2024 Parish Council Minutes of Meetings

North Thoresby, Grainsby & Waithe Parish Council 

North Thoresby Village Hall, The Square, North Thoresby, DN36 5QL 

Minutes

Monday 1 July 7.00pm

Present:

Chair   Colin Goodwin

Councillors   Keith Butters (Vice Chair), Ian Bunn, Lynne Gale, Helen Winterton

County Councillor Hugo Marfleet.

District Councillor   Terry Aldridge

Public   Nine members of the public

Acting Clerk & RFO   Lynne Gale

1.   Open and Welcome by the Chair.

The Chair opened the meeting and reminded attendees that the proceedings were being, recorded.

2.   Declarations of Interest:

a)   No declarations of interest by any member of the council.

b)   There were no dispensations.

3.   Apologies:

Apologies had been received from Councillor Orrill.

4.   Adoption of Previous Minutes:

The minutes of the Parish Councill Meeting held 3 June, were proposed, seconded, and approved.

The minutes of the Extra-ordinary meeting held 17 June at 18.00 hours, were proposed, seconded, and approved.

The minutes of the Extra-ordinary meeting held 17 June at 18.30 hours, were proposed, seconded, and approved.

Councillor Marfleet abstained in approving the minutes as he had not been in attendance.

5.   Open Forum:

A resident talked in terms of the play park and football field. He thanked the council for donations to the sports club, he has volunteered to keep an eye on the bins and equipment as he is regularly in that area. The grass cutting contract is now with the contractor who services the rest of the village. The hedge between the field and the school has become unwieldy. It is necessary to identify responsibilities of maintaining it. Cllr Goodwin will contact the school. Cllr Marfleet will contact the education authority. The resident was thanked for his service to the village facility and Cllr Goodwin offered that he contacts him directly should he have anything to discuss re this area.

6.   District/County Councillor Reports:

County Cllr Hugo Marfleet. Reported that with the election taking place on Thursday, this will then speed things up at the council. He anticipated a lot of changes to come, whoever won the election. There is an active battle at County Council level, to fight the National Grid pylons scheme.

District Councillor Terry Aldridge. Advised that three councillors have still not completed their DPI forms.

Cllr Aldridge advised the councillors the penalties of noncompliance, a personal £5000.00 fine. He also recommended full council training and reading the good council guide. The clerk agreed to obtain printed copies for the councillors as the electronic copies were too big for personal printing.
 
Cllr Aldridge has investigated the Children’s home planning application presented at last months meeting. He can see no practical reason to object.

Cllr Aldridge requested a motion be proposed regarding the Nuclear Waste Dump at Theddlethorpe. It was agreed to add the motion to the next agenda. Links to the relevant information to be added to the website for council to read and consequently vote. Cllr Marfleet reminded everyone that this project brings millions of pounds to protect the coastline, so to look at both sides of the argument.

7.   Planning applications. (nothing as of 25/6/24)

No planning applications had been received in time to be added to today’s agenda. Application reference N/133/00989/24 has been received will be added to next month’s agenda.

8.   Community Library – losing the phone box ideas for a replacement.

Cllr Goodwin described the plans to replace the phone box library, being a small shed to be positioned outside the village hall. A budget of £400.00 was proposed, seconded and approved.

Some discussion took place regarding the state of the old telephone box and if BT maintain it properly now, they had decided to keep it with a working phone. Clerk to follow up with BT.

9.   Update on Railings and Notice Boards

Almost completed. Additional notice boards will be fitted in the bus shelters. The general response has been very favourable. The keys will be kept in a key safe with a keypad and only authorised users given the code. Only materials relevant to the Village will be accepted, as before. The Memorial Roundels will be relocated. Still need to agree the plan for Waithe and Grainsby.

10.   Essential Repairs to Village Hall / Village Hall Working Group (held over from last month)

We cannot yet afford a full-scale fire alarm system as mandated by the recent H&S report. However, new linked smoke alarms have been fitted across several rooms increasing the ability to warn users of fire/smoke emergency. Cllr Orrill who has taken the lead on this, is unable to attend this evening and will update council at the next meeting. Heading to be.

a)   Update: Progress to date.

b)   To resolve: Agree next set of priorities from the H&S plan.

c)   To resolve: Allocate responsibility for work.

d)   Outline budget for planned work.

11.   Public Toilets next to the Village Hall.

Councillor Bunn has agreed to take this forward with respect to finding funding. Councillor Gale handed over information pertaining to the history, past usage and known costings.

The clerk to advertise for interested volunteers to come forward to maintain the facility.

12.   Update on the Defibrillators.

A heated cupboard has been identified with the potential to house a unit at Grainsby. A proposal was made to spend £120.00 to secure this as they usually retail around £500.00. This was proposed, seconded and approved.

A unit is now housed in Waithe. Councillor Goodwin to publish how to access the units.

13.   Historical Parish Council Ledgers

The Council had hoped to donate these to the local history society; however, Cllr Aldridge informed the council that as these are legal records, they should be sent to the Lincolnshire council archives. The Clerk to organise.
 
14.   Clerk’s Report:

a.   Community correspondence

a.   beanfield hedges – still awaiting feedback.

b.   road safety – Champion Lane – still awaiting feedback.

c.   road signs brighten – Clerk to write to ELDC.

d.   A16 Bushes and sign. – Clerk has cut back brush. Need someone tall to cut thicker brush and turn sign round.

b.   Internal Audit and AGAR, public inspection dates 25 June to 5 August. Now on website. Also, paperwork from last year has just been signed off by the external auditors. We received a charge of £804 because this was not managed correctly last year.

c.   Web Site Updates / FOI and SAR Requests (request 10 more hours for rebuilding site)

d.   Appointment of Locum Clerk/RFO. A new clerk joins us on 15 July. She will attend the August meeting but in the main will work remotely.

e.   Proposed review/addition of core policies (see list forwarded to Council)

f.   Our domain norththoresby-pc – There is no cloud space included. Suggested contingency: an offer has been made to provide free cloud space to be able to be used as shared storage.

g.   Payments Schedule for July – The payments and projected payments listed below, were discussed, proposed, and approved for payment.

15.   Proposal to Move into Closed Session for discussions on Internal team challenges.

The Chair proposed we move into a closed session to discuss staff related activity. This was approved. At this point, the public were thanked for their participation and asked to depart. Cllr Marfleet left at this point.

a)   Jill Davis will join as Locum Clerk on 15 July. Cllr Gale to download Clerk handover check list and standard Clerk contract from LALC. Also to create a list of known ongoing jobs for all councillors to contribute to. It is likely that Cllr Gale will drive over to Jills home to deposit equipment. We need to agree a strategy for printing.

b)   The Caretakers workload was discussed regarding changing some things around with potential to opening the toilets. A few ideas were discussed, and Councillor Goodwin is going to discuss these further with the caretaker. Councillor Ian Bunn has been allocated the task of researching funding options.

c)   The Clerk to register Councillors Bunn, Butters and Goodwin for new councillor webinar. To register Councillors Bunn, Gale and Goodwin for LALC AGM
 
d)   Not documented due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter. It is hoped that Councillor training will resolve some of the challenges.

e)   To discuss /demo Monday.com – project and job management. Although this is an excellent piece of software, we are unable to justify the costs. Councillor Ian Bunn to research the possibilities of an
alternative. Councillor Gale confirmed that Microsoft Office is a suite of office productivity programmes and not a job/project management system.

16.   Date & Time of Next Meeting

To agree Monday 5 August at 7.00pm for the next meeting.

The list below comes from the Recommendations of the Internal Audit. The Council will look at implementing these changes. This will be managed by the new clerk.

Recommendations: -

•   Consider implementing a Scheme of Delegation.
•   Review Standing Orders and Financial regulations in light of recent changes.
•   Ensure the arrangement for public inspection of records is advertised within the stipulated legislation. - done
•   Ensure the AGAR documentation is submitted within the guidelines to ensure - done. Recommendations: -
•   Ensure risk is re-assessed to adequately safeguard the accounting documentation and council records.
•   Ensure Members Interest declarations are available either on your website or linked to the district council website. Awaiting Ian/Mick/Helen

Recommendations: -

•   Ensure risk is re-assessed to adequately safeguard the accounting documentation and council records. – Discuss contingency plan
•   Re-claim outstanding VAT (Value Added Tax) as soon as possible and ensure future returns are submitted within a reasonable period and in accordance with your financial regulations.
•   Consider implementing an Internal Control Policy.
•   Review how payments are approved ensuring that Councillors have sight of invoices they are approving. – new process started this month
•   Ensure that all payments are made in accordance with the Financial Regulations.
•   Review your reserves position and ensure these are periodically reviewed.
•   Re-visit your cash handling policy to ensure that cash is appropriately handled, and adequate records are available.
•   Whilst the budget was adequate more information could have been made available to councillors to justify how figures have been arrived at.

Recommendations: -

•   Review your risk management policy as this would appear to have failed. Warnings were being given and red light activated throughout the year which councillors appeared to have ignored. The subsequent resignation of all but one councillor and officers created a non-functional council and whilst you cannot safeguard everything something could and should have been done earlier to
minimise the disruption.
•   Minutes need to focus more on the resolution as to verbatim reports. Long minutes can cause confusion, hide irregularities and lead to libellous claims. – already started being concise.

. Recommendations: -

•   Whilst the budget was adequate more information could have been made available to councillors to justify how figures have been arrived at.

All Councillors to undergo training.

The list below refers to review of a small number of policies. To be managed by new Clerk.

Also, all policies to be date and time stamped.

Records Retention Policy – we only keep things for as long as they are useful. Publication Scheme. – we publish everything we possibly can.

Privacy Policy. – All councillors and who we connect with have a right to privacy Media Policy. – Only agreed statements can have full council approval.

GDPR including

Data Protection Policy. – keeping personal data safe Data Breach Policy. – what to do when there is a breach

Freedom of Information Requests Policy. – The process and responsibilities Subject Access Request Procedure - The process and responsibilities

Systems Data map (we only really have email and FOI/SAR registry) – where do we keep data.

In addition, there is a Habitual or Vexatious Complaints Policy, in draft format, available for you to read for approval at the July meeting. See link.

Habitual or Vexatious Complaints (DRAFT)

Key holder policy – We had one, we agreed it, do we need to update it?

The Chairman thanked everyone for attending and closed the meeting at 9.10pm.

Signed:   Cllr Colin Goodwin

Dated:  05th August 2024

The minutes were approved by the Parish Council at the PC meeting held on 5th of August 2024