District Report for Box Vale February 2024.

Firstly the annual debate on our budget setting for 24/25. With a predicted deficit of £1.4 m, this has become controversial again because along with everything else, we have to review the level of cost and income from runniour car parking service, which is at the moment subsidized by the council tax payers to an amount that is not entirely clear, until councilors have all the facts before them.

We are told that the cost to Babergh DC, to run, police and repair all our car parks, is just short of £480,000 but we are not quite sure of the income we get through long-term parking charges and fines etc. My group at full council has asked for more details to enable us to make a balanced decision on behalf of our residents and council taxpayers.

There is no such thing as free parking, it is either funded by the users or the rate payer as a whole, some of whom may not be a user or even have a car at all. Is that justified??

The main share of our costs to run the car parks is the government levied Business rates which currently stand at just short of £300,000. While I personally support free car parking for the user for 90 minutes to help churn and trade in the market towns, this is becoming ever harder to balance without the DC having the finances to facilitate it and keeping other services and general benefits, such as sport and leisure provision, grants and subsidies as well.

More controversially nationally is the great post office scandal, that I am sure that now the truth is coming out will be sorted out quite quickly after over 20 odd years of hurt for the innocent Sub postmasters and mistresses. We can but hope that the chain of brilliant branches in our villages, town and cities will survive the Fujitsu/government incompetence and cover up.

Please everyone go into your local and see how much the foot soldiers can offer and do for you.

Following on from the sewage scandal along with horrendous revelations of lack of acceptable standards amongst politicians and members of our police and fire service, the general public have a right to ask questions of those who have been elected and paid to serve us, it seems that when national figures in government set such a bad example, others in the national chain follow suit and standards fail and fall, into a rush to just grab for oneself. Really horrible to see.

It is always said that a fish goes bad and rots from the head down to the rest of its entrails and body down to its tail. Never a truer word was spoken.

Good news across Babergh Mid Suffolk is that we have managed to build 128 new affordable homes in 2023, this is as a result of exception sites put forward by communities, windfall sites from private developments and new homes we have built on our own council owned land.

One piece of bad news is that we have had to sell 9 as a result of the dreadful, still in place right to buy legislation from a long bygone era. Still a really good effort with a net gain of 119 homes.

As part of our extending the future housing needs requirements well into the future of our long term Joint Local Plan, Babergh has invited landowners/developers to submit land that might be suitable for housing development, to approach the council and engage with us to fulfil our housing needs into the future. This process is called, A call for sites and will run until the end of spring 2024.

It is hoped that this process will guarantee us housing land into the future.

It is very important that with our JLP stage 1 in place, that we decide our own future development and not let it be decided by government inspectors at appeal.

The village of Boxford recently held its own planning appeal regarding the application for 64 houses at the top of Sandhill running up to the 1071 by-pass, this event was held in our own Spinney HQ building, by kind permission of the scouts/guides management group. I attended for the whole day and along with other villagers spoke my very best in support of the vast majority view that this application should be refused on many grounds including vehicle capacity and highway safety throughout the village. My view remains that we need local needs houses that are affordable to villagers and local people. Not another carbuncle of unaffordable houses for speculative gain and sale by profit hungry developers on the open market  .

 This brought back to me many years of attendance at this venue, when my own two daughters attended these groups, a great venue and those that run it for the benefit of local children should be applauded for keeping these premises in good order for yet another generation.

So sorry that I was unable to write my column for January issue last month, with huge council commitments and a full order book with my furniture making/carpentry business, time just got the better of me and the sand ran through too quickly.

If you need help in the coming months, just call, email or rugby tackle me in the street.

With my gammy knee, still awaiting surgery, that is not hard to do at the moment.

Bryn.hurren@babergh.gov.uk       tel 01787 210854  mob  07771 508348