Christmas Greetings

A merry Christmas and a happy New Year

Parish Council By-election 15th December 2011

Following the resignation on health grounds of one of the Parish Councillors the Parish Council was contacted by Chris Newsome with an expression of interest to serve. This was the only contact received by the Parish Council and under normal circumstances would have resulted in an appointment by co-option or if more than one expression of interest had been received a selction would have been made by the council. This would have had no cost to the community.

However under electoral law if ten members of the public request an election one must be held. In this instance ten residents of Chestnut Drive, Gilberdyke, comprising Mike Whitleys family and close neighbours wrote to the East Riding Council calling for an election.

As a result the council taxpayers ended up paying for an election, which in ball park figures is £3000. This money was not budgeted for and will have to be borrowed from other funds then replaced by increasing the precept for next year.

Increasing the precept for next year is not something the Parish Council want to do in times of austerity, so will have to cut back on other expenditure. The £3000 would have gone a long way towards a skate park/BMX facility for the village kids.

Well done to the Chestnut Drive gang of ten - your actions simply jeapordise progress and to hear your hero state in the aftermath of the count (which showed almost three to one majority for Chris Newsome) that he did not expect to win anyway, makes the wasted time, effort, and money almost criminal!

Drainage project progress

I'm delighted to report that phase 2 of the drainage work is now underway. Completion of phases 2 and 3 will give confidence to those residents of Westbrook Road and Crescent who suffered so drastically during the 2007 flood. Its a great pity that so much delay was caused to the project but luckily no-one, that I am aware of, has had floodwater into their houses since the catastrophic event (although some came pretty close on at least one occasion).

This work in the village is another major step along the way but we must not forget the works still required to complete improvements to the outfall to the River Ouse at Blacktoft.

None of this improvement would have happened without the Parish Council and the Gilberdyke Flood Action Group who had to fight every inch of the way to complete the investigation and obtain the Mason-Clark report which was the instrument in compelling the relevant authorities to act.

Special thanks must go to our ward councillor Paul Robinson for his tireless work in pressing matters forward despite many personal attacks and attempts to obstruct progress.