Minutes
- To receive and approve any apologies for absence. None
- Councillor / Parishioner engagement
- To receive the County Councillor's report -
- To receive the District Councillor's report -
- To receive questions from members of the public (allow 15 minutes). No questions
- To approve the Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Parish held on 11th May 2024 - Approved
- To receive the Chairman’s Annual Report – See attached
- To receive any other reports
- Suez - See Attached
- Clerk
- Karen Grimwood
- clerk@greatblakenhamparishcouncil.gov.uk
- Phone
- 07463329570
- Parish Council website
- www.greatblakenham.suffolk.cloud
- Date
- 05/05/2025
Chairman …………………………………………………. Date ………………………...........
It has been a funny old year.
Firstly, I would like to thank our previous Chair Steve Plume for his work on behalf of the village over many years.
When Steve decided to take a well-earned rest that left only myself, Debbie & Will so we need all three of us to attend meetings to be quorate. I know Will and Debbie work full time, sometimes away from home and with young families as well so for them attend every meeting without fail took some commitment from them. They have also roped in their families to help try to improve the look of the village with hedge cutting and bulb planting, so they deserve a large dollop of thanks.
I would also like to thank Karen our clerk. I freely admit I wasn’t expecting to be chair and have less time and experience than the village deserves so Karen has had to pick up a lot of the slack for me as well as giving me a lot of guidance. In fact, she is so flexible in how she works that I think many in the village are under the impression that she is on call 24/7 and don’t realise that she only gets paid for 15 hours. So again, we owe a big thank you to Karen.
At the risk of becoming even more boring than usual I would also like to thank our district councillor Adrienne & County Councillor Chris. Some of you will have seen Chris in the paper but won’t realise that Chris has played a big role in the background for example dealing with the aftermath of the fire at Sackers etc. Similarly, Adrienne has helped for example in helping residents in preventing their houses from flooding.
So, what have we achieved as a council in the last year. We have funded £10,000 towards developing the picnic site at Barham which should be open to the public in the next year or so and we hopefully will lead to a well needed increase in the provision of early years places for children. We have also funded over twenty thousand to make the Bowls Club a more suitable community venue and look forward to them having an open day for those in the village who want to try out bowls but also to look at the facilities they have on offer. We have also funded the Community Chinwags meetings in the village and made smaller donations to fund charities who help people in the village.
This is all on top of the run of the mill stuff like feeding into planning matters, organising grass and hedge cutting, dog and waste bin emptying, street light maintenance and ensuring that the graveyard and lawn cemetery are safe pleasant places for those wishing to remember their departed loved ones.
The coming years will be challenging for us on the council, and we know that some of our costs are going to more or less double so we will inevitably have to do things differently - and hopefully involve more of the village community in voluntary making this village a great place to live. We will also have to deal with the application to extend Port One and to work with MSDC increase the provision of housing in the village in the best way possible.
Many hands will make light work of this so we have recently been joined by Matt & Karen who are already making a difference but if there is anybody else who can help then please do not be shy in joining us.