Parish Council Chairman’s Report 2010 -11

Thank you for your attendance tonight and welcome to your 2011 Annual Parish Meeting.

I shall briefly summarise the PC activities for this year and how the future looks.

Following this there are various reports which have been submitted and are available as hard copy or can be viewed on the village website. We are available to discuss and elaborate on these reports as required by your-selves tonight.

Finally there is an open forum and for us the most important part of the meeting in which we wish to hear your opinions and ideas as to how you would like the village to go forward in the coming year.

Parish Council Changes

The current PC members shall be standing down and a new PC formed on Thursday 5^th May.

I would like to convey my thanks to all those past and present PC councillors who have been in office during the last four year period. In particular I would like to convey our thanks to our most experienced and longest serving councillor Mike Brown for all his work on the PC and for the village.

Clare Lightfoot shall continue in her role as the Parish Clerk and Finance Officer. I would like to take this opportunity to thank her for the excellent and capable support provided to the village and PC.

The first scheduled PC meeting after the forming of the new PC is timetabled for Tuesday 17^th May at 8.00 p.m. I would like to remind you that all parishioners are welcome to attend PC meeting. Every meeting has a “villager’s forum” through which contributions/concerns can be put forward for the PC to consider.

2010 -11 Parish Council Plan Outcomes/Objectives

Financial

Finances are in good order, the precept has been held static at £7250 for the fifth year in a row. You will note there is a separate Finance Report prepared by Clare and Mike that shows our finances to be under close control and in a healthy position.

Village Character – The PC continues to strive to maintain a village character through consideration in all planning applications of balancing improvements with the requirements of a rural village

Village Hall – Regularisation of the land between the PC and UVHAT has been finalised. The parking facilities have been improved through resurfacing and alterations to the original car parking area and a matted surface extension provided for when circumstances require. Thank you to all those involved in this project and the assistance provided in raising the additional funds required.

Recreation and Playground – The mowing schedule continues relieving the village of substantial contractual charges. Thank you to everyone involved in their past and for their ongoing assistance in maintaining the recreation ground. Mounds have been created to the far left of the recreation ground for biking activities.

There are funds in the PC this year for playground improvement. A playground committee has been established. Thank you to all those involved with the playground; David shall be updating us on progress later in this meeting.

Bus services, Roads and footpaths

The current bus service is under threat again and a bus subsidy review is underway. The service is of vital importance to this rural community. We have combined with Blewbury to make as strong a representation as possible. A survey sheet has been sent out to households and your response is important. Please use the bus service where possible to enable us to continue our case for securing this service.

The Parish has a contract with OCC Council for cutting of the grass on the village footpaths. Thank you to the volunteers for cutting the footpaths; as an “in-house” service we achieve a much better result and generate an additional income to the PC for village improvements.

The PC has remained committed to trying to achieve a cycle route or at least an improved path from Upton to Blewbury. This remains a difficult issue which is mainly outside of our Parish Council boundary. Discussions with Blewbury PC and the OCC Footpaths Officer continue.

Village amenities and Upkeep

The volunteer group has continued to carry out further excellent work this last year carrying out remedial and improvement works on behalf of the village and its environs. The annual litter pick was again well supported. Thank you to everyone for your help with these on-going activities.

Youth and Clubs

There remains a nucleus of thriving clubs in the village, which the PC is keen to assist where possible in whatever small way we are able. This is an important element of the village community and the PC would like to encourage further activities for the village youth. Short mat bowls is the latest addition to the activities on offer from within the village. The karate club, Brownies and Guides, the Dog club, Wine appreciation society, Theatre group, the Upton Ladies Coven, Upton Table Tennis, the cycle group and the village drop in sessions continue to thrive.

Communications

The Upton News and Web site continues as the main steer of our communications. Thank you to Brian Rippon for re-designing the village web site. Thank you to all those involved with the submission of entries, compilation, printing and delivery of the Upton News.

George and Dragon Pub

Our thanks to Kenny and Jo for providing a friendly, welcoming pub, with excellent food and drink. Please continue to support the pub where possible; it is such an important element of traditional village life and a valued village facility.

Putting Upton on the Map

The PC remains keen to assist in promoting Upton into the future, whilst having due regard to preserving our private village life. The recreation ground combined with the extended and refurbished village hall provides us all with an excellent collective area for social and club activities through the year.

The Uptonogood mountain bike challenge was a great success last year and achieved wide spread acclaim. The village fete was outstanding and provided another hugely successful day for the village. The PC would like to convey our thanks to all those involved in the management and organization of both events and wish the organizers similar success for this year.

John Dickens Chairman Upton P.C.

**********

Upton P.C. Finance Report 2010-11

After last years record turnover of just over £136,000 this year almost returned to normal with an expenditure of £9990. Even at this level it was still well above the norm of about £6000 as we spent £3888 on improvements to the car parking facilities by extending and re-surfacing the existing car park and laying an extended car parking area using plastic matting. Much of this car park expenditure was offset by a donation of £1343 received as a result of the Barn Dance organised at Prospect House by Hilary and Simon. Our thanks to both of them and to all the others who helped with the organisation and running of this event.

We are pleased to report that at the end of this financial year our balance is just £180 higher than we estimated in our budget produced 15 months ago whilst we were in the thick of the village hall spend, this demonstrates that we have kept excellent control of our finances. Looking at the figures produced at our half-year revision, our expenditure is £20 under spent and our income £9 less than predicted which means our current balance is just £11 more than we predicted six months ago.

The current balance of just over £7000 is about £2500 higher than you would expect a council of our size to be holding. This is a result of our putting away an annual sum towards the cost of improving the children’s play area. It is intended that the council will contribute £5000 towards the play area project in the next financial year, providing that goes ahead it will give us a predicted balance at the end of the coming financial year of £4732.

For the fourth consecutive year the annual precept has remained unchanged. If we can get through the play area project which will be the last of the amenity improvement schemes we have managed in recent years, we forecast you can look forward to a relatively small decrease in next year’s precept but this is entirely down to the volunteer effort coming from our residents. The savings on the mowing projects this year are likely to be close to £1600 including the contribution from the County Council for cutting the footpaths and a further example of the saving made by our volunteer work force is the £1000 we saved in using our volunteers to lay the car park extension. If it were not for this volunteer effort your precept would have to be raised by at least £10 per household.

Mike Brown and Clare Lightfoot

***********

Parish Transport Representative’s Report

We are grateful to Mr Graham Homer who took over as Upton’s Transport Representative during the past year. Mr Homer is a very frequent bus user and has a hands on approach by talking to other bus users and the bus drivers.

During the year two meetings for Transport Representatives have been held in Oxford. These meetings provide a forum for dissemination of information.

Currently, a review of subsidised buses is being undertaken. Surveys were distributed to all households in the Parish (170) through the Upton News. So far 17 (10%) have been returned. The Parish Council will analyse the responses and endorse a case for the bus service to continue.

Clare Lightfoot (Clerk)

***********

District Councillor’s Report

This is my last report to Upton Parish Council as its District Councillor. Having stood in every District Council election in the last 28 years and having represented you for the last sixteen, as well as being your County Councillor for four years, I have decided that it is time for a change and I am not offering myself for re-election in Upton and Blewbury .

You may well have heard in the news in recent months that Councils, up and down the Country, have been forced to slash expenditure on front line services following swingeing cuts in central government grants to local government. Although there have been some minor changes, the closure of some super-loos comes to mind, we have been able to protect the Vale from serious damage to front line services. This has been achieved by the very substantial savings achieved from joint working with SODC which have saved about £3.5 million so far. Savings, either from staff costs or from savings that could only be implemented from having the joint management arrangement with SODC now come to about £1.5 million per annum. I do believe that the Vale, which has the 13th lowest council tax out of some 290 district councils, offers excellent value for money. I would not want to diminish the challenges ahead for the Vale. The number of personnel that the Vale employs has been significantly reduced and many who have left are, inevitably, the most experienced and longest serving.

This sea change would be difficult enough to navigate, but councils, and this applies equally to parish councils, face the prospect of wide ranging changes which may or may not come from Mr Pickles’ Localism Bill and other changes to the planning process. How much of this Bill will finally make it to the Statute Book remains to be seen and I do hope that there are some major changes along the way. Just to examine one strand: the Localism Bill is supposed to give local communities greater control over the way in which their neighbourhoods develop, or, presumably, don’t develop. And yet the Chancellor in his budget statement blamed the planning process being a drag on economic development and has promised to streamline the system to reduce delays. These aspirations are fundamentally contradictory. Few communities these days are going to volunteer to have 300 houses built at the bottom of their respective gardens. Believe me, I know.

I am grateful for the courtesy and welcome that I have received from Upton over the years. There have been times when we have had our disagreements, usually over planning. But if I was to say that I felt apologetic about this, I would not be truthful. I have always sought to ensure that the legal rights of every one, and particularly every applicant, were upheld. Planning is often a complicated process in which all sorts of shades of grey can develop, and this, inevitably, leads to differences of opinion. As I said, I don’t apologise for those differences, but I am sad that they happened.

*********

St Mary’s Church Report

St Mary’s continues to grow through the loving service of many villagers. We have said goodbye to Father Anthony and his wife Rosemary Lury who have retired and moved away from the Benefice. We give thanks for their support but we are once again looking for an organist for our regular Sunday Eucharist service. Fr Geoffrey Borrowdale has joined the Benefice as an Associate Priest. Family services have continued on a monthly basis with Mr Richard Burrow playing the organ for us. The church was full for the Crib and Carol service, following the service we all enjoyed mince pies and a wassall cup.

The fete was again very successful and our thanks go to Mrs Jessie West and her team of helpers. We were fortunate to be able to use the refurbished village hall and patio for the teas and the weather was kind to us. As ever we would like to thank all villagers who supported the fete in many different ways.

The church was used for 2 weddings this year, both families having close connections with the village.

There have been 2 baptisms and 3 funerals during the year.

Sadly a long serving member of our congregation, Theo Gordon passed away. She is greatly missed.

Looking to the future, the PCC is in the initial stages of investigating the installation of a toilet. Bearing in mind that the church is a listed building this will not be straightforward.

Clare Lightfoot

**********

Neighbourhood Watch Report

During the past 12 months we have only had one incident in Upton.

This was the theft of a digger from a property in Church Street during the evening of 4^th April 2011. I am awaiting an update on this case.

Otherwise I have little to report this year which is most encouraging.

I still attend the quarterly NAG meetings at Milton Park but am pleased to say that where crime is concerned we are most fortunate compared to Blewbury and Harwell who regularly have incidents of theft and also teenagers being a nuisance in the evenings.

The SID speeding machine is still in regular use on the A417, particularly outside the Upton Fruit Farm and at the top of Station Road and is quite a deterrent for motorists.

Hare coursing is one of the major problems in this area but even that is centred in Hendred not Upton.

On the whole I think we have an awful lot to be thankful for living in Upton.

Celia Davies

Upton Neighbourhood Watch Organiser

*********

Summary of PCSO Activities

“Have Your Say” meetings are held bi-monthly in Upton. These meetings provide an opportunity for a confidential one-to-one meeting with the local area PCSO.

During the past year PCSOs have attended 4 of our 6 Parish Council meetings.

They usually start by saying that there is not much crime to report in Upton.

I have extracted below some issues which have been dealt with during the past year:

• Speed Indicator Device operations carried out on A417
• Poachers apprehended in the Village Hall car park
• Illegal hare coursing patrols stepped up
• Illicit motorcycling on land south of the Ridgeway, in Upton parish. 2 Section 59s have been issued and there will be a continued police presence
• Smoke from bonfires in the George & Dragon field have been a hazard on the A417
• Additional patrols carried out following the theft of property
• Attention was paid to vulnerable people in the village, especially during the bad winter weather

Clare Lightfoot Parish Clerk

**********

Blewbury School Report

• New heating system required after failure of pipes. Phase 1 of 3 complete. Work paid for by county due to catastrophic nature of problem.
• Teachers room adjoining staff room completed on time and budget.

· Budget surplus and carried debt eliminated in this financial year.

· School participated in village events such as Apple Day, Band Day, church services.

· Choir performed at Oxford Castle Market

· Performance of the musical Oliver.

· Children helped design the new play area and picked out trees.

· Early morning orchestra proving popular

· Raised money to buy chickens for Ugandan partnered school

· New Commenius project has started. Children from Italy, Germany and the Czech Republic stayed with Blewbury/Upton families, our children will be making trips to these countries over the next year.

· Staff continuity maintained for another year

· Welcomed three new governors in the last year. Now have a full complement.

In the coming year:

· Possibly installing PV solar panels on school roof this Summer depending on final approval from full governing body,

· Governors will be running three BBQs in June (Uptonogood, Blewbury Festival Family Day, and Treasure Hunt at the school)

· Didcot Partnership of 15 schools evolving rapidly in response to gradual withdrawal of services supplied by local authorities.

· Year 6 classroom will most likely be replaced this year either by a replacement structure or by a permanent extension to the main building.

Andrea Brown

**********

Report of United Charities of the Ancient Parish of Blewbury (Blewbury, Upton and Aston Upthorpe)

The United Charity is managed by a group of Trustees. One of our functions is to provide financial gifts to certain elderly residents of Upton at Christmas time and to contribute to a Christmas lunch for them. This was carried out last year but the number of recipients has, sadly fallen. If anyone feels that they would like to nominate a new recipient to the charity, would they please contact me. There are certain financial criteria to be met, but we guarantee total confidence and careful consideration of any nominations made.

Charmian Whitmell, Trustee, representing Upton

Pippins, Fieldside, Upton. Tel 01235-850163

**********

UVHAT Report

The new facilities to the village hall continue to be appreciated, with villagers and visitors being pleasantly surprised. We are pleased that the Bowls Club is slowly gaining a following, and thank Tony and Joan Durbin for giving it their commitment to make it a success.

The Wine Club continues to flourish thanks to Mike Collins and his committee. The Guides and Brownies too, although sadly, the Tuesday evening Guides had to finish because of lack of a leader.

Thanks to Yvonne Collins and her many helpers for keeping the “Drop In” available.

We are pleased to have an increase in bookings for children’s parties. It’s good to have the hall used during the day.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to Brian Simpson, for not only keeping the day to day running costs of the all in good order, but for steering us through the labyrinth of funding that was obtained, enabling the completion of the extension.

Brian is retiring from the post of treasurer this year. We still hope to enjoy his company at events and wish him a well-earned break. Ross Caffyn has kindly agreed to take up the challenge. We offer her a warm welcome and look forward to working with her.

Some of the aspirations we still have when funding allows are to complete the refurbishment of the toilets, i.e. in the gents, new floor, wall tiling, WC and Cistern. In the disabled, new floor and baby changing unit. Hand dryers in all.

The kitchen too, needs a bit of TLC and the proposal is to have the walls tiled. Plus a new frost heater and microwave. Fortunately the ceilings in all the toilets and kitchen were redone at the time of the alterations to the Ladies cloakroom.

Ideas are in the pipeline for the little room next to the kitchen! However, do you have any thoughts about it that you would like to share?

Meanwhile, freestanding shelving is required for use in the new storeroom, which will enable us to store the boxes etc from that aforementioned little room.

Then of course we will probably need a lean-to shelter outside, to store the bins!!!!!

Jessie West (Chair)

REPORTS FOR THE ANNUAL PARISH MEETING 2010

Upton Parish Council – Chairman’s Report 2009 -10

Thank you for your attendance tonight and Welcome to your Parish Council 2010 AGM. I have a brief summary report on the years events followed by a short summary of reports from our District and County Councillors, Richard Farrell and Stuart Lilley, and from other organisation that have an important role to play in our village life. However the most important aspect of this meeting for the PC is that we gain your opinions and ideas as to how you wish the village to go forward in the coming year.

Parish Council Changes

This year we made the full complement of 6 councillors with Geoffrey Summers joining the Council.

Due to a move away from the village Geoff has resigned from the council and I would like to express our thanks for the excellent work he has performed for the PC over the last year. Specifically he has worked as the PC representative with UVHAT and as the Parish Transport Representative.

This leads me to say that we currently have a vacant position for a councillor on the PC which has been advertised according to the regulations. We are also seeking any volunteers to step forward who are interested in filling the role of Parish Transport Representative.

During the second half of the year Mike Brown passed over the Role of Chair to myself, Mike continues as the Vice Chair to provide support to the PC given his experience and wealth of knowledge.

For your information the PC divides some core responsibilities currently identified into lead roles as follows

Stuart Norman – Roads and footpaths

Tracy Seelig – Young parishioners, the playground and Harwell site Liaison committee representative

Mike Brown – Vice chair, planning (with myself) , communications and volunteer group

David Mason – Amenities including Recreation Ground

Geoffrey Summers – Transport and Village Hall (Retiring)

Clare Lightfoot continues in her role as the Parish Clerk and Finance Officer. I would like to take this opportunity to thank her for the excellent and extremely capable support she provides us all with.

Last, but by no means least – Brian Simpson worked for a period of six months as Temporary Clerk to the PC to assist the PC dealing with the complex financial arrangements required for the village hall financing. I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the village and the PC to thank Brian for his outstanding work regarding this matter.

As a note for your attention in May 2011 your current Parish Council will be standing down and a new Parish Council will be elected.

2009 -10 Parish Plan Outcomes/Objectives

Financial

Finances are in good order, the precept has been held static at £7250 for the fourth year in a row. You will note there is a separate Finance Report prepared by Clare and Mike that shows our finances to be under close control and in a healthy position.

Village Character – The PC continues to strive to maintain a village character through consideration in all planning applications of balancing improvements with the requirements of a rural village

Village Hall – The PC has afforded financial support and assisted UVHAT in placing the main contracts through the PC for the build of the village hall extension to enable VAT refund and provide an overdraft facility post SOS agreement. We continue to allocate one councillor in a liaison role to UVHAT. Currently we are working with UVHAT to determine the best way forward regarding land regularisation and the development and funding of the further car parking facilities. Mike Brown also assisted in monitoring and directing the building work contractors during the village hall extension contract.

Whilst I am on the subject of the village hall extension I would like to express my thanks to Mike for the work he undertook in this role. I would also like to thank Jessie West and Brian Simpson for their hard work in seeing the project through from conception to fruition. And of course thanks to everyone in the village, or associated with the village, who assisted the project through fund raising events and donations.

Recreation and Playground – One further dog bin has been placed at the bottom of the Sustrans path at Chapel Furlong as requested at the AGM last year. The mowing schedule continues relieving the village of substantial contractual charges, which would be incurred if we were not to carry out this work ourselves. Thank you to everyone involved in their past and for their ongoing assistance in maintaining the recreation ground. There are funds in the PC this year for playground improvements, and given that the structure of the extension is completed we would like to look towards how we could improve the playground facilities for all age groups. A bike jumps cycle track is to be created to the left hand side of the recreation ground.

Bus services, Roads and footpaths

We are in the fortunate position that the current bus service although limited has been maintained. Please use the bus service where possible to enable us to continue our case for securing this service.

We remain committed to trying to achieve a cycle route or at least an improved path from Upton to Blewbury. This remains a difficult issue which is mainly outside of our Parish Council boundary. We continue our discussions with Blewbury PC and the OCC footpaths Officer to find a suitable agreement for all interested parties.

Village amenities and Upkeep

The volunteer group has continued to carry out some excellent work this last year, amongst other projects, in assisting with grounds maintenance at the recreation ground. The March Litter pick just carried out was another success, and a great example of the community spirit of the volunteers who assist in the village up keep. Thank you to all of you for your assistance.

First Responders

A further step forward made during the last year was the formation of the Upton First Responders Group. This group under went demanding training and provides a valuable self help facility for Upton and the surrounding villages should any one require emergency medical assistance. This is a further example of the great community spirit that exists within Upton. Well done to all those involved in providing what could be a life saving service.

Village Fete

A fantastic day, just about kept the weather at bay, and such great promotion of village life and community. Thank you to all involved and well done on the funds raised for St Mary’s Church.

Youth and Clubs

There remains a nucleus of small, but thriving clubs in the village which the PC is keen to assist where possible in whatever small way we are able. This is such an important element of the village community and the PC would like to encourage further activities for the village youth.

Amongst others – The karate club is now running on Sunday mornings, Brownies and Guides and the Dog club continue to meet in the village. Tiddlywinks, Wine appreciation club, Theatre club, the Upton Coven, Upton Table Tennis, and a keen group of cyclists who I am sure will soon form a further Upton club! I am sure other clubs will now develop such as short mat bowls given the village hall facilities we now have.

Communications

The Upton News continues as the main steer of our communications, but what a fantastic Web Site we have as a village. It is easy to use and keeps us all informed. Please let us know of any other pages which would be useful, and our gratitude goes out to Brian Rippon for creating and maintaining a superb village web site, Cathy Brown for compiling and Dawn Saunders for printing the Upton News.

George and Dragon Pub

Our thanks to Bill and Cielo for giving us such a lovely, friendly welcoming pub, which has been an absolute pleasure for us to attend on more than one occasion. We will all be sad to see the departure of Bill and Cielo and we thank them for their wonderful work and contribution to our village. We would like to extend a warm welcome to the new tenants and, in an effort to maintain our village character and amenities given the difficult economic environment, please continue to support the pub wherever possible.

Putting Upton on the Map

We are keen to assist in promoting Upton into the future, whilst having due regard to preserving our private village life. The Recreation ground is a wonderful facility, which along with the super village hall we now have, can work to bring more funding into the village facilities and clubs through community events. Recently we have had a caravan meet and the Uptonogood mountain bike challenge will take place on 20^th June.

Now most importantly I open this forum to yourselves and we, as your PC, ask you for your valued input and suggestions for the village.

John Dickens

Chairman Upton P.C.

*************

Upton P.C. Finance Report 2009-10

This year has undoubtedly been the most complex financial year in the history of this council. In recent years our income has been about £7500 with an annual expenditure of about £6000. This year our income has been £129,521 and our expenditure £136,640. Indeed when this year’s accounts are sent off to the auditor we can expect a lot of questions and a considerably higher audit fee.

The system that we use to monitor our financial affairs is very efficient and has allowed us to run parallel systems for the hall and for normal business on simple spread sheets so we can give you a report on what we see as our normal financial transactions and on the Hall transactions.

Dealing with the Hall account first we received a total of £122,065 and spent a total of £131,531 the difference being made up of the £9020 we contributed to the building program plus we paid for the new wall lights and the hire of a skip.

The income can be split down into grants totalling £95,750, an interest free loan of £21,000 from UVHAT that has been fully repaid and VAT refunds of £15,315. The loan was a short term arrangement to ensure that the builder could be paid promptly without the council’s bank account becoming overdrawn awaiting the receipt of the grants.

Looking at our routine business we had a total income of £7546 and a total spend of £14,574 of which £9,466 was on the hall (see above) leaving a routine spend of £5108. Our spend this year has been lower than usual as we have spent nothing on improving the playground whilst waiting for the hall and the surrounding areas to be completed.

All transactions on the hall are now complete and our bank account currently stands at £6,803 which is within a few £s of what was predicted at the beginning of the financial year. Everything is back in a stable state and for the coming year all estimates are near normal although there is a sum of £1700 set aside to continue to help with the refurbishment of the hall and the extension of the car park and in order to compensate for the lack of recent spend we have budgeted £1900 to be spent on playground improvements. Of this £1900 approx £400 are donations given to improve the play area that are currently held in the Council’s bank account.

Our estimated reserve at the end of the coming financial year is just over £5000, ideal for a parish of our size.

The decision to undertake our own grass cutting continues to save the parish about £750 per year thanks to the volunteer effort.

We are currently looking at the possibility of getting a contract from the County Council to maintain our parish footpaths, this will mean some adjustment to our estimates but it will not have a significant effect on the end-of-year figures.

Mike Brown and Clare Lightfoot

Upton Parish Council

************

District Councillor’s Report

In recent years my report to you has tended to focus on the Council’s finances and this year is going to be no exception. Every year the Council’s financial position has become yet more challenging and this, as I will explain, is a trend that is likely to continue.

There are three key factors, all related in one way or another to the financial crisis, that have combined to put pressure on the budget this year:

· a reduction in income from sources such as planning fees, car park income, building control etc.

· a significant reduction in investment income as interest rates have fallen. A 1% movement in interest rates equates to about £300,000; this is the expected reduction this year and is in addition to the £1.1 million fall that I mentioned in my report last year.

· an anticipated fall in government grant over the next five years as it tackles the public spending deficit. This year over half of the Vale’s budget requirement came from government grants. Any shortfall will have to be met by either council tax rises – which may be problematic – or a reduction in services and/or greater efficiency..

If central government is to cut the budget deficit as all three of the larger parties have suggested and if the NHS is ring fenced, and other public sector spending protected as some have promised, then it is inevitable that disproportionate cuts will fall on local government. The Vale’s medium term financial plan anticipates a 5% reduction in central government grant, year on year, for the next five years. This translates into a fall from £7.3 million this year to £5.8 million by 2014/15. It is also necessary to rebuild the Council’s revenue reserves which are in danger of falling below the levels recommended by the accounancy body, CIPFA.

Taking all this together, the Vale needs to find average savings of over £1 million per annum every year for the next five years to stay solvent. Already the joint working arrangements with South Oxfordshire are saving nearly £1 million a year and new joint working proposals should save a further £500,000. Other significant savings this year are:

• the closure of the Local Services Point in Wantage, which saves £153,000 per annum in a full year. In 2010 redundancy and other costs limit the saving to £57,000.
• a reduction in sports development from £150,000 to £50,000
• reducing spending on grants, including one-off grants in 2010/11 which saves £100,000.
• reducing special responsibility allowances to councillors, including those to leader and deputy leader, which saves £25,000.
• removing essential car user allowances from staff who undertake low levels of official mileage which will ultimately save £80,000.
• modest increases in car parking charges, offset by free parking after 4pm

For the future there are two further unknowns. The first is that there will be an actuarial revaluation of the pension fund as at 31^st March 2010 with new contribution rates from 1^st April 2011. However, the recent strong rise in the stock market will hopefully mean that this is not as dire as it looked as if it might a year ago.

The other uncertainty is that this is the last year that the Vale will be responsible for concessionary fares which will then be provided by the County Council. Although the government theoretically funds this, the process is not transparent and our fear is that it will take from us in grant everything which the Vale spends (and which we suspect that the government doesn’t adequately fund, but can’t prove) while not passing the full amount on to the County.

October will see the introduction in the Vale of the new joint refuse collection contract with South Oxfordshire, about which I wrote in my report last year. This service which is already operating in South Oxfordshire is achieving one of the highest recycling rates in the country. Some residents in Stream Road have recently experienced problems with rubbish collection from the retiring contractor. I hope that this will not recur, either in Stream Road or elsewhere, but if it does if residents contact me I will take the matter up with officers who monitor the contractor’s performance. A financial penalty is imposed on the contractor for missed collections without an adequate excuse.

Finally, although it is remote from Upton I was happy to see the other day that work has started on the Old Gaol project in Abingdon.

*************

ST MARY’S CHURCH

During January 2009 St Mary’s was closed for the redecoration of the inside of the church. The congregation attended other church services in the Benefice during this time. The Benefice comprises the Astons, the Moretons, Hagbourne and Blewbury. Now that the decoration is complete the church is in good order. The quinquennial inspection which took place in August 2009 concluded that “This beautiful church receives much loving attention. It is in extremely good condition.”

Family services continue on a monthly basis and these are well attended by families in the village. The crib and carol service held on Christmas Eve was a highlight when the church was full and all enjoyed a wassail cup and mince pies.

The fete this year was a very successful fund raiser for the church and we are grateful to all those who worked so hard, led admirably by Mrs Jessie West. We were thankful for good weather and the music from the brass band along with entertainment from the dog show resulted in a delightful time for all. The quantity and quality of the cakes deserves a special mention! Due to the success of the fete the PCC was able to make a donation to the extension of the village hall, in addition to other charities which the church supports.

We are now fortunate to have the services of two organists: Mrs Rosemary Lury plays for most of our regular services whilst Mr Richard Burrow plays for Family Services. Our thanks to both of them as the music makes a valuable contribution to our worship.

Sadly 2 loyal parishioners died this year: Mr George Milford-Cottam and Mrs Edna Bonner, both are very much missed.

Clare Lightfoot

PCC Secretary

*************

UVHAT  Chairman’s Report 2010

After all these years of fundraising, I can still hardly believe we’ve done it!

What a relief to see how successful the new extension promises to be. Yes I know we are still waiting for it to dry out sufficiently, so that the store and meeting room floors can be completed. It will be worth the wait.

The smoothness of the build between the contractors, the Parish Council and the Trust has been phenomenal.

Due not only to the right choice of contractor, but to Mike Brown’s ever quiet presence throughout, ably assisted by Graham De Wilde, as liaison. Also Brian Simpson’s exemplary gift for handling the finances.

Mike and Cathy are still quietly getting on with it and daily open up the extension to help with the drying up process.

My heartfelt thanks to Brian, Mike and Cathy, and Graham. Thank you also to Maggie and Austin Maytham, Clare Lightfoot, Celia Davies and Carol Hall for helping me with the clean-up and hanging of the curtains.

The Grand Opening was a great success, with our guests from the various grant funding bodies, fully appreciating what we have achieved and considering it to be money well spent.

Jessie West

**************

UVHAT Report from P.C. Representative

1. As Upton residents will no doubt be aware the activities of Upton Village Hall Amenities Trust have been centred this year on the Village Hall extension, which was officially opened on 13 March 2010. The project has been largely achieved thanks to unstinting efforts by members of UVHAT, ABS Builders & their sub-contractors and the enormous financial contribution made by Upton people by way of donations in money & equipment and in organising fund raising events. There is no doubt that these self help efforts within the village which provided some £43,000 encouraged outside Agencies and Charities to make grants totaling £91,500. A larger car parking area is still to be put in together with improvements to the existing car park and it is estimated that we will need to raise up to £4000 to complete this work. A conveyance of part of the land from UVHAT to the Parish Council is still to be arranged.

2. UVHAT is planning further fund raising events, again with initiatives coming from village residents, and these will assist with furnishings and other items needed for the village hall.

3. UVHAT has also continued to carry out responsibilities for Licensing, etc.

Geoff Summers

Parish Council representative on UVHAT

**************

PARISH TRANSPORT REPRESENTATIVE

1. Bus Strategy Document

On 05 June 2009 Oxfordshire County Council issued a revision dealing with Bus services funded by the County Council. Relevant extracts are:-

(a) The ring fenced Rural Bus Subsidy Grant from Central Government was used in 1998/99 to introduce 34 then new or substantially improved bus services and unless there is a further large boost in this fund it is likely to be required solely to maintain these services, which are for the most part now acknowledged as part of the core network.

(b) In rural areas long-term viability without subsidy cannot be realistically expected. There is a small budget reduction of -2.4% in 2009/10, with the rural bus subsidy grant at £1.66m. Some savings might need to be considered. There are already cuts being implemented on some services but our local services on routes 94/95 & X32 not mentioned.

(c) Subsidised journeys will be randomly sampled by Council officers after the contract has run for 2 years. The sampling will include counting passengers and noting where they board & alight.

(d) When a full scale area review is approaching all Parish & Town Councils will be contacted 3 to 4 months in advance of the formal consultation to assist in arranging a survey of local needs & usage of local subsidised services.

2. Local Transport Plan –

OCC has outlined the programme for preparing Local Transport Plan 3 covering the period 2011 – 2030 which will include shorter term improvements over 3 – 5 years to be reviewed and rolled forward annually.

The process stages for consultation as decreed by Central Government are scheduled to complete in December. 2010.

3. New case for bus timetable

OCC arranged for a new case to be fitted at the bus shelter in February 2010 to replace the old one where the plastic covering had split.

4. Transform Oxford –

The pedestrianisation programme for central Oxford has resulted in changes to location of bus stops. Maps have been provided & can be accessed via the OCC website. The only change affecting our local service the X32 Chilton – Oxford is that this terminates outside the OCC offices & the return service is from St. Aldates (Stop H5).

5. Didcot Parkway station forecourt development plans –

These show a proposed revamping of the vehicle waiting areas for public, including disabled spaces, taxis & buses with the objective of improving the current congestion and traffic flows. Also envisaged is improved access to the day parking levels for permit holders.

Funding of £5.4m is available subject to planning consent with view to work commencing sometime this year & completing in 2011.

Whilst this looks at coping with the current situation it appears sadly that these plans & the expenditure are short term and not in any way designed to deal with increased traffic use resulting from any expansion of housing in the Didcot catchment area.

6. Other Rail issues –

(a) A new service is planned to run London Marylebone – High Wycombe – Bicester – Oxford.

(b) Plans to re-establish the line between Oxford – Bletchley (via Bicester), which would link with the current Bletchley-Bedford service appear to be progressing.

(c) Disruption to services to & from London Paddington are envisaged over the next few years as the infrastructures are put in place for electrification (due to complete 2016/17), Crossrail & redevelopment of Reading Station.

Geoff Summers

Upton PTR

***************

United Charities of the Ancient Parish of Blewbury (Blewbury, Upton and Aston Upthorpe)

The United Charity is managed by a group of Trustees. One of our functions is to provide financial gifts to certain elderly residents of Upton at Christmas time and to contribute to a Christmas lunch for them. This was carried out last year but the number of recipients has, sadly fallen. If anyone feels that they would like to nominate a new recipient to the charity, would they please contact me. There are certain financial criteria to be met, but we guarantee total confidence and careful consideration of any nominations made.

Charmian Whitmell, Pippins, Fieldside, Upton. Tel 01235-850163

Trustee, representing Upton.

************

Blewbury Primary School

As always this was a busy year for the school with various activities happening. Blewbury held another festival and the school was able to take part in this in two different ways. The choir sang and the children were able to share traditional country dances outside the original school house as part of the 300 year celebration.

The school opened it’s doors during the exhibition weekend and we were able to share work from residential visits as well as sharing our International Eco Charter created by children on Comenius visits to France and Sweden. There were also examples of art work and work from the Year 2 presentation of Romeo and Juliet.

The Year 3 children went to the Ridgeway Youth Hostel for their residential visit, including a trip to Steam in Swindon. The Year 4 and 5 children went to Cheddar and Year 6 went to Kilvrough which is an Oxfordshire Activity Centre.

We had the usual sport’s morning and children took part in cricket and rounders as well as a swimming gala.

The Year 3 children linked Romeo and Juliet into their Literacy work and gave a wonderful performance on the outside stage on a beautiful evening. The older children created a great show with their version of Bugsy Malone.

During the spring J.I.G.S.A.W club contributed to a church service. In May we had a beautiful morning for our Pilgrimage Service which we held this year on Blewburton Hill surrounded by poppies and joined by our visiting teachers from Uganda and from Germany. We finished the year in church with our usual Leaver’s Service which went very well this year.

We started in September with a healthy number of children in the Foundation Stage and although a few children had moved away in the summer we are increasing in numbers and will be taking somebody into Year 2 straight after the Easter Break. We currently have 151 children in school.

One of our first successes of this new year was the presentation of our fourth ‘International School Award’, we are one of only 17 school form any sector to have received this continuously since it was first awarded.

The new school year started off in lively fashion with trips to the Hawk Conservancy and Warwick Castle, whilst Key Stage 2 had a Macbeth Workshop .A high percentage of Key Stage 2 attended an activity weekend on the Isle of Wight at a Kingswood Centre, we took 66 children and 10 adults.

As the term progressed rehearsals started for both the Nativity told this year through the story of the Lazy star who was having great difficulty shining until it came to rest over the stable.

Key Stage 2 created an impressive version of Macbeth with the three classes working together to either provide dances and scene setting, writing rhyming couplets for narration or producing speech for the main characters to act out the story.

As usual we held a harvest Service at the end of September and shared both our produce and food created by each class with the Senior Citizens at our Harvest Tea. The choir sang again in Oxford at both the castle and Holywell Music Room.

We held our first new style church service in the Autumn with Year 6 servers helping to share bread with everyone. This had a really good feeling about it.

At Christmas we held a much enjoyed Carol Concert where a long with everything else we were congratulated about the layout of the church.

The start of the year was blighted with snow and the decisions about staying open grew every day. We had wonderful volunteers clear paths and we opened late on Day 3 only to be thwarted by a Pressure Pimp failure in our heating plant.

There have been lots of football matches and a very cold Year 3 / 4 Rugby Tournament, with both our boys and girls playing well.

J.I.G.S.A.W (Jesus in games, song and worship) club continues to thrive after school and Mrs Partington has a knack of attracting many recruits! They completely took over the church service in February. We are also grateful to Mrs Partington for her Prayer group that meet once a month.

The choir continue to sing and the school was treated to a complete musical performance in March where anybody who had learnt an instrument could take part.

Children from Class 6 attended the Didcot Partnership International Day where we provided an activity linked with Egypt. Class 6 are about to attend a morning called Junior Citizens in Oxford where they will experience advice about work sites, electricity cables, basic first aid, water safety and how to dial for the emergency services.

Our next visit to church to hold our Easter Service will incorporate the sharing of bread and the sharing of Peace which was first introduced by JIGSAW club.

Marion Mills

*************

Neighbourhood Watch Report

During the past 12 months we have had very few incidents in Upton.

I have received two reports of minor vandalism to property but that is all.

There was a NHW police survey carried out in the village in November 2009 to which 20 householders took the time to reply and the two main issues raised were speeding on the A417 and dog fouling in the village.

The police assure me that they are constantly carrying out speed checks on the A417 usually at the Upton Cider Farm.

Otherwise I have little to report this year which is most encouraging. Compared to Harwell and Blewbury who have a lot of youth problems, particularly at night time, we are really quite fortunate in Upton.

Celia Davies

Upton Neighbourhood Watch Organiser

*************

Parish Council Annual Report 2008-2009

Chairman’s Report

This year has seen some changes in our composition having begun the year with just 5 councillors.

In July we welcomed David Mason onto the council and asked him to take the lead role in our work to support and provide facilities for our younger residents.

No sooner were we back to our full compliment than unfortunately in November Belinda Drew had to resign as she was leaving the area. During the 18 months that Belinda served she proved to be a valued and enthusiastic member of the council, we appreciate and thank her for her efforts.

Belinda’s resignation has created a vacancy that has been advertised in accordance with the regulations. We are hoping that we will have co-opted a new member before the Annual Meeting.

You will recall that last year I told you that we were doing our best to share the workload and that has continued this year.

Stuart Norman has continued with the lead role on roads and footpaths and is also our representative on UVHAT.

John Dickens has continued with the lead role on matters relating to our Recreation Ground and also continued as our representative on the Neighbourhood Action Group until January when that role was taken over by Celia Davies to complement her valued work as our Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator.

Tracy Seelig has continued with the lead role on matters relating with the play-area of the Recreation Ground and has taken over from Belinda as our representative on the Harwell Site Liaison Committee.

I have temporarily taken the lead role on planning matters as well as continuing with my responsibilities for amenities and communications (Upton News and Website).

Clare Lightfoot has continued to give us excellent support in her role as your Parish Clerk and Finance Officer.

This has been a year of mixed achievements with just about equal amounts of success and disappointing outcomes.

I will deal with the disappointing internal outcomes first.

One of the downsides (there are many upsides) of having a young council is that other than myself they all have to earn a living and three of them also have a young family to consider and that means as volunteer councillors they have limited time to spend on council activities. This needs to be taken into account when looking at the short-comings we have experienced this year. A disappointment to me personally has been our failure to get the energy saving project off the ground despite agreeing that 3 councillors should take this idea forward some 18 months ago. The idea of this type of project, which has been so successful in many other villages in the county, is to help us all save energy and to make us all aware of the ways available to us in which we can improve our carbon footprint. When the initiative was seen to be floundering within the council we asked for help from the village, none was forthcoming and we will need to agree at the meeting that this initiative is unfortunately dead.

Another internal problem has been our failure to find a member who was prepared to take on the role of Parish Transport Representative following the “retirement” of Peter & Juliet Gardiner who have done sterling work in that role for the past 10 years. This is a very important task if we are to continue to have our say on the standard of bus service we receive and have any influence on other local transport issues. Once again when we realised we had difficulties within the council we asked the village for help and sadly no one has come forward.

The third disappointment for me was our decision not to go ahead and enter the Village of the Year competition. The decision, which I believe to be the right one, was a combination of the difficulty in finding a group of volunteers to organise and present our entry and our feeling that we had not sufficiently moved on from the position at the time of our previous entry due to our failure to make progress on the energy saving and on an environmental improvement project.

On to the disappointing outcomes where we have tried our best without success.

The council did everything that it could to try to prevent the closure of our Post Office. On your behalf we spent a lot of time, sent out many protest letters and made countless telephone calls to all parts of the UK including Ireland. Right from the outset we were told that Upton had the lowest usage of any of the offices under threat in Oxfordshire and was the No 1 target for closure. Undeterred we made every effort including asking the Post Office for conditions under which the council could consider a deal where we covered the losses being made in this parish. The terms that they eventually offered just a week before the closure included us having to pay to them a non-negotiable £30,000 security up front to show we were able to cover the losses and were a capable organisation. We could not consider such action and at that point we had to reluctantly accept the inevitable knowing that we had done our best to prevent it.

You will recall that as soon as an application for an additional exit from Beeching Close onto the hump in Station Road was approved by the District and County Councils we called a public meeting because of our concern over safety. Over 50 of you attended with 20 more apologies and left us in no doubt that we should do our best to get the planning decision reversed. We wrote letters to the leader of the District Council and the leader of the opposition at the District Council. The leader of the opposition has still to reply but the leader of the council set up a meeting for us to go down to Abingdon to air our grievances and to seek a review. At that meeting the District Council agreed to seek clarification from the Highway’s Dept. on the contents of their erroneous report. The Principal Highways Engineer has replied with a less than factual response. We have pointed out the errors in his reply to the District Council but it would appear they have accepted his comments, or at least they have failed to respond to our latest letter.

We have now taken the matter up with Ed Vaizey who at the same time has been working with the residents of Beeching Close on other areas where the County Council have behaved in a manner that is less than acceptable.

The way this application has been dealt with by the District Council Planning Dept. and the County Council Highway’s Dept. clearly shows the difficulties we have in dealing with them. To both of them we are a minor irritant that keeps asking awkward questions and won’t go away despite their attempts to ignore both ourselves and some of our parishioners. I regret that despite our showing up the obviously flawed practices of both councils the exit will go ahead and the local residents will I am afraid have to put up with the safety consequences.

The later letters on this issue I have posted on our website so that you can make up your own minds on the competence of those involved in imposing this decision upon us. Please look under ‘Village News’ for an item titled ‘Planning Communication – Station Road’.

Having got the downsides out of the way let us turn to this year’s achievements of which we can be proud.

First an internal plus.

In November we suddenly stumbled on a directive that we must set up a system in which we had to make available to the world a vast array of documentation and it had to be in place by 1^st January 2009. We obviously were not the only council caught on the hop as a few days later the deadline was extended but we had to be seen to be underway by 1^st January. You will be pleased to hear we were much better organised than we might have been and had much of the documentation within the council but had not made it available to the public.

We were very grateful to Brian Rippon who worked miracles on the new website and soon had it set up and tailored for us to use. I estimate it has taken about 100 hours of councillor’s effort in writing, collating and posting documents to get to where we are now. We have now completed the task and this week with more help from Brian the Parish Council section of the website has been tidied up. You now have access on the web to all the council’s documents that the government says you should be able to see, we will be very pleased to hear back any comments on the way the section has been set up and on documentation we have produced. Whilst at the time we were definitely not pleased with the government edict we can now look back and see that the effort we have put in can only improve the way in which both ourselves and future councils will work. The size of the Parish Council section on the website and the number of documents involved has left us with an on-going problem namely the amount of work that will be necessary to keep it up-to-date.

And now to the areas where the village can be proud.

The volunteer spirit within the village is still alive. With the help of a generous donation from Infinium the village volunteer work force has installed new safety mats under the swings and the climbing chains and has made good use of the best of the old safety mats by putting down an all-weather surface to allow greater use of the ball wall.

On another front that volunteer spirit has allowed us to make an enormous improvement to our Recreation Ground by allowing us to take control of mowing our own grass. The work of the 13 volunteers who manned the mowers for us during last summer was great and from the number of compliments that I received about the state of the Recreation Ground I know how much many of you appreciated their efforts. Due to the higher price of petrol and the fact the grass grew so well last summer we have not saved quite as much as I had predicted but including a generous write off on both mowers we still saved over £500 as well as improving the use and the appearance of our amenity.

It is largely down to savings like this by using our volunteer work force on so many jobs over the last 4-5 years and by very sensible forward planning that the Parish Council have been able to put up the sum of £9000 towards the cost of building the extension to our Village Hall. This initial promise from within the parish together with the news that something approaching that sum was also being raised by the residents has enabled UVHAT to go out to other organisations and obtain promises of funding that hopefully will allow work on the extension to begin in the next few months. Had the council not been able to put up that sort of sum I doubt that UVHAT would have had the same success. We hope by this time next year our enlarged hall will be in use and all the volunteers who have helped the council save money and all the councillors past and present who have sensibly planned the council’s finances can take their share of pride in that achievement.

If you have read the earlier version of this report with the note on the Litter Pick you will be delighted to hear that we did match last year with 30 volunteers going out on a cold but fine morning to do their bit in tidying up our parish. Those passing the Recreation Ground will see the results of our labours.

The above items are just some of the topics that has kept us all busy during the last year, there are many others that we have done our best to take forward with various degrees of success including getting part of our AONB tidied up, improving the safety of Chilton Road, creating a cycleway to Blewbury and improving the state of Frog Alley and the adjacent stream.

Mike Brown

Chairman Upton Parish Council

28/03/09

Finance Report

At the time of writing this report, which is not quite the end of the financial year, the council’s bank account shows a holding of £14,630. When the contribution of £9000 towards the village hall extension is made this will give the council reserves of just over £5000 which should be seen as very healthy for a parish of our size. With no further large projects looming in the foreseeable future your council will budget in future to maintain its reserves at that level.

It should be noted that about £400 recently donated by parishioners for improvements to the children’s playground is being held by the council and will not be spent until the extension to the village hall is complete.

The decision to undertake our own mowing has resulted in a saving to the council of just over £500 compared to the cheapest quotation that we received. It has been agreed that both mowers will be written off over a 5 year period at £450 per year. The saving on mowing whilst very acceptable was not as high as we had predicted due to the higher price of petrol last summer, a healthy grass growing year which meant more cuts and a higher than predicted maintenance cost.

Other significant outgoings during the year were

Clerks Salary £1900

Burial Ground Loan £826

Insurance £337

Playground Improvements £850

Village Hall Planning Approval £356

Our total spend in the financial year is predicted to be £6800 with a predicted income of £8000.

Next year we will see a loss of income due to a large drop in bank interest and a much smaller sum invested.

In the coming year the Parish Council will be heavily involved in handling the finances of the hall extension, in order that this in no way interferes with the normal council business separate bank accounts and income/expenditure reports will be set up.

Mike Brown and Clare Lightfoot

Chairman and Finance Officer Upton Parish Council

25/03/09

Parish Council Reports 2008-2009

You will have seen in the Upton News that the reports will not be read out in full at the meeting this year which gives us the opportunity to include more detail than in previous years. Rather than go over the report information in full we feel there are more important issues that we would like to discuss with you in the time we have available at the Annual Meeting. In particular we would like your thoughts on the following

1) It is now 5 years since we worked on the Parish Plan. Its publication created a lot of ideas and work for the council but things have moved on and we need your latest thoughts, criticisms and ideas on what we should be looking at in the coming year.

2) The future of the Volunteer Work Force, which you will remember was an early spin off from our Parish Plan. There is a feeling that it would be better if the Force were to be organised by a small group of volunteers away from the Parish Council. It would be the role of that group to come up with projects, seek the finance necessary and organise the working parties. The advantage would be to further share the workload, to involve more people coming up with more ideas of how we can improve our environment, make it easier for that organisation to seek project funding and it should help make parishioners proud to be a member of the force.

3) What can we do about finding a Parish Transport Representative?

4) The likely effects the work on constructing the hall extension will have on the availability of the hall and the use of the children’s playground.

The Parish Council reports and all the other reports received prior to the meeting can be viewed on the Upton village website and will be made available in hard copy prior to this meeting. We hope will read through them and then at the meeting we will welcome and encourage questions and requests for more information or clarification that we will be pleased to provide.

We really do hope you will be able to join us on Monday April 6^th at 7.45 p.m. for 8.00 p.m. and that we are able to enjoy a very constructive meeting.

Chairman’s Report

This year has seen some changes in our composition having begun the year with just 5 councillors.

In July we welcomed David Mason onto the council and asked him to take the lead role in our work to support and provide facilities for our younger residents.

No sooner were we back to our full compliment than unfortunately in November Belinda Drew had to resign as she was leaving the area. During the 18 months that Belinda served she proved to be a valued and enthusiastic member of the council, we appreciate and thank her for her efforts.

Belinda’s resignation has created a vacancy that has been advertised in accordance with the regulations. We are hoping that we will have co-opted a new member before the Annual Meeting.

You will recall that last year I told you that we were doing our best to share the workload and that has continued this year.

Stuart Norman has continued with the lead role on roads and footpaths and is also our representative on UVHAT.

John Dickens has continued with the lead role on matters relating to our Recreation Ground and also continued as our representative on the Neighbourhood Action Group until January when that role was taken over by Celia Davies to complement her valued work as our Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator.

Tracy Seelig has continued with the lead role on matters relating with the play-area of the Recreation Ground and has taken over from Belinda as our representative on the Harwell Site Liaison Committee.

I have temporarily taken the lead role on planning matters as well as continuing with my responsibilities for amenities and communications (Upton News and Website).

Clare Lightfoot has continued to give us excellent support in her role as your Parish Clerk and Finance Officer.

This has been a year of mixed achievements with just about equal amounts of success and disappointing outcomes.

I will deal with the disappointing internal outcomes first.

One of the downsides (there are many upsides) of having a young council is that other than myself they all have to earn a living and three of them also have a young family to consider and that means as volunteer councillors they have limited time to spend on council activities. This needs to be taken into account when looking at the short-comings we have experienced this year. A disappointment to me personally has been our failure to get the energy saving project off the ground despite agreeing that 3 councillors should take this idea forward some 18 months ago. The idea of this type of project, which has been so successful in many other villages in the county, is to help us all save energy and to make us all aware of the ways available to us in which we can improve our carbon footprint. When the initiative was seen to be floundering within the council we asked for help from the village, none was forthcoming and we will need to agree at the meeting that this initiative is unfortunately dead.

Another internal problem has been our failure to find a member who was prepared to take on the role of Parish Transport Representative following the “retirement” of Peter & Juliet Gardiner who have done sterling work in that role for the past 10 years. This is a very important task if we are to continue to have our say on the standard of bus service we receive and have any influence on other local transport issues. Once again when we realised we had difficulties within the council we asked the village for help and sadly no one has come forward.

The third disappointment for me was our decision not to go ahead and enter the Village of the Year competition. The decision, which I believe to be the right one, was a combination of the difficulty in finding a group of volunteers to organise and present our entry and our feeling that we had not sufficiently moved on from the position at the time of our previous entry due to our failure to make progress on the energy saving and on an environmental improvement project.

On to the disappointing outcomes where we have tried our best without success.

The council did everything that it could to try to prevent the closure of our Post Office. On your behalf we spent a lot of time, sent out many protest letters and made countless telephone calls to all parts of the UK including Ireland. Right from the outset we were told that Upton had the lowest usage of any of the offices under threat in Oxfordshire and was the No 1 target for closure. Undeterred we made every effort including asking the Post Office for conditions under which the council could consider a deal where we covered the losses being made in this parish. The terms that they eventually offered just a week before the closure included us having to pay to them a non-negotiable £30,000 security up front to show we were able to cover the losses and were a capable organisation. We could not consider such action and at that point we had to reluctantly accept the inevitable knowing that we had done our best to prevent it.

You will recall that as soon as an application for an additional exit from Beeching Close onto the hump in Station Road was approved by the District and County Councils we called a public meeting because of our concern over safety. Over 50 of you attended with 20 more apologies and left us in no doubt that we should do our best to get the planning decision reversed. We wrote letters to the leader of the District Council and the leader of the opposition at the District Council. The leader of the opposition has still to reply but the leader of the council set up a meeting for us to go down to Abingdon to air our grievances and to seek a review. At that meeting the District Council agreed to seek clarification from the Highway’s Dept. on the contents of their erroneous report. The Principal Highways Engineer has replied with a less than factual response. We have pointed out the errors in his reply to the District Council but it would appear they have accepted his comments, or at least they have failed to respond to our latest letter.

We have now taken the matter up with Ed Vaizey who at the same time has been working with the residents of Beeching Close on other areas where the County Council have behaved in a manner that is less than acceptable.

The way this application has been dealt with by the District Council Planning Dept. and the County Council Highway’s Dept. clearly shows the difficulties we have in dealing with them. To both of them we are a minor irritant that keeps asking awkward questions and won’t go away despite their attempts to ignore both ourselves and some of our parishioners. I regret that despite our showing up the obviously flawed practices of both councils the exit will go ahead and the local residents will I am afraid have to put up with the safety consequences.

The later letters on this issue I have posted on our website so that you can make up your own minds on the competence of those involved in imposing this decision upon us. Please look under ‘Village News’ for an item titled ‘Planning Communication – Station Road’.

Having got the downsides out of the way let us turn to this year’s achievements of which we can be proud.

First an internal plus.

In November we suddenly stumbled on a directive that we must set up a system in which we had to make available to the world a vast array of documentation and it had to be in place by 1^st January 2009. We obviously were not the only council caught on the hop as a few days later the deadline was extended but we had to be seen to be underway by 1^st January. You will be pleased to hear we were much better organised than we might have been and had much of the documentation within the council but had not made it available to the public.

We were very grateful to Brian Rippon who worked miracles on the new website and soon had it set up and tailored for us to use. I estimate it has taken about 100 hours of councillor’s effort in writing, collating and posting documents to get to where we are now. We have now completed the task and this week with more help from Brian the Parish Council section of the website has been tidied up. You now have access on the web to all the council’s documents that the government says you should be able to see, we will be very pleased to hear back any comments on the way the section has been set up and on documentation we have produced. Whilst at the time we were definitely not pleased with the government edict we can now look back and see that the effort we have put in can only improve the way in which both ourselves and future councils will work. The size of the Parish Council section on the website and the number of documents involved has left us with an on-going problem namely the amount of work that will be necessary to keep it up-to-date.

And now to the areas where the village can be proud.

The volunteer spirit within the village is still alive. With the help of a generous donation from Infinium the village volunteer work force has installed new safety mats under the swings and the climbing chains and has made good use of the best of the old safety mats by putting down an all-weather surface to allow greater use of the ball wall.

On another front that volunteer spirit has allowed us to make an enormous improvement to our Recreation Ground by allowing us to take control of mowing our own grass. The work of the 13 volunteers who manned the mowers for us during last summer was great and from the number of compliments that I received about the state of the Recreation Ground I know how much many of you appreciated their efforts. Due to the higher price of petrol and the fact the grass grew so well last summer we have not saved quite as much as I had predicted but including a generous write off on both mowers we still saved over £500 as well as improving the use and the appearance of our amenity.

It is largely down to savings like this by using our volunteer work force on so many jobs over the last 4-5 years and by very sensible forward planning that the Parish Council have been able to put up the sum of £9000 towards the cost of building the extension to our Village Hall. This initial promise from within the parish together with the news that something approaching that sum was also being raised by the residents has enabled UVHAT to go out to other organisations and obtain promises of funding that hopefully will allow work on the extension to begin in the next few months. Had the council not been able to put up that sort of sum I doubt that UVHAT would have had the same success. We hope by this time next year our enlarged hall will be in use and all the volunteers who have helped the council save money and all the councillors past and present who have sensibly planned the council’s finances can take their share of pride in that achievement.

If you have read the earlier version of this report with the note on the Litter Pick you will be delighted to hear that we did match last year with 30 volunteers going out on a cold but fine morning to do their bit in tidying up our parish. Those passing the Recreation Ground will see the results of our labours.

The above items are just some of the topics that has kept us all busy during the last year, there are many others that we have done our best to take forward with various degrees of success including getting part of our AONB tidied up, improving the safety of Chilton Road, creating a cycleway to Blewbury and improving the state of Frog Alley and the adjacent stream.

Mike Brown
Chairman Upton Parish Council

28/03/09

Finance Report

At the time of writing this report, which is not quite the end of the financial year, the council’s bank account shows a holding of £14,630. When the contribution of £9000 towards the village hall extension is made this will give the council reserves of just over £5000 which should be seen as very healthy for a parish of our size. With no further large projects looming in the foreseeable future your council will budget in future to maintain its reserves at that level.

It should be noted that about £400 recently donated by parishioners for improvements to the children’s playground is being held by the council and will not be spent until the extension to the village hall is complete.

The decision to undertake our own mowing has resulted in a saving to the council of just over £500 compared to the cheapest quotation that we received. It has been agreed that both mowers will be written off over a 5 year period at £450 per year. The saving on mowing whilst very acceptable was not as high as we had predicted due to the higher price of petrol last summer, a healthy grass growing year which meant more cuts and a higher than predicted maintenance cost.

Other significant outgoings during the year were

Clerks Salary £1900

Burial Ground Loan £826

Insurance £337

Playground Improvements £850

Village Hall Planning Approval £356

Our total spend in the financial year is predicted to be £6800 with a predicted income of £8000.

Next year we will see a loss of income due to a large drop in bank interest and a much smaller sum invested.

In the coming year the Parish Council will be heavily involved in handling the finances of the hall extension, in order that this in no way interferes with the normal council business separate bank accounts and income/expenditure reports will be set up.

Mike Brown and Clare Lightfoot

Chairman and Finance Officer Upton Parish Council

25/03/09

District Councillor’s Report 2009

The main issues to which I would like to draw your attention are:

• the expansion of joint working with South Oxfordshire District Council,
• the joint senior management arrangements between the Vale and South Oxfordshire,
• the new waste collection contract,
• Continuing pressures on the Vale’s budget.

I have long thought that the structure of local government in our part of Oxfordshire was wrong. It seemed crazy to me that the Vale, a small authority with fewer than 120,000 electors had its own Chief Executive, its own legal department, HR department etc. and that SODC, a similarly sized council, had the same. For this reason I enthusiastically supported the proposal in the consultation a year or two ago that the Vale and SODC be allowed to form a unitary authority – in other words one that was responsible for the services at present provided by both the County and District Councils. In addition to efficiency savings, this would have the advantage that there would no longer be any doubt in the public’s mind as to which council was responsible for providing a particular service. Sadly, after a change of ministers the government seemed to loose interest in the subject and permitted only a relatively small number of new unitaries. A Vale/SODC unitary was not among them, but the government did say that it expected local authorities to make the savings by joint working anyway.

Three years ago the Vale and SODC jointly outsourced their finance operations to Capita Local Government Services and this operation is overseen by a Supervisory Board made up of councillors from both authorities. This year joint working has been taken substantially further forward with the creation of a joint senior management structure for both councils which now share a chief executive, David Buckle, who was previously the chief executive of South Oxfordshire. David is supported by three very experienced strategic directors who divide between them oversight of all functions of both councils. Under the strategic directors each service has a senior officer responsible for similar operations in both councils so that, for instance, the same person is head of planning at both Vale and SODC. Getting to this position has, inevitably, been a difficult and at times, painful process, as serving officers sought to gain selection for jobs that covered much of their existing responsibilities. It was made slightly easier by the fact that several officers elected to take early retirement and there had been one post vacant. Even so three long serving officers were made redundant, or four if you count Terry Stock, the former chief executive of the Vale who lost out to David Buckle.

This January a contract was awarded jointly by the Vale and SODC for waste collection in both districts. This will entail the weekly collection of food waste, both cooked and raw, and also either recycling or residual waste on an alternating basis. The new arrangements come into operation in SODC this year and in the Vale next October when the present waste collection contract expires. Hopefully, this will mean that any snags with the new contractor will be ironed out in SODC before operations start in the Vale. I believe that it will result in a significant increase in the recycling rate, which has been the experience with similar waste collection regimes which are well established at other councils.

The new contract will also bring substantial financial benefits to both the Vale and SODC. It is anticipated that by municipal year 2011/12, the first full year of operation for the Vale, the benefits of the new contract and the enhanced recycling credit income will save the Vale over £760,000 a year. This will be most welcome as the Vale continues to face relentless financial pressures, particularly as a result of the new duties that the government imposes on the Vale, but does not fund satisfactorily.

A good example of the above is the Council’s experience with concessionary fares. Although the government says that it is fully funding this scheme, this is far from the truth. Last year’s budget, the first covering the new national free bus pass for the over 60’s, contained a provision of £130,000 as our finance officers believed that this is what it would cost the Vale over and above what the government may have provided – and even that is obscured by smoke and mirrors. In the event the new scheme has proved to be even more popular than anticipated, and this year a further £319,000 is required to meet the cost of providing this service.

Last time that I travelled on a bus from Blewbury to Didcot it cost me £2.50 return, (although this was almost a year ago and it may have gone up since). I presume that the fare from Upton would be similar so that just one trip a week would add up to £130 per annum. Compare this with the amount of one’s council tax bill that is retained by the Vale (as opposed to being passed on to the County Council, the Parish Council and the Police) which ranges from £74.87 for a Band A property to £224.62 at Band H, with Band D, the most often quoted measure, at £112.31. The only slight sign of relief is that during the really cold weather a month or two ago the use of bus passes fell quite sharply.

A further financial pressure comes from the credit crunch, from which the Vale is not immune. When the budget was being finalised it was anticipated that lower income from the council’s substantial cash and property investments would reduce revenue income by over £1.1 million, and, if anything, interest rates have eased further since then. All these figures should be seen in the context that this year the Vale will be raising £5.38 million in total from the council tax payer. Our council tax is capped so that once efficiency savings have been exhausted any revenue shortfalls have to be met by cutting services.

I will, as always, be happy to answer any questions that anyone might have about this report or any other council matter, either at the Annual Parish Meeting, by phone (850275), or by email at richard.farrell@whitehorsedc.gov.uk.

Richard Farrell

Upton Parish Transport Representatives (PTR) Report.

Buses: During the year, the 94 service came up for its 4-yearly review under the County Council Review of Subsidised Bus Services programme. Although the previous company had proved to be unreliable and unable to sustain the service, the timings of the buses had been very satisfactory for the village. However, the 94 was under great threat as it was a heavy loss-maker for the County Council. We therefore made representations and attended meetings with the Council to do all we could to save this service, which is of vital importance to the village. In May we heard that the service was to be taken over by Heyfordian, and that the timetable, with minor alterations, would stay very much as it had been before. This was good news – the only disappointment being that the 9.00 a.m. bus had been removed, the one that had proved of most use to many villagers. A 9.50 a.m. service has been substituted which, although free to pensioners, is far too late for most purposes. Since it started on 1^st June, the Heyfordian service, with its comfortable and reliable bus, has proved very satisfactory.

Cycle Track: For many years we have been Sustrans rangers for the Upton end of the track. This unfortunately we are unable to continue to do. There is another ranger, Keith Walton of West Hagbourne, but as he is also in his seventies it is not really possible for him to carry out the heavy work of clearing up bad cases of litter, which is a continuing problem.

Railways: We understand that a planning application has at last been submitted for the radical redesign of the forecourt of Didcot Parkway station.

Upton PTRs: After 10 years as Upton PTRs, we feel the time has now come for us to retire. We sincerely hope a new volunteer can be found, and will be only too pleased to give all the help we can in the meantime.

Juliet and Peter Gardiner

United Charities of the Ancient Parish of Blewbury (Blewbury, Upton and Aston Upthorpe) Report.

The United Charity is managed by a group of Trustees. One of our functions is to provide financial gifts to certain elderly residents of Upton at Christmas time and to contribute to a Christmas lunch for them. This was carried out last year but the number of recipients has, sadly fallen. If anyone feels that they would like to nominate a new recipient to the charity, would they please contact me. There are certain financial criteria to be met, but we guarantee total confidence and careful consideration of any nominations made.

Charmian Whitmell Trustee, representing Upton, Tel: 01235 850135

Blewbury School Report

We are pleased to report that in its recent Ofsted Inspection Blewbury School achieved not only a “good” rating, but one with significant “outstanding” elements. Here are some of the highlights from the report which provide a good summary of the school and what it stands for:

“The school provides an exceptional curriculum” which “captures pupils’ enthusiasm for learning and their thirst for knowledge.”

“Teachers… invariably set interesting and challenging activities that are well matched to pupils’ interests and learning needs”

“Provisional results in the 2008 national tests at the end of Year 6 show standards that are above average in English, mathematics and science”… “Current year 6 pupils are achieving well and are on track to attain the targets set for them and to improve on the current above-average results”.

“Pupils in all year groups are eager to learn, enjoy coming to school and behave exceptionally well.”

“Pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development are outstanding.”

“Pupils are proud of their contribution to the school and to the lives of others through membership of the influential school council and eco-councils” and “thrive on the many opportunities that they have to take responsibility”.

“Parents were unanimous in saying that their children enjoy school and this is reflected in the exceptionally high levels of attendance.”

“The outstanding emphasis on global development has enabled the pupils to have a highly developed sense of the importance of global understanding.”

We believe one of Blewbury’s strengths is its ability to identify areas for improvement and address them. This was reflected in the really encouraging comment from the Inspector that the school had the potential to achieve an “out-standing”.

Aside from the Ofsted inspection, the school has had a very busy and successful year:

• Maintained our excellent staff from 2008/9 into 2009/10
• All new Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum requirements met in full
• The Creative Partnership Project gave children the opportunity to work with an architect and visual artist, solving problems in practical and constructive ways
• The Comenius Project ‘Fit for the Future’ took place in which 6 pupils travelled to France and took part in an Eco Council
• Secured place in “Pathfinder” trial – grant to enable economically disadvantaged children to participate in activities as part of extended schools and beyond.
• 89% of key stage 2 children participated annual activities weekend, where they learn to take risks and extend their perception of their capabilities
• A number of teachers visited Uganda (grant funded) and have been able to bring Uganda “alive” in the class room
• New website launched, new prospectus produced and increased Upton News articles
• Hosted a trainee German teacher in Summer 2008 and will host two further teachers in 2009
• Art Exhibition raised funds for the school and displayed children’s work
• Mid Summer Night’s Dream production by Year 2 in Spring 2008
• The school will introduce a breakfast club in September 2009

Andrea Brown, Local Authority Governor

UVHAT Annual Report 2009

A revised planning application for the hall extension is currently being considered by the Vale of the White Horse District Council. The original plan included dividing doors across the hall to enable two meetings to take place simultaneously. Due to a shortfall in funds available the dividing doors will not now be installed. The revised plan adds a metre to the length of the archive room and includes a window and an emergency escape door. This will facilitate holding two separate meetings at the same time.

Promises amounting to £67,770 have now been received from various official bodies and £5,595 from people living in the village. A further £4,145 has been raised at events held in the village during the past twelve months and the Trust itself has built up some financial reserves in recent years.

The Trustees think, therefore, that they may soon be in a position to go ahead with the scheme to extend the hall – providing the building of the patio and the extension to the car park is deferred. Providing also, of course, that an affordable tender is forthcoming from a reputable building firm.

The Government has reduced the VAT payable in 2009 to 15%, and so completion of the work by the end of the year would save about £2,000.

Accordingly, the Trust has appointed a Managing Architect to oversee the invitation of tenders, the letting of the contract and the execution of the work.

It should be stressed that the work will only go ahead in the next few months if an affordable tender is received.

It is important that the fundraising should continue. Any money received that is not needed for the extension itself can be used for the patio.

Brian Simpson
UVHAT Treasurer

Neighbourhood Watch Report

On the whole we have had a quiet year in Upton on the Neighbourhood Watch front.

In October 2008 there were 2 reports of vandalism in the village, one being an empty property in Fieldside being renovated by builders where damage occurred and the other being flagstones removed from outside a dwelling, also in Fieldside. Both incidents occurred on the same night.

In Frog Alley a car was stolen from the owner’s driveway and in Fieldside a 4 Wheel Drive was stolen also from the owner’s drive.

There were 3 burglaries in the summer of 2008.

One being in Beeching Close and 2 along the Reading Road area of Upton.

Otherwise things have been fairly quiet especially when you compare our few incidents with those in the larger local villages and Didcot itself.

Celia Davies

Upton Organiser NHW 29^th March 2009

St Mary’s Parochial Church Council Report

Church life in the village continues to flourish with a regular congregation attending our weekly Sunday morning services together with the other acts of worship. We now hold a Family Service once a month starting at the later time of 10.00am which over the past year has been well supported by children and their parents. These are set to continue and all are very welcome to attend.

During the year we welcomed our new Rector, Father Jason to St. Mary’s who together with his wife Miranda have now settled in the Benefice living at The Rectory in Blewbury. Together with Father Anthony and The Revd. Louise Butler they lead our acts of worship at St. Mary’s at most of the services and provide important pastoral care. In turn, the Lay Ministry Team and those who serve on our Parochial Church Council to whom we are extremely grateful support the Clergy.

The final phase to complete the refurbishment of the Church building has recently been undertaken namely the internal redecoration. This now complements the new roof, floor, lighting and heating systems that we have installed over the past few years. A great deal of this work was carried out and supervised by our dear friend and long serving Churchwarden Tony West who sadly died during the year. He is sorely missed for many reasons not least as our regular organist.

There will be ongoing repair work as for any building and particularly one of this age but the fabric is now well protected for the foreseeable future.

Our annual fete remains one of the primary sources of fund raising for the work of the Church including the maintenance of the property. The support received from those living in the village for this event is much appreciated.

Julian Sayers 30^th March 2009

County Council Report

The Audit Commission report on the County Council this year gave it an overall rating of three stars, out of a possible four, and “improving well”. This is not quite such a good result as two years ago, but it is still very satisfactory in comparison with many other Councils, including the Vale. The report says that “the Council is delivering better outcomes and infrastructure improvement that are enhancing the quality of life for its residents. Effective partnership working is improving health, reducing inequalities and making Oxfordshire a safer place to live. The environment is well managed, with strong focus on sustainability.”

Areas where there is some criticism are GCE results, road deaths and violent crime. These are difficult matters to address and you may wonder why the Council is blamed for violent crime, when that is not under its control. The answer to that is that the Government is now insisting on “Partnership Working” with other bodies such as the Police and the NHS. If a Partnership fails to deliver its targets the Council has to share the blame. However, as the report gave financial management and use of resources the maximum possible score you can feel satisfied that the Council is using your money wisely.

Elections for a new Council will take place on 4^th June this year but I shall not be standing for re-election. I have done four terms as a councillor on the Vale and the County and I think I deserve a rest. It has been a privilege to represent you, which I have very much enjoyed.

Colin Lamont