely this year and alert MDDC if we feel regulations are being broken.

Finally, I would like to thank all the Councillors for their commitment to the Council and for their support of me in my first year of this complex role.

I particularly would like to thank Jane Hole, our excellent Parish Clerk.

Next year, I would like to think we could move forward on some of the more intractable issues. Newton St Cyres is a lovely place to live and I want to help it stay that way.

Liz Ouldridge