I hope the following report will tell you something about how the Town Council works on behalf of our community throughout the year.
With the end of the financial year Kesgrave Council like many other organisations looks back over what has been achieved and also forward to what they hope to achieve in the coming year. The Council Tax demand which drops through the householders letterbox often focuses residents attention on this too. The Precept this year increased from £155,000 to £170,000 and you will be pleased to know that none of the Council money was deposited in Icelandic banks and is therefore safe. The increase in precept took into account the cost of inflation, the increase in the number of properties in the Town and also funding the progress of three extra facilities which are being provided.
On a band D property the whole Kesgrave portion of the Council tax is still only £35.10 a year, or 68p a week, which is less than a Sunday paper.
So what does this pay for?
The three extra facilities being provided this year are:
– part funding the Community Support Police Officer – a partnership between Kesgrave and Rushmere Councils with the Police;
– 4 extra opening hours of the Council office and the employment of a litter picker for 4 hours every week.
The Council office dealt with over 2,000 enquiries by letter and e-mail and over 1,000 visits in person last year. Residents seek help on a myriad of issues varying from information, planning applications, the purchase of black and green sacks, and fido bags, to reporting broken glass, faulty streetlights and holes in the footway and roads.
After much work with Suffolk County Council (SCC) and Bovis Homes a purpose built library replaced the portacabin in 2007. The Town Council formed a partnership with SCC to fund some of the staff hours and have recently purchased the unit which displays the items for sale.
The Council owns Legion Green which is the site of the War Memorial, and is also responsible for the provision of the car park and maintenance of the public areas of Rupert Fison Centre, the area where the Scout Hall is sited. We have 18 benches throughout the Town and 6 notice boards with maps, information about planning applications and Council meetings, and this includes one board in conjunction with Cedarwood School. The Council has also funded a number of litterbins and fido bins in areas where there was obvious need, but where the District Council declined to provide them. The pond in Long Strops is also the Councils responsibility and there are plans to work with the Greenways Countryside project over the coming months to improve this area. At the same time interpretation boards are to be erected in Long Strops to give information about the area, and funding for these has in part been provided by the two County Councillors Locality Budgets.
We continue to employ a handyman to clear up particular areas where litter collects, the Penzance Road lay-by area near the shops, underpasses, the play areas, Legion Green and Rupert Fison are all good examples. He is usually able to attend to specific issues which have been reported, such as broken glass, within 24 hours, which is far quicker than SCDC. However this year we have augmented this service with a second gentleman who has a rolling schedule of areas which he litter picks on Monday mornings – he regularly collects four bags of rubbish in 4 hours.
The Council continue to organise an annual outing for Senior Citizens in the summer, which attracts well over 80 participants and now departs from the Community Centre with disabled participants being collected from home. This has been appreciated by many as it obviates the need to be picked up sometimes ¾ hour before the tour starts.
Grant aid is an important role for the Town Council and last year grants have been made to Suffolk Accident Rescue Service, Holm Court, British Red Cross, Kesgrave PCC Youth Club, The Royal British Legion Ipswich and East Suffolk Headway, East of England Air Ambulance, Twelve Acre Toddlers, St Elizabeth Hospice, Wednesday Youth Drop in and Greenways. These are all locally based organisations or assist Kesgrave residents and anyone is welcome to apply. Recycling credits are received for the collections from the banks at Tesco and The Bell, and for the sale of sacks. We have noticed that over the past couple of years these are diminishing as the doorstep collection of recyclate increases. We intend to use the monies already collected over the last year to help fund some work at Rupert Fison Centre. If you can do so, please continue to recycle at the Tesco banks as this is the means by which the credits are earned and mean that Kesgrave residents will benefit.
Kesgrave Council is a Burial Authority and provides and manages the Lawn Cemetery. Space for earthen and cremation plots is no longer available, but we do now have a scattering of ashes area. Further details for this area can be obtained from the Town Council Office.
The Council is also a Lighting authority and provides and manages much of the street lighting in the older parts of Kesgrave. We are conscious that much of this lighting is inadequate. It was initially provided as footway not highway lighting, and we set aside money each year to replace the existing lights with new ones and supplementary lights which are up to highway standard. We do not undertake this work ourselves but wait for the utility providers who are upgrading their provision nationwide as this enables us to provide additional lights at a greatly reduced cost. There is only a few weeks notice of works in the area and therefore we must make sure we have made sufficient provision to pay the bill after the work is completed.
Suffolk is currently undergoing a Boundary Review and a recommendation will be made by the Boundary Committee to the Secretary of State in July. The Town council has responded vigorously to the Boundary Committee as we feel strongly that the current system works well, and we are not convinced that any changes implemented will actually realise much in the way of cost saving. So after the first round of consultation which ended around Christmas 2008, the Boundary Committee published its preferred options for another round of consultations. These as you may know are for OneSuffolk or a 2 authority Suffolk. Again we have responded to the Boundary Committee most strongly rejecting the need for change as the proposed benefits are still not proven, and in the current economic climate we feel prudence is the most sensible way forward.
Although the public consultation period ends on the 14th May if you haven't commented to the Boundary Committee there is still an opportunity to comment directly to the Secretary of State on how you would like the Councils to be reorganised. The suggestions are to abolish the two tier County and District system and to either have a Whole of Suffolk Council or to have two Councils – a North Haven Council, comprising of Ipswich, Felixstowe, Kesgrave and the surrounding smaller parishes and a Rest of Suffolk. There is plenty of information about this on the Boundary Committee website, and also both the County Council, the District Council and the Ipswich sites.
In 1921 Kesgrave consisted of 20 dwellings with 103 residents, 88 years later we number over 5,000 dwellings with approximately 14,000 residents! When the current development is complete dwellings will be in excess of 5,300 with approximately 15,000 residents. That is of course if the Local Development Framework also currently being considered does not increase the area around Kesgrave which can accommodate residential development. At present the only area left from the the original Masterplan of expansion in the 1980's is the area between Cedarwood School and Fentons Wood, but a Reserved Matters application, which will give detail of what type of housing, what numbers and how they will be laid out, has yet to be received.
We will continue to keep you up to date with our regular articles in Kesgrave News on our priorities for the coming year which include helping the Allotment Society find some land to realise their dream, contributing to the Town Plan document which considers the development of Kesgrave over the medium and long term and responding to the Local Development Framework. This latter document is a long term plan drawn up by Suffolk Coastal which includes the determination on how many more homes the area will have in the next 12 years. We have already stated that Kesgrave is big enough, should not have any more houses and now needs to go through a period of settling down and community firming.
Sharon Evans
Chairman of Kesgrave Council
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