Meetings
The full Council meets on the 3rd Monday of every month
excepting August.
All meetings are held at the Blackbourne, Blackbourne Road –
clearly signed from Ashfield Road just north of the railway
crossing.
The meetings start at 7.30 unless otherwise notified. The agenda
is published on the notice board at Crown Mill on Station Road on
the preceding Tuesday. It is also posted on the website and is
available by email or in hard copy on request from the Parish
Clerk.
The public are welcomed to all meetings and have 2 points on the
agenda – towards the beginning and end of the session – when they
are invited to speak.
Meeting dates until May 2010 are:
June 15th
July 20th
September 21st
October 19th
November 16th
December 21st
January 18th
February 15th
March 15th
April 19th
May 17th – the Annual Meeting when officers are elected etc. for
‘10/’11 (starts 7.00pm)
Minutes are available on this website and are
available by email or in hard copy from the Parish Clerk. Copies
are also filed for reference in the Elmswell Memorial Library,
Cooks road, where the whole of the previous year’s Minutes are also
available. Approved Minutes, in bound form, are lodged with the
Suffolk Records Office in Bury St Edmunds as an annual May-April
volume each year.
The Council’s Planning Committee meets on the first
Monday of each month, including August as necessary.
These meetings are convened only when the timescale set by the
Planning Authority, Mid Suffolk District Council, is such that the
parish council’s comments are required sooner than the meeting
schedule of full council will allow.
Planning Committee meetings are posted on the notice board at
Crown Mill on the preceding Thursday. They are held at the
Blackbourne, as above, and the rules and procedures of full Council
meetings are followed, including the encouragement of public
participation. Agendas and Minutes are made available as per those
of full Council.
Meetings could be held if necessary on:
1st September
6th October
3rd November
1st December
5th January
2nd February
2nd March
6th April
4th March
The Council also has a standing Complaints Committee
which meets, within the same framework as full Council, as and when
necessary. It has not met this year.
There are 2 standing Working parties which deal with the
day-to-day detailed matters with which the council must deal. They
are the Finance & General Purposes Working Party and the
Environment & Facilities Working Party. The Working
parties can make no decisions which bind Council. Their (often
lengthy, detailed & technical) deliberations produce
Recommendations which have to go before full Council before any
action is determined. The public is not invited to these meetings,
although non-councillors can be invited along when their expertise
or experience might be thought to be of benefit to a specific
discussion topic. Any Councillor can opt to join these Working
Parties which are less formal than Council or Committee meetings
but which are guided by the Council’s Standing orders.
The working parties sometimes appoint, with Council’s approval,
smaller groups, often including non-councillors, to deal in detail
with specific topics. Currently there is:
- a Bacon Factory Strategy Group which is invited to meetings
with the site’s developer, planners, highways officers etc. so that
the village is properly represented throughout the process of
determining the way forward for this massive site at the heart of
the village.
- a Youth Facilities group which trawls through the considerable
range of possibilities towards recommending equipment to form the
basis of the council’s stated aim of improving leisure and
recreational facilities for children and young people in
Elmswell.
- the Blackbourne Development Working Party which has the
long-term brief of producing further plans, costings and a
management scheme for further consultation towards the extension of
the hall at Blackbourne to provide an activity hall and dedicated
youth facilities.
Enquiries on any or all of the above, or on any Council matter,
are invited through the parish Clerk, Peter Dow at the Parish
Clerk’s Office, Station Road, Elmswell IP30 9HR telephone 01359
244134 email clerk@elmswell.suffolk.gov.uk.
The office is situated on the Station Road Industrial estate,
behind the Fox pub and right next to the railway line above
Gobblins factory premises. It is open for business on weekdays from
9.00am – 5.30 pm, excepting Bank Holidays. The answerphone is
monitored
daily.