Spooner Row Message Board

Date: Jun 8, 2016

Street Lights

Date: Jun 8, 2016

I disagree with this. Residents of Spooner Row already pay one of the highest parish precepts in South Norfolk for Wymondham Town and get very little back in return. It is a bit much to expect us to foot the bill for Wymondham's extra street lighting when we only have two/three street lamps. Please may we have a breakdown on what our parish council spends on Spooner Row services compared to Wymondham? If anything, we should have a reduced precept due to our remote village status.

Date: Jun 8, 2016

i am quite happy for them to be turned off, perhaps the ones in the shopping area in wymondham should stay but the rest can go....

In answer to the next few comments..

1. buy a torch

2. use your headlights

3. think of your environment

Date: Jun 9, 2016

Duly noted so far As far as a breakdown of costs and reduced precept the only way that is going to happen is if the sub parishes say of Suton, Wattlefield and Spooner row, break away formally from Wymondham Town

A remote village reduction would be a wonderful idea, poor Broadband etc etc BUT it is never going to happen under of our current governance arrangements.

Date: Jun 11, 2016

Its another decline from me. 3 lights in the village is plenty and yes, I also feel that we pay more than enough towards Wymondham Town Council.

When friends stay they often comment on how bright the stars are in our part of the sky. Leave things be please.

Date: Jun 11, 2016

I agree, I like the fact that a lack of light pollution allows us to see stars more clearly, it's one of the few benefits of living here. What I don't like is for us to pick up the bill to pay for Wymondham's extra street lighting when the responsibility gets shifted from County Council to Town Council for all new building developments eg 1,230 houses at Silfield.

Date: Jun 23, 2016

With reference to the above post from anonymous ..." Please may we have a breakdown on what our parish council spends on Spooner Row services compared to Wymondham?" In my eyes, very little of the amount we pay in our "parish" council tax contribution gets spent on us so I requested a breakdown of costs for Spooner Row, Suton and Wattlefield in October last year from SNDC via the Freedom of Information Act and received this reply:

"I have looked into your request and liaised with relevant officers and would like to update you on progress.

Unfortunately, we calculate council tax collected in Parishes (Wymondham) and to calculate the amount of council tax collected in the settlements you refer to in your request would take a considerable amount of time and involve us manually identifying the properties in each of the settlements and then again manually calculating the tax collected.

Once we have identified the council tax collected, we are unable to comply with the second part of your request to the level you wish. We are only able to report on how council tax monies are spent generally and this information is available on our website: http://www.south-norfolk.gov.uk/democracy/5949.asp. Police and County spending can also be found on these websites:

http://www.norfolk-pcc.gov.uk/spend/ http://www.norfolk.gov.uk/Council_and_Democracy/Our_budget_and_council_tax/Our_budget/Where_the_money_is_spent/index.htm

Given the issues with collating the information you have requested and that we are unable to calculate answer the second part of request, I wonder whether you would like us to calculate the first part as it may be irrelevant to you without knowing what it is spent on."

Suffice it to say, as the total for the Parish of Wymondham is readily available, I didn't proceed with the request but spent hours trying to find a rough total spend on various services within the village and gave up in the end.

I only started the process as twice in the previous week I had to clean dog mess of my children's pushchair due to the state of the path at the church end of Chapel Road. My grievance wasn't particularly aimed at dog owners not clearing up, but the regularity of the maintenance of the grass verge. If it was well maintained and regularly cut and the hedgerow maintained, at the very least any offending piles of poo could be avoided. It is also particularly aggravating with the brambles and branches etc. hanging over the path from one side and trying to keep legs dry after a downpour due to the length of the grass on both sides of the thin piece of footway.

I'm not even going to start whinging about the state of the Church hedgerow, I'll leave that for another topic!

Date: Jun 23, 2016

I too like the chance to see stars, passing satalites (sic)etc. & I do not want light pollution to spoil this luxury we have, to be able to point out to our children(& grandchildren) the various constellations.

Regarding footpaths, from the corner of Queens Street, going towards the Boars, the footpath is now impassable because of the thorny hedge planted by the the homeowner. The footpath was fought for, over many months, several years ago ; I find it dreadful that last Sunday I watched a young family have to walk in the road, with a youngster on a small bike and Mum with pushchair... all because, despite the obvious danger, the hedge is not kept trimmed. Surely this is immoral, if not illegal.

Date: Jun 24, 2016

Particularly with the heavy traffic and lorries at that junction, I completely agree. The home owner should be made to do something about it, or the council should do it to make the path safe and usable.

Date: Jun 24, 2016

We seem to have digressed a little but in answer in part to some of the questions raised above.

Footpaths are part of the Highway and as such fall to County Council to maintain and they have powers to make owners whose hedges impinge on the Highway ( footpath) to get them to clear the obstruction. Footpath enforcement , another severely cut back back service is also County. Need to speak to County Councillor Colin Foulger
As far as cost and spend from the precept ( wymondham Town ) is concerned, the largest cost is probably the mowing of the field , paying for the dog poo bins, trimming the hedge etc. The street lights fall to Highways again.
The bins get emptied but that is paid for by the rates proper to South Norfolk who also provide services such as E Health ( Dog poo enforcement) Democratic elections services and maintenence of the register and of course Planning. It is no secret that this Govt , or rather the shambles we now have in place, given recent events are going to reduce to nothing the rate support grant by 2020. This will mean more austerity and more cutbacks across the board ( County and District) plus you having to pay for what always was seen as a paid- for service as part of the rates. Getting Planning permission and building big estates gives a wedge of cash to the District (Paid once from Govt ) who can also levy a charge on the developer once, and then they collect the rates as well on top for ever more. This might explain a great deal.

Date: Jul 16, 2016

The position adopted by the council following discussion at the last meeting is that each planning development will be considered on its own merits so developments in the countryside are less likely to be lit than in town ones. ( That is us ) For Silfield the current proposal will be that the spine roads and those near schools will be lit but not others and the developer will pay for this. After that , maintenance and repair will fall to the Town Council. Modern design of lights will enable long life ( 30 years??) and timing programming so off at say midnight but on again at 0600.

Norfolk CC has simply passed the cost of street lights after installation onto the Parish and Town Council under the pretext of saving carbon and INCIDENTALLY a whole load of money.

The clear downside is that in effect we will all be paying for this on an equal footing and there is no mechanism that I am aware of to allocate this on a user basis charge.

New developments , such as Gonville Hall I suspect will be similarly lit but on account of some old planning applications County will retain some responsibility for new developments s but there are some already ( in Wymondham) who have nothing and I think it very unlikely that street lights will be provided at this stage as the cost is prohibitively high, post build.