Informal meeting, 20th May 2021

Parish councillors are hosting a drop in online session this Thursday evening from 7pm-8pm on Zoom. We would like to invite residents to attend to give you the opportunity to talk to us about recent concerns raised about how deemed consent has been granted for a barn at Lone Barn Farm in Church Lane.

If you wish to attend then please use the link below to log in. The session will start at 7pm but feel free to drop in any time until 8pm when the session will close.

Or by telephone: 0203 481 5240 using meeting id: 892 5133 4128

Following the drop in session, councillors will separately meet informally to discuss any action they wish to take. Holding meetings at the present time is proving extremely difficult and frustrating. We are not permitted to hold formal council meetings remotely at all now and we also have some councillors and residents who are understandably concerned about meeting in person. If members of the public attend a remote informal meeting, it may be considered a council meeting which would leave any decisions made open to challenge and potentially run the risk of those decisions being deemed invalid.

The other reason why we have decided to arrange the meetings this way is that whilst we are able to hold face to face meetings, we must also balance public safety and think about restricting numbers. This could mean that some residents may not be able to participate in a formal face to face meeting meeting should we hold one in the village hall as, if we reach capacity, we would have to turn people away. This does not sit well with us and we want to give anyone who wishes to speak the opportunity to have their say.  We have also considered holding a meeting outside but the weather forecast is currently awful for the remainder of this week and would make any meeting very difficult.

We do hope that you will drop in to talk to councillors on Thursday if you have concerns but equally do pass on any comments by email. Importantly, we must bear in mind that the site owner does have permission to proceed with building a barn but it is the method by which this has been given that we will be focussing on.