Parish October Newsletter.

Reminds the citizenry that next May The Parish hopes that there will be an Election for Parish Councillors. For that to happen there is a need for more than eleven persons to offer themselves as candidates. We are given to understand that one qualifies to be a Parish Councillor if either living or working in Tisbury Parish. The Word Tisbury refers to the Parish Of Tisbury and not the Parish of West Tisbury. One recalls that way back in the 1960’s aggravation was suffered by Reading Borough Councillors on being advised that working in the Borough was no longer sufficient qualification to be a Councillor, whether a Rate Payer therein or not. Tisbury has not had an election for Parish Councillors for circa twenty years. Thus our existing Councillors were either returned unopposed or were later co-opted by sitting Councillors, ours hold Office by default .

Having myself twice stood unsuccessfully to be an Independent New Forest District Councillor in the late 1970s, am well aware that the Electorate may not see things the way an unsuccessful candidate does. If later opinions change, sitting Councillors have a tendency to adopt previously rejected manifestos as their own. Of course not seeing eye to eye affects even Parish Councillors, for being returned uncontested, doesn't necessarily mean one would have been returned had there been an Election.

There have been happenings in Tisbury Parish which have disturbed me. The greatest of these was the decision of the then Parish Council to support the Planning Application for some sixty houses to be built at Station Works a then prime site of employment in Tisbury, which as such was, and again should be ‘The Jewel in Tisbury’s Crown.’ The Village is incredibly fortunate to have such a worksite in our midst, and one really wonders how the then Parish Council saw fit to support an application from St Modwyn Property Co. to build houses on a site that might better have been retained as a place of employment. Possibly encouraged by Central Government we will now have housing on the site regardless.

The Parish Council’s decision brought to mind the ‘Judgement of Solomon’. Because either the Site at Hindon Lane which already had permission (Following a very expensive Planning Inquiry) would be released for Development, or housing was to be built at Station Works, despite that so doing would have contravened the wish of the village as expressed in the TisVis Questionnaire, Station Works being outside the Village’s House Building Envelope.

Fortunately the Salisbury District Council gave the Parish Council’s decision the thumbs down. Parish Councillors are as entitled to their opinions as are others, but one wonders how such a seemingly perverse decision was reached by Tisbury Parish Council, or how it was that it expended our money pursuing the cause. Some are bemused that much of the new Estate at Hindon Lane sports the same name as that of my house, as too another house in an adjoined Parish. I wouldn't suppose so naming the Development was a matter of the Parish Council getting its own back, for it probably signified a lack of imagination. Were not the Grosvenors rather than the Wyndhams the previous owners of this Hindon Lane site ? One envisages no end of further Postal Delivery Mishaps, but being vaguely distantly related to Jane Wyndham, I didn't compla

FONTHILL CRICKET PAVILION. Something else that disturbs me, is the allocation of R.4 money from Messrs FRY, the builders of the Hindon Lane Development. We seem to be further funding the Cricket Pavilion at Fonthill. Why is this a priority for the spending of Tisbury’s R4 Money. Who owns this Cricket Field and ramshackle Pavilion ? Would one be wrong to suspect that both belong to the Fonthill Estate . If such is the case is The Parish Council effectively giving our cash to the Fonthill Estate? No doubt if the Cricket Club has legal title to a Lease on the land , our Parish Council will have satisfied itself as to the period of unspent tenancy. Have we seen the Plans and Consent for this Pavilion. If there is such an application made, my search of the Wiltshire Unitary Authority’s web site has failed to reveal it. The only recent applications lodged refer to properties other than a Cricket Pavilion. Clearly Tisbury Parish Council would not have promised our R4 funding to a ‘Castle in the Air.’ We have previously funded Cricket in Fonthill, but what contributions have Fonthill Parishes made to this Cricket Club?

One might hope to have seen a list of its fixtures displayed, or read of it in Focus ‘Our Community Magazine’, but then one reads nothing there of Tisbury’s own Cricketing either. The request for this Grant of Funds to Fonthill was aired at the Tisbury AGM, and when a show of hands was called for some voted in favour of Fonthill Cricket, who to the best of my knowledge neither lived nor worked in Tisbury Parish.

Tisbury United’s Football pitch looks in a very sorry state to me, and might have benefited from levelling and the installation of drainage, and being reseeded for better grass. One sees that Dinton has recognised its priorities in that respect.

Its all too easy with the best of intent to spend other people’s money. That being so it would be a fine thing if the detail was better explained to Parishioners. Do we as yet have this money in our Account ? Even if we do it might have been better to have allowed the incoming and hopefully balloted for Parish Council decide where this R4 funding be spent.

AS TO THE ELECTIONS MAY 2013. So much whinging is but an expression of concern, rather than an implied criticism of persons doing their very best for the Public Good. It would be nice to have an Election next year, because co-option is an unsatisfactory process. Those who are willing to become Councillors should stand for Election at the appropriate time, for one has less respect for all who creep in under the wire immediately after a failed Election Process.

That Electors may not agree with one’s opinions is neither here nor there, certainly no cause for embarrassment if one fails to be elected. When I failed at a second attempt to get myself elected to the aforementioned Council, I thought the more fool them. It is gratifying, when later things turn out the way one predicted, for apart from anything else, that was all one sought to see happen in the first place.

One does not have to be a Retiree nor a Village Trader to be eligible to be a Parish Councillor, but maybe those of us who feel that age or infirmity might prevent regular attendance at Parish Council Meetings might better resist the temptation to stand in the stead of younger men and women, for theirs not ours is the morrow.

The Lord Mayor’s Show not on the 10th of November 2012 but as depicted by George Cruickshank in 1836.