6 February 2022
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On 31 January, two more councillors, Andrew Capey and Paul Hardinge, resigned from Hughenden Parish Council. Which leaves 3 councillors - Cllr Nicholls, Cllr Kearey and me.
The Council’s quorum is 5 so the Council became inquorate and could not continue to conduct its business.
[Updated - Paul Nicholls resigned on 7 February so there are only 2 councillors left.]
At this point, Section 91 of the Local Government Act 1972 comes into action. Under this Section, Bucks Council may appoint “persons to fill all or any of the vacancies until other councillors are elected and take up office.”
Under Bucks Council’s procedures, it looks first to appoint the ward councillors for Bucks Council i.e. Cllrs Carroll, Broadbent and Harriss. The procedures envisage that these appointments would be temporary until applicants can be elected or co-opted onto Hughenden Parish Council.
There are currently four applicants for the Council waiting to be considered for co-option.
And this is where we are. The Council cannot take any decisions and is not holding any Council meeting or Committee meetings.
I normally stick to the facts in my blogs, just recording events.
But I have to say if ever there was a time to rebuild the Council, this is it. If ever there was a time for the Council to become a positive force to improve things for the community and the environment in Hughenden, this is it.
There are still many vacancies – application forms can be obtained from the deputy Clerk (who becomes Acting Clerk on Monday).
On other news, the owner of Country Supplies, a company based in Warrendene Road in Hughenden Valley, put in a planning application in January for a lorry and customer car park in an untouched grazing meadow, outside the village settlement, that lies in the GB and AONB. A new access road from Bryants Bottom Road is also proposed. I commented on this issue previously in my blogs of 5 October, 17 October and 23 October.
An Action Group has been set up for those opposed to the application and residents in Hughenden Valley have been leafletted by the Action Group. So they should know what is going on.
However, residents in other parts of the parish might be interested. An increase in lorries in the parish, whether for Country Supplies or Binders Yard, affects us all.
There is an article in the Bucks Free Press at Hughenden Valley residents furious at company's plans for a lorry park on Green Belt land - and say business now needs to move | Bucks Free Press.
Hughenden Parish Council, which is a statutory consultee, will not be able to comment until it is quorate. The deadline is 14 February. I will probably therefore be commenting on an individual basis as a councillor for Widmer End.
And in case you are asking – yes, I am totally opposed to the application.
Finally, I mentioned in my blog of 4 December the very slow progress of HPC’s Streetlights Working Group. The first task of the Working Group was to establish who owned the streetlights in Widmer End.
I’m not going to set out the details of progress since then – life’s too short. Suffice it to say all we could do before Christmas was establish that there was no evidence in HPC’s minutes for 2014 as to why the Council decided then to take responsibility for the lights in the Windmill Estate.
After Christmas, Cllr Air resigned from the Working Group and it became inquorate so I carried on by myself. I spent some hours reading through the HPC minutes from 1966 - 1980 (during which the Windmill Estate was built) to see if there was anything there to shed light on who owned the streetlights in Widmer End. Fascinating stuff but nothing relevant.
Nothing daunted, I consulted a huge book called Arnold Baker, the parish councils’ bible, looked at the legislation, and found that there are 2 sorts of streetlights – road lighting and footway lighting. All road lighting was transferred to Bucks Council in 1967 but footway lighting may have stayed with HPC.
There was a complicated legal definition as to what was road lighting and what was footway lighting involving how high the lamps were and how far apart they were.
My husband and I spent an enjoyable time trying to measure how high the lamps were on the Windmill Estate, Primrose Hill, Windmill Lane and Brimmers Hill and pacing between lampposts. Not exactly scientific but we got a rough idea,
The Clerk of Hazlemere helped enormously with a far more sensible definition and also allowed me to read Hazlemere PC’s minutes. (Hughenden and Hazlemere used to have the same parish council and I wanted to see if there was any reference as to which streetlights went to which parish council when they split.)
So, the work is finished as far as I can do it and I have written it up for the Council.
We have now exhausted all the sources of information as to the ownership of streetlighting in Hughenden. None of it is helpful in establishing ownership.
The Windmill Estate and Sunnybank seem to be unusual, perhaps unique, in Hughenden in having street lighting installed on side roads.
HPC needs a clear agreement with BC as to who owns what so that residents are confident that there is not double taxation between HPC and BC and everyone concerned knows who is responsible for what.
I have proposed three options for the future and when HPC is quorate I will ask Council to decide which option to take.
If anyone would like to see the papers, I can send them a copy. Comments would be very welcome.
What I found remarkable is how few streetlights there are in Hughenden (apart from the Windmill Estate). You really do need to take a torch with you at night.
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