May 2025 Minutes
May 2025 DRAFT Minutes of the Annual Parish Council Meeting
Grasby Parish Council C/o Ash Grove Farm, North Willingham, Market Rasen, LN8 3RJ Telephone 07890 238463 Email: grasbyparishcouncil@gmail.com
Minutes of the Council Meeting held Wednesday May 21st 2025, at Grasby Village Hall
Present: Cllr. R Bennett, Cllr. P Grimes, Cllr. J Brown, Cllr. C Mead, Cllr. S Riley and District Councillor Cllr. P Morris.
Public forum: no members of the public attended.
32.25 Election of Chair: Cllr. P Grimes proposed Cllr. R Bennett. Proposal seconded by Cllr. J Brown. Cllr. R Bennett was unanimously voted as Chair for the coming year.
33.25 Election of Vice Chair: Cllr. P Grimes proposed Cllr. J Harris in his absence. Proposal seconded by Cllr. R Bennett. Cllr. J Harris was unanimously voted as Vice Chair for the coming year subject to his acceptance.
34.25 Apologies for absence: apologies were accepted from Charlotte Wright (Clerk), County Cllr. J Bean and Cllr. J Harris.
35.25 Declarations of Interest: None.
36.25 The minutes of the meeting held 19th March 2025 were approved and signed as a true record.
37.25 Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) Matters: No report. Cllr. James Bean was elected as the North Wolds County Councillor on May 1st. Due to other duties he was unable to attend but hopes to make our next meeting in July.
38.25 West Lindsey District Council (WLDC) Matters: Cllr. P Morris reported that negotiations on the Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) continue but no consensus has been reached. WLDC have until the 28th November to submit proposals to the government. It was also reported that WLDC will remain in place until at least May 2028, with a possibility that the reorganisation may be halted subject to an ongoing government review of the cost/benefit analysis.
Cllr. P Morris wished to place on record his appreciation of the Neighbourhood Planning Steering Group’s efforts in producing an excellent pre-submission version of the Neighbourhood Plan. In his opinion, this is the best example he’s seen to date.
39.25 Clerk’s report: None (due to absence).
40.25 Highways matters: On May 13th members of the Parish Council and the Head Teacher of All Saints Primary School met with representatives of the Highways Department outside the school to review the effectiveness of the waiting restrictions on Vicarage Lane. Further to this meeting, Highways have today submitted plans to modify the restrictions. After discussions focussed on children’s safety, the Parish Council support the proposed changes subject to receiving the views of the Headmistress on this matter. Cllr. S Riley will contact the school to progress. Note: unless a response is made to Highways by June 20th the changes will go ahead as proposed.
It was noted that the state of the footpath on the Viking Way has badly deteriorated.
41.25 Finance: the following schedule of payments and receipts were approved:
(i)C Wright, salary April- £142
(ii)C Wright, salary May- £142
(iii)C Wright, expenses February and March- £57
(iv)Zurich, insurance- £200.50
(v)M Williams, grass cutting- £396 + £132
(vi)H Metcalfe, Neighbourhood plan consultancy work- £2808
(vii)Groundwork UK, grant underspend- £55.55
(viii)WLDC, defibrillator maintenance- £110
(ix)LALC, annual subscriptions- £172.04
The annual audit and accounts return for the parish were approved subject to clarification by the Clerk. Accordingly, the annual governance and accounting statements were signed off by the Chair on behalf of all members.
It was noted that Helen Metcalf has requested immediate payment of £1,643 in relation to an outstandingly invoice. Cllr. C Mead will raise this with the Clerk.
42.25 Neighbourhood Plan Update: Cllr. C Mead reported the following –
A full, pre-submission draft of the Neighbourhood Plan is now available on the parish council website. This is now subject to a mandatory consultation period, known as Regulation 14 Consultation, which formally starts today and will run to the 6th July. Flyers publicising this consultation and inviting feedback have been posted to all households in the parish. Social media posts reminding residents to review and feedback on the plan are to be made shortly. In addition to residents, a list of 161 agencies and interested parties was provided by Nev Brown of WLDC for consultation participation. Emails have been sent to all these bodies, although approximately 20 have failed due to the addresses being either out of date or incorrect. These will be reviewed and actioned by Cllr. C Mead and Cllr. S Riley together with any additional parties to be contacted.
A ‘drop-in’ session is to be held on June 2nd between 3pm and 9pm at the village hall for residents or other consultees to discuss the plan and provide feedback directly to Steering Group. Feedback can also be sent to the group via email, completing an online form, over the phone or in writing.
After the Regulation 14 Consultation period, focus will turn to the completion of the Site Environmental Assessment (SEA) Screening Report to be submitted to WLDC together with the Neighbourhood Plan for independent review.
It was noted that the parish council at an extraordinary meeting held on April 30th at the village hall, gave their support to the parish aspirations as expressed in Annex B of the latest version of the Neighbourhood Plan.
43.25 Planning matters: Planning application WL/2025/00291 has recently been made regarding the erection of detached garage with ancillary garden room accommodation at 5, Bentley Lane. There were no issues raised on this matter.
44.25 Correspondence: None received.
45.25 Superfast Broadband: Cllr. J Harris has been in contact with the WLDC Community Broadband Officer. Openreach have no immediate plans to provide full fibre in Grasby at this moment, but this does not mean that they may decide to expand their network in the area in the future. The government aim is to have 95% coverage UK by 2025 and 100% by 2030. In addition, Quickline have been awarded the contract to provide Gigabit link connectivity in our area by 2026, so we await their plans. We will continue to regularly lobby the Community Broadband Officer for a specific date.
46.25 Parish Council website: The refreshed website went live on the 1st May as directed by the Chair. Some content, such as pictures and maps of Grasby, are yet to be updated but the remainder of the refresh is complete. The general feedback is that the site is clearer, more informative and up-to-date. Work continues to complete the changes.
Cllr. S Riley was authorised to procure 100GB of permanent cloud storage on behalf of the parish council, at a one-off cost of £26.31, to store data files over 2.4 Mb (the limit imposed by LALC). This space can also be used by the parish council to back-up important or legally required retained data, to protect against hacking and improve our data security.
47.25 Items for next agenda: as previous list. A full review of the financial return will be held to clarify points raised, such as VAT.
48.25 Date and time of next meeting: Wednesday 16th July 2025, 19:15 at the Village Hall.
Meeting Closed: 21.14 pm. These minutes are draft until approved at the above meeting.