Category Archives: Local News

Local News

BANES COUNCIL’S COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT – INFORMATION AND AN INVITATION

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BANES Council ‘s Community Engagement Team (CET) holds periodic meetings to try to engage face to face with local communities. Information about these meetings – called Community Engagement Forums – is published here:

https://www.bathnes.gov.uk/area-forums

We are in the Bathavon Area Forum.

Prior to COVID, these meetings had drifted to a point where they were mainly attended by parish councillors. That wasn’t the intent, as the meetings duplicated a lot of stuff that was being done at other BANES meetings held specifically for parish councillors!

Post COVID, the BANES CET has made a real effort to get these meetings back to what they should be: meetings of interest to BANES residents – particularly residents running local organisations, clubs and businesses.

It should be an opportunity to hear directly from, or flag up directly to, the BANES Team those things that are causing problems today or might help or hinder your future plans.

The next Bathavon Area Forum meeting will be on Wednesday 25 June from 6.00pm at Camerton Community Hall, Meadgate. Do plan to drop in if this opportunity sounds of interest.

David Orme

Chairman, Dunkerton & Tunley Parish Council

Local News

2025 2026 PRECEPT AND PARISH COUNCIL BUDGET

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Dear Parishioners,

Dunkerton & Tunley Parish Council Funding

The parish council’s work is funded by the precept, which you pay as part of your Council Tax. Each parish council determines its own level of precept to fund its work through an annual budget setting exercise, but the billing of it is undertaken by the local Council – in our case, by BANES.

The activities funded include:

  • The employment of our highly experienced clerk, who is also our Responsible Financial Officer
  • Training for councillors and staff
  • Maintenance of our various parish assets such as phone boxes, green spaces including land owned by the parish, bus shelters, street lighting
  • Room hire costs for parish council meetings
  • Maintenance of the parish website (by law the parish council has to be able to display information such as agendas, meetings and financial information on a website)
  • Insurance

For many years when setting its annual budget the parish council did its utmost to keep the precept as low as possible. However over several years those budgets resulted in a year end deficit – the parish council’s expenditure each year had exceeded its income.

Obviously this could not go on. We could not keep eating into our reserves which, by law, have to be maintained at a minimum equivalent to three month’s expenditure.

Therefore, just over a year ago, the parish council decided to increase the precept more than usual, with the rise spread over two years to soften the blow. We are approaching April and the second of these 2 financial years, and the increase as planned will amount to £9.01 per annum (based on a Band D household). For an individual household (based on Band D) this equates to 17p a week.

Based on research on the level of precepts in other similarly sized parishes within Bath and North East Somerset, the level of precept still remains lower than many and is below the national average.

Your parish council, in keeping with most other parish councils, has only the one source of income: the precept. We are investigating other possible sources of income by diversifying the use of parish council owned land. One example is the cricket ground in Dunkerton where, thanks to the cooperation of the Bristol Lions cricket club, we have been able to reduce significantly the costs to the parish council of its maintenance.

Thank you for your continued support. Your councillors will endeavour to continue maintaining the parish for as low a cost to you as possible.

Regards

Cllr David Orme, Chairman Dunkerton & Tunley Parish Council

Local News

THE ANNUAL PARISH MEETING – A MESSAGE FROM THE PARISH COUNCIL CHAIRMAN

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We have posted on the parish website a notice of the 2024 Annual Parish Meeting, to be held on 23rd April. This is not a Parish Council meeting. It is a meeting for parishioners – for you – that the Parish Council is legally required to organise.

The requirement for Parish Councils to hold an Annual Parish Meeting stems from legislation dating to 1972. The purpose of the meeting, as stated at that time, is to enable the registered electors to discuss parish affairs and to have a say on anything they consider valuable to the people of the parish.

We have, properly, organised these meetings over the years, but like melting snow attendance has reduced over those years to, for at least the last 2 years and literally, nothing. It’s now a meeting without a purpose or any participants – the bureaucrat’s dream.

The reason is obvious. The legislation was framed and passed decades before widespread mobile communications, the internet and social media revolutionised the way government and councils communicate with their residents and keep them informed about local, regional and national issues.  

Despite the world having gone somewhere else since 1972, the continuing legal obligation on Parish Councils to organise an Annual Parish Meeting reflects sepia-tinted social expectations, organisational cultures and ways of working redolent of “The Vicar of Dibley.”

I believe the whole idea of an Annual Parish Meeting is now an outdated anachronism, a cause of wholly unnecessary, no-value-added work for small councils like us.

I feel strongly that it is time that it should be optional for small councils to hold an APM, at their discretion. I have argued my case with Jacob Rees-Mogg, but it’s clear that there is no political appetite or parliamentary time to revisit the 1972 Local Government Act.

So, stuck in our Groundhog Day timewarp, here we are again offering you the chance to attend a meeting no-one is interested in.

David Orme

Chairman, Dunkerton & Tunley parish Council