Before I go completely apoplectic at the parish council meeting on Wednesday 21 March 2012 can anybody tell me how an increase in the precept of such magnitude can be justified?
Derbyshire County Council …………. Increase in Council tax….. 0.0%
Derbyshire Police Authority……….. . Increase in charge……. … 0.0%
Derbyshire Fire Authority ……………. Increase in charge……. … 0.0%
Derbyshire Dales District Council ….. Increase in Council Tax …..0.0%
Parwich Parish Council……………… Increase in Council Tax….. 46.1% !!
For a village of less than 400 souls this is some kind of increase. What on earth can a Parish of this size spend an additional £2000 on?
I am not aware of any costs to the Parish Council other than an extremely expensive Parish Clerk, an expensive Internal Auditor, and a mowing contract, that even before the debacle of last year, would have made Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club green with envy.
Please let me know?
(PS you should have seen the diatribe before I watered it down!)
John B
PARWICH.ORG 
Hi John
I am pleased to see that I am not the only one to be outraged at the rise in Parwich Parish Council tax bill. With respect to the members of the Parish Council it would appear that they are well out of there depth with regard to financial matters. I have to ask the question do we really need a Parish Council? I would expect to see more comments in the coming days on this issue , or is there such appathy in our community that nobody cares.
Yes, the increase in the Parwich Parish Council Tax element seems excessive and I don’t know the details.
What I also know is that I am more than happy to ‘leave it to others’ to sort the Parish Council’s responsibilities. I don’t think people are queuing up when there is a vacancy on the Parish Council. I never attend the meetings (shame on me), although I usually do read the Minutes of the meetings. I expect that I speak for most villagers.
I for one would be happy to ‘do my tiny bit’ by going back to the time when we shared the mowing of the tiny green on Creamery Lane with the residents living around the green. I realise that it wouldn’t make much difference on the cost of the Mowing contract, let alone on the total Parish Council tax element, but it’s a start (and an offer)!
There was a person who did ‘more than his bit” by mowing the cricket field until he was told not to because he wasn’t insured.
I noticed that the Parish Council were unable to discuss setting the precept at their meeting in December as the full counill was not in attendance and it was scheduled for discussion in January. No meetings of this meeting have been made available on the blog. It would have been useful if they had been made available, or the Parish Council had posted information about why they were setting such a high precept. It is disappointing that the first people knew of the increase was once the council tax bill hit the doormat. Better communication from the Parish Counil would be good.
From what I can gather from different sources, the increase in council tax increase is due in part to this mowing issue.
I have made some enquires about this issue of insurance, but can anyone tell me if the Parish Council have third party public liability insurance that covers all parish grounds.
If so, wouldnt it be sensible to erect exclusion notices to these areas that need to be mown, saying that all persons are excluded from these areas when machinery is being used. Then and only then, the villagers may be able to take up the mowing of these areas.