Parish Council – Areas of focus

Introduction

This page provides further details of the Parish Council’s main areas of work and involvement. We encourage residents of the Parish and interested members of the wider public to get involved with these areas. This section includes information on how to do this and further contacts.

The council’s primary activity areas are currently (in alphabetical order) :

  • Cemetery maintenance – Mowing the grass
  • Community Hall (former Methodist Chapel and Schoolroom)
  • Dog fouling
  • Environmental Improvement and Maintenance – Planting trees in open spaces and hedge cutting in public spaces.
  • Financial support for the Village Park, village flower tubs and village defibrillator.
  • Highways and Traffic signs
  • Litter and Litter bins
  • Planning
  • Rights of Way, Footpaths and Bridleways. This includes keeping rights of way open and accessible and maintenance such as salt gritting of footpaths within the village in winter.
  • Supporting local volunteers

Get involved ! Please read on to see how involved the Parish Council is in each of the areas identified above. If there are areas where you agree or disagree with where the Parish Council is spending your money, or where you believe the Council should be more active, then let us know by emailing us at “admin@churchbroughtonpc.org.uk”. Similarly, if you’d like to add to, update, correct or make suggestions for this section of the website then please use the same email address to send them to us.

Cemetery maintenance – Mowing the grass

The Parish Council give the Church funds from what is referred to as its “Section 136” budget which goes towards the upkeep of the graveyard in front of church. It also pays separately for the grass cutting of the graveyard at the rear of the church. Previously the Parish Council bought some additional land as the graveyard was running out of burial spaces and gave the land to the Church.

Community Hall

The Parish Council has acquired the former Methodist Chapel and schoolroom for use as a Community Hall.  The “Methodist Chapel Project” page of this website contains all the background to the acquisition including information about the public consultations and funding sources.  The PC has established a Community Hall Management Committee to manage the day-to-day running of the Community Hall.  The Committee will soon be setting up a dedicated page on this website which will contain its Terms of Reference and details about room hire, terms of use etc.

Dog fouling

Dog fouling has been and remains a recurrent problem in parts of the parish and on local footpaths. Some people may not realise that it represents a significant health hazard to humans and animals.  A local farmer has recently lost cattle to a parasite called neospora, most likely because of eating grass contaminated by dog waste.  Humans, especially young children are at risk of toxocariasis, a round worm parasite which can cause serious illness, stomach upsets, breathing difficulties and even lead to blindness. The council has paid for the installation of 4 dog waste bins around Church Broughton and pays South Derbyshire District Council to empty them regularly, along with the village’s litter bins. This is one of the Council’s larger expenditure items and currently costs £845/year. We continue to ask dog owners to use them or to take their dog’s waste home and dispose of it using their own bins.

Get involved ! Consider making a “polite challenge” any time you see an owner not clearing up after their dog, or a “thank you” when you do.

Environmental Improvement and Maintenance – Planting trees in open spaces and hedge cutting in public spaces.

Tree planting

Councillor Julie Patten of South Derbyshire County Council has previously donated monies within her Community Fund for the purchase of 5 trees for the Parish. In addition an Acer tree was funded by the Village Show to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The photos below show two of these at the eastern end of Main Street in Church Broughton. The Council would like to thank Councillor Kizia Woodhall for planting and tending these trees on a voluntary basis.

Hedge cutting and wild flower areas

The council would also like to thank Councillor Danny Redfern for hedge cutting and planting the wild flower area on the western side of Church Broughton, again on an unpaid, voluntary basis.

Financial support for the Village Park, village flower tubs and village defibrillator.

Village flower tubs

Volunteers from the Church Broughton Wine and Rose group (the village’s gardening club) maintain 3 flower tubs at the main entrances into the village. The one at the East of the village on Littlefield Road is arranged and maintained by Sheila Coutts. The one to the West entrance on Church Road by Mike and Christine Emery, and the one to the South-West of the village on Tipper’s Lane by Mike and Pat Johnson. Maintaining these tubs during the summer is a notable commitment given the need for daily watering. The council provides a small contribution to partly cover the costs of purchasing plants for the flower tubs (£100 in 2022).

Get involved ! If you’d like to join the Gardening club or help out with the village tubs by, for example, providing some holiday cover for watering then please contact John Thorpe (the Group’s Chairman) on 01283 585146.

Village defibrillator

The defibrillator is located at the front entrance to the park in the centre of Church Broughton in the old BT telephone box. The Parish Council paid £1995 for it to be installed in 2016. Of this amount Councillor Julie Patten of South Derbyshire County Council kindly donated £1000 from her community fund to the Parish Council such that are own costs were effectively halved. The Parish Council pays for the annual rental of the unit (£151 in 2022) with the Village Show usually funding the telephone line fees associated with it. Its intended use is for people who are unconscious and not breathing normally, possibly because they have suffered a heart attack or have been electrocuted. To access the defibrillator you need to ring 999 and ask for a code for the access lock.

The defribrillator can also be accessed by calling the Village Emergency Telephone System on 01283 260860. The automated system progressively calls the local (01283) landline numbers of 10 volunteers who have been trained in first aid and have offered to provide assistance prior to a 999 responder arriving – so stay on the line if you don’t get an answer immediately as the 10 alternative contact numbers are being tried in sequence. A volunteer will answer and will be able to collect and deliver the unit to your location if you provide an accurate address or location.

Get involved ! If you’d like to become a first aid volunteer within the village’s emergency system then please let Kate Gadsby on 01283 585581 know.

Highways and Traffic signs

The Parish Council can and does collate inputs on local concerns and problem areas with Highways and Traffics signs and will make requests to Derbyshire County Council’s Highways Department. Councillor Bill Speake is the PC’s Roads Officer who collates inputs on local concerns and brings these to the PC for discussion and escalation to DCC. Our preference is that the person identifying an issue reports it directly to the County Council in the first instance. This avoids delays and allows information to be communicated from a first-hand perspective. We’d appreciate it if you can then let the Parish Council know by sending us a short email at admin@churchbroughtonpc.org.uk

Report an issue ! Please report an issue directly to the County Council using the “Report a Road Fault” website (link below). This way problems can be reported as quickly and as accurately as possible. Our experience shows that it’s also the best way of getting prompt repairs or changes. Use the following link :

Road maintenance – Derbyshire County Council

We are aware of the general poor state of the roads in our area and continue to raise this with SDDC/DCC. We do regularly share specific requests to resurfacing and road edge repair requests. Many of these have been attended to. We do understand, however, that only limited budgets are available and do that they do need to prioritise across the whole of the county – we try to prioritise and rank our requests accordingly.

Recent examples of inputs that the Parish Council have made include a (July 2022) request to re-establish clear white lines at the road junction between Mount Pleasant and Sutton on the Hill and to replace the current “Give-way” sign with a more definitive “Stop” signal. This is the junction where Sutton Road and Common Lane cross Schoolpiece Lane which often has fast moving traffic on it. A number of people consider it to be a dangerous junction. This request has been partially successful – the County Council completed white line re-marking work in early October 2022.

Similar efforts are being made to improve local direction signage, some of which has either fallen over recently, or will do so shortly.

Litter and Litter bins

The Parish Council employs two “lengthsmen” on a part time basis to help keep the footpaths in populated areas free of litter, and leaves in Autumn. Our current lengthsmen are D Wallis and B Rudge.

Planning

The Parish Council reviews all planning applications within the Parish’s boundaries and will provide input to South Derbyshire County Council’s (SDCC) planning department as the Councillors may agree. This input is in addition to any comments that individuals make. If you want to make an input on a planning application then our advice is not to wait for the Parish Council to meet to discuss it, as there are deadlines for providing comments. In making an input make sure that you state any grounds for objections (or support) and frame them in terms of Local and/or National planning policies, as it is these frameworks that very much guide the response of the Local Planning Authority within SDCC. The Parish Council may provide a “collective voice” to amplify concerns to SDCC if multiple individuals have similar inputs, or the Councillors feel strongly about an issue. Let us know your thoughts by emailing us at “admin@churchbroughtonpc.org.uk”.

The Parish’s Community Led Plan established a Development and Housing Working Group which has previously collected local inputs on planning related matters. You can review their summary by following the link below :

Development & Housing Working Group – Church Broughton

Rights of Way, Footpaths and Bridleways.

The Parish Council can and does collate inputs on local concerns and problem areas with footpaths and bridleways and will make requests to Derbyshire County Council. Councillor Kizia Woodhall is the PC’s footpath officer who regularly walks the various footpaths and bridleways, contacting landowners informally as necessary to ask them to clear restrictions or repair stiles.  If problems persist, then Councillor Woodhall will bring issues to the PC and make requests for help from Derbyshire County Council.  It can also help if the person initially identifying a problem reports it directly to DCC. This avoids delays and allows information to be communicated from a first-hand perspective.

Report an issue ! Please report the issue directly to the County Council using the Counci’s website (link below).

You can use the Council’s mapping portal to identify a footpath by its explicit identification number (e.g. FP35) to help with communicating where the problem is. To access the portal you have to accept its conditions of use, as it is based on data owned by the Ordinance Survey. An example screen is shown below. You need to select a “Map Legend” that turns on the layer of information that shows Public Rights of Way. It’s accessed using the purple “layer” icon at the top right-hand corner of the portal’s screen.

The portal can be accessed via the following link :

Derbyshire Mapping Portal – Derbyshire County Council

Once you have the location information to ensure that you can communicate the problem effectively then please notify the council of the issue using the following link :

Rights of way – Derbyshire County Council

Supporting local volunteers

Details to follow

The Parish Council’s costs

In addition to the discretionary spending that the Council makes, some of which has been described in the sections above, the Council has a number of annual costs that it must meet to satisfy its legal and statutory duties. These include employing the Parish Council’s clerk on a part time basis, ensuring a valid liability insurance policy is in place (£352 in 2022) (which now also extends to a further £284 for the building insurance for the Community Hall), paying an annual membership fee to the National Association of Parish Councils (£375 in 2022) and paying for an annual audit of its accounts and associated accountancy fees (£303 in 2022).