www.wrington.net

Report submitted by Deborah Yamanaka - North Somerset Councillor   The Annual Parish Report was delivered door-to-door, but unfortunately my report as District Councillor was not included. So here it is! NB the Parish Report refers under Old Surgery Site to “an application for a Right of Way designation recently refused”. That is rather misleading. The application for a vehicular right of way was refused, but NSC agreed to start the process for establishing a footpath right of way, as included in my report below. Annual Report for Wrington ward from NSC Councillor Deborah Yamanaka As always I have worked with the Parish Council on many matters including some of those below, and on residents’ individual problems. Flooding – Luckily Wrington village avoided flooding this winter and NSC successfully applied for funds to prevent future flooding to houses in Silver St, The Glebe and Garstons Close. The work is in two phases - Phase 1 to enlarge a stretch of culvert from The Glebe to the brook should be carried out this summer, but Phase 2 in the field off Rickyard Rd will have to wait until 2015. Surgery – Wrington’s small rented surgery in Broad St has not improved since last year. There are now notices outside to say it is only for eligible patients without transport, which is not what was agreed originally. The temporary planning permission for use as a surgery will run out in Jan 2015. I have enquired about this but not had an answer so far. Former Surgery Station Road – Medcentres now owns this building and has applied for planning permission to replace it by 4 houses. This went to appeal in April and we are waiting for the result. Last year the Parish Council applied for a Right Of Way through the site which the housing development would block. NSC decided in March to start the process for establishing a footpath rather than a vehicular ROW through the site and the appeal inspector should take this into account. Other appeal issues are building design in the Conservation area and the effect on the protected trees. There is also a group in Wrington trying to raise money to buy the building for community use. NSC Councillor numbers and ward boundaries – the number of councillors will be reduced from 61 to 50 for the 2015 elections. The Boundary Commission has still not finalised some ward boundaries, their latest proposals being a 3-member ward for Wrington, Churchill, Blagdon, Congresbury & Cleeve; and a 2 member ward for Winford and Long Ashton. This produced a lot of opposition! The final result will be published in June. NSC Budget – more cuts again this year. The Conservative majority agreed to some Opposition proposals, ie no cuts to school crossing patrols or community transport this year, and a lower increase to community meals prices. NSC accepted the Government’s Freeze Grant equivalent to a 1% CT increase, and so the NS element of Council Tax did not go up this year. Tropicana – things have moved on for this beach site in Weston-super-Mare since Derek Mead of the Trop Ltd won the Worle byelection as an Independent last year.  NSC now supports “in principle” redevelopment of the pool provided that funding can be found. Clevedon Hospital – there are discussions about the future of the hospital, where a planned rebuild was stopped in 2012. The options include increasing facilities for out-patients eg x-ray, ultrasound etc & either keeping or removing the 18 inpatient beds. The Minor Injuries Unit will not be affected by these changes. Clevedon hospital covers not just Clevedon but also the areas of North Somerset outside Weston. Core Strategy – the proposed housing figures in NSC’s new planning policy, the Core Strategy were challenged. The Appeal hearing for this was in March and unfortunately the Inspector did not agree with NSC’s proposed new housing figures of 17,000 and considered instead that the housing requirement should be in the range 20,220 - 25,950 dwellings. NSC is now working out how and where these extra houses should be built. Airport  - Airport matters have been less controversial since the airport was granted planning permission for expansion in 2010. Passengers have now climbed back to pre-recession levels and it remains to be seen whether the road traffic and noise problems predicted at the time of the expansion application will come to pass. Planning permission for the revised on-site hotel is expected soon. Deborah Yamanaka tel 01934 862109     email <d.yamanaka@btinternet.com>