Dear Resident
The West Hill Parish Council Campaign (“WHPCC”) are very pleased to have achieved our main objective of creating a parish council for West Hill. The EDDC Cabinet approved the recommendations at their meeting on 13th July, which will go for ratification by Full Council on 27th July.
The recommendations in full are:
* A new Parish Council be established for the area known as ‘West Hill’
* That the boundary be as set out in Appendix B (attached)
* That the new Parish Council be known as ‘West Hill Parish Council’
* That the Membership will comprise of 7 councillors
* That no warding provisions are incorporated in the Parish Council
* That there be consequential changes to the remaining wards of Ottery St Mary Town Council
* That these recommendations are duly published and the appropriate Order be made with delegated authority to the Chief Executive to incorporate all necessary provisions into the Order
* That it be noted the Parish Council will come into formal legal effect on the 1st April 2017 and the first elections will be held in May 2017.
This is a long overdue step for West Hill, by some margin the largest village in East Devon without its own parish council. We know that we have had overwhelming support from West Hill residents, who want West Hill to have its own voice.
We are however very disappointed with the final decision on the boundary. We were confident that we had made a sound argument for the original ward boundary, which has been West Hill’s boundary for over 100 years. You can read our full submission the WHPCC website However, it proved to be impossible to take this argument further without compromising the overall goal of achieving a parish council for West Hill.
The Local Government Boundary Commission for England are about to start a review of the District Council ward boundaries. “Option A” presented to the Cabinet was to defer any decision on a parish council for West Hill until after this review has been completed. In effect this would mean after 2019. WHPCC felt this would be a completely unacceptable delay. It also seemed logical to us that the West Hill parish council question should be resolved before the Boundary Commission starts its review. Parish council boundaries are the building blocks of any new or revised district ward boundaries.
WHPCC would have liked to pursue the argument for the original West Hill ward boundary to be the boundary of the new parish council. The “red boundary” proposed by EDDC as “Option B” has improved matters in that the northern end of Toadpit Lane is now included in West Hill, as is part of Higher Metcombe. On the other hand, even more of the countryside to the east side of the village has been left within Ottery St Mary parish, including the ancient monument of Belbury Castle.
We disagreed with the consultation process that the Chief Executive adopted – in particular giving greater weight to those people living in the disputed (hatched) area than those living in the centre of the village. Also he ignored guidance that boundaries should be fixed and identifiable, e.g. roads, rather than the field boundaries and tracks which make up the eastern side of the new parish. The consequence of the Chief Executive’s decision-making process was that a few landholders were able to have a huge influence on the boundary.
It became clear that trying to pursue the arguments about the consultation process and the recommended boundary at the Cabinet meeting would be virtually impossible. Cabinet members would very likely have felt unable to make a final decision, and because of the time constraints this would mean they would have had no alternative but to approve “Option A” and call a halt to the governance review now. As WHPCC considered this to be unacceptable, we decided it was best to accept the compromise of a very much reduced boundary in order to achieve the primary objective of achieving a parish council.
The extremely tight time schedule between publishing the Cabinet Agenda on the evening of 4th July (the first time we had seen the recommendations), and the Cabinet meeting on 13th July meant that we had no time to call a public meeting or to consult more widely in the village. The WHPCC group, which consists of representatives from many village organisations, jointly came to the decision to support Option B in order to achieve our main goal of creating a parish council for West Hill.
It has been an unfortunate consequence of the difficult passage of this campaign, with radical disagreements with Ottery St Mary Town Council, that there has been considerable acrimony. WHPCC hope that now the decision is made, we can work positively with all our neighbouring parish councils in the future.
Margaret Hall
Chairman, West Hill Parish Council Campaign