Royal Burgh of Crail and District Community Council Minutes of Meeting held Monday, 26 th January 2015 7:15pm. Crail Town Hall Welcome: Present: Jack Jarvis in the chair welcomed all present Jane Deans, David Hobbs, Jack Jarvis, Moira Kay, Victor Reynolds, Peter Salkeld, Ronnie Webster, Eileen Wood Cllr. John Docherty, Cllr. Donald Macgregor, Cllr. Elizabeth Riches Plus 5 members of the public Gillian Tetlow of Scottish Police Apologies: Graham Anderson, Ian Robertson, The meeting started with a brief talk from Gillian Tetlow of Police Scotland. She and a colleague Tracy Elder will be our Community Police Officers. Both are local and know the area well. She commented on the rise in dog fouling and will discuss the situation with the Dog Warden. Police are aware of the unacceptable on-road parking by builders on the new development. The Police have had words with the individuals and will continue to monitor the situation. Gillian said that she had several options open to her including putting notes on car windows and even charges for causing an obstruction if necessary. The Chairman thanked Gillian for her time and said that a visible police presence gives confidence to our residents and so two local community police officers was to be welcomed. Approval of the Minutes of previous meeting held on 24 th November 2014 Proposed: Seconded: Ronnie Webster Victor Reynolds Review of Action Summary: Ronnie Webster: Victor Reynolds: Cemetery Road - Quotes assessed and funding being sought. (See Chairman s Report below) Street lights Crail lighting has been pushed up the agenda within Fife Council and the problems in St Andrews Rd were rectified within a week. Railings Victor has not heard back regarding community service workers.
The alignment problems regarding the steps at the Doocot will be passed to Crail Preservation Society. Ronnie to action. Ian Robertson: Peter Salkeld: Eileen Wood: Cllr. Elizabeth Riches: Street signs Ian has requested an invoice from Fife Council A cheque for 150 for the bench in the cemetery extension has been issued. However, it was reported that Crail Welfare Group may wish to pay for this. Ian to liaise with Ruby Mackie on his return. B940 road closure in About Crail publicised as requested. The attendance at the airfield development drop-in session on Thursday 29 th January will be assessed and, if required, the developer will be invited to attend a Community Council meeting to go through their plans. Waid Academy - It has been determined that there are no plans to provide a swimming pool within the new Waid Academy re-development. Caraille Green - There is considerable confusion about the steps Fife Council are taking to allocate housing at Caraille Green. Further work is required to ensure that the Council and developer are acting within the conditions laid down by the Reporter when approval was given for the development. Cllr. Riches will report back to Fife Council that the Community Council are very concerned about the situation. Lorries churning up road After some confusion as to the exact location of the problem it has now been identified to be Osborne Terrace. Cllr. Riches will pass this back to Transportation dept in Fife Council for them to assess. It was commented that the road in question does cause difficulties for large vehicles such as refuse lorries to manoeuvre. Children from Bow Butts not being able to attend Crail School Cllr Riches gave a very full account of the process whereby children get places at local schools. In this particular case, the school year had already started and the class size was at its maximum. However, with a falling roll, the children will be able to attend Crail School at the start of the next academic year. Jane Deans confirmed all this from her own discussions with the Head of the school. Electric Car Charging Points Crail has been added to the Fife wide list for the provision at some time in the future of charging points. Cllr. Riches reported that there are currently only 18 such points throughout the whole of Fife.
Drainage problems in Anstruther Rd below Dr Emsley s house a solution to this dangerous problem is unlikely to happen very soon due to manpower conflicts. The meeting asked Cllr. Riches to continue pushing the case with Fife Council. Cllr. John Docherty: Overgrown trees at the putting green no further news. Water supply at the putting green funding and long term maintenance issues are being looked at and news is expected in the next few weeks. Chairman s Report: Jack Jarvis prefaced his report by reminding the meeting that the role of the Community Council was a positive one. It can neither demand nor order anybody to do anything but to ensure that Fife Council are always informed of issues that affect Crail. Jack asked the following members to carry out specific roles within the Community Council. He advised that any decisions arising from the work of these people can only be made at official Community Council meetings and minuted accordingly. David Hobbs to have a watching brief over Crail Airfield developments. He is to ascertain whether current use of the airfield exceeds the agreements in place. He will also keep an eye on the proposals (albeit very vague at this point) for future development. Moira Kay to keep an eye on activities at the airfield particularly racedays and car boot sales. Moira Kay and Jane Deans to focus on school and young people related issues and to liaise with Crail in Bloom to get the school more involved in the community. Eileen Wood to follow up on the efforts being made by the East Neuk Forum of Community Councils to bring high speed broadband to the area and, in particular, Crail. Eileen will also add the provision of better mobile phone coverage to this brief. Victor Reynolds and Ronnie Webster will continue the sterling work they are doing regarding the environment, eg. roads, paths, lighting etc and the continuing and worsening situation of dog fouling in Crail. They will be assisted in this particular aspect by Isobell Hanlin. Peter Salkeld will combine his role as Secretary with that of communication via the new Community Council website (www.ccc.aboutcrail.co.uk) and other media.
Graham Anderson will continue to progress the Food Festival. Ian Robertson will continue to be responsible for all things financial. Jack Jarvis will concentrate his efforts on the re-surfacing of the cemetery road. His report continued with: Christmas Tree Lighting this was a great success with well over 600 being raised for the Sick Kids charity. Special thanks go to Jimmy Aird and his friends for the tree and decorations and the work of the elves in collecting money. He also thanked the Fife Councillors for their donations in kind, the Golf Hotel for supplying mulled wine, Moira and Isobell for their help, Betty Kitchin and her singers and finally Carl Spowart and his Santa bike! Cemetery Road The Community Council approved Jack s request to the Crail Common Good Fund for approximately 25,000 to cover the bulk of the cost of re-surfacing the first section of the road between St Andrews Road and the entrance to the Community Hall car park. This will be with tarmac and kerbs. A further 1000 will come from Community Council funds. Jack has also requested funds from the Fife Council locality budget, bereavement services and Lindsay Brown who is responsible for community halls in the area. No responses have been received to date from these additional sources. In respect of the remainder of the cemetery road Jack has been in touch with a local contractor who has quoted 670 for the initial phase of deep digging the road to repair the potholes and to add a camber to the surface to hopefully reduce the problems in the future so that the road will only require an annual maintenance. Crail Community Trust is holding a Coffee Morning on Saturday 31 st January at 10am at the Legion Hall to raise funds towards meeting this cost. The idea of providing a Pavillion at Beechwalk Park is progressing. Fife Council are drawing up plans for a 12m x 12m prefabricated structure. Funding from various sources will be sought. Proposals are also being considered to erect a Green Gym alongside the Pavillion. This could be at least partially funded by Sport Scotland. Peter was asked to publicise both the work on the cemetery road and the ideas for the Pavillion in future editions of About Crail. Jack and Victor have spent a number of days repairing the sea wall below Downie s Terrace. Work is continuing. The meeting thanked Jack and Victor for all their hard work. Jack has paid for materials out of his own
pocket but it was strongly suggested that he should be reimbursed from Community Funds. He declined this offer. Stannah Lifts have been asked to investigate the cost of providing a lift in the Town Hall. There are three options: a single person stairlift, a platform stairlift to take a wheelchair, and a vertical lift in the existing stairwell. The third option is considered the preferred choice as the first two options are more expensive and have a major impact on the staircase. Planning consent will be required for all the options. At this point it is thought that funding for the lift could come from a variety of sources including Crail Town Hall Trust (part of Crail Community Trust), an application to the Helen Main Charitable Trust and others. Treasurer s Report: The treasurer s report is appended to these minutes. The current account balance now stands at 6,522.34 Secretary s Report Planning Applications: Co-operative Shop. High St, Crail - No objections New external plant room etc Ragfield House, Chance Inn, Crail. KY10 3XG No objections Change of use of stable to children s care home (Class 8) including external alterations and extensions to building and erection of storage building Correspondence: Email from Fife Council re replacement of street lights. Noted Documents from Isle of May National Nature Reserve regarding Management Plan Consultation. Noted Letter from the Post Office asking for comments regarding the re-location of Crail Post Office to Crail Food Store. The Secretary is to write to the Post Office reinforcing our desire as a Council and a Community that Crail should not lose a Post Office counter service. We have no objection in principle to the plan to re-locate the Post Office to Crail Foodstore but will ask the Post Office to take into consideration the size of the Foodstore, current and imminent parking restrictions, disabled access and the current location of the Post box. The letter should also stress the merits of The Beehive and the previous experience of the owner as a sub-postmaster. Fife Councillors Reports: Cllr. Donald Macgregor: Regarding the dangerous situation at Denburn Narrows Cllr Macgregor advised that lack of funds prevent Fife Council from any major improvement
for the foreseeable future. The most we can expect are road markings in an attempt to improve the situation. Cllr. Elizabeth Riches: Traffic speeds on the Anstruther Rd into Crail are to be investigated. Peter Salkeld was advised to contact William Welsh of Fife Council to arrange for the update of contact details possible by self-editing. Cllr. Riches told the meeting of the HMIE report which has awarded Waid Academy extremely high marks. We can therefore be assured that our children are getting a very high quality education. Cllr. Riches also reported that the lamps in Crail street lights will be undergoing a programme of replacement with LEDs. This will result in lower running costs and a longer life expectancy for the lamps. Cllr. John Docherty: Cllr. Docherty gave the Secretary a Quick Guide to Contacting Fife Council. This will be promulgated throughout Crail for the benefit of residents. Cllr. Docherty has promised to email to the Secretary full details of the delivery of healthcare so that the information can be used by us all to help monitor the healthcare of the residents. A.O.C.B. 1. After a number of requests for information on where commemorative benches could be located it was agreed that Victor Reynolds will conduct a survey determining where existing benches are in poor condition and could benefit from being replaced. 2. The meeting approved the continued development of the Community Council website. 3. David Hobbs noted that even with only a few properties at Caraille Green being occupied there was already a problem relating to recycling bins. The designated locations for bins were a) too small for purpose and b) although the areas appear to take three bins they are unable to fit in the four that we now have. Cllr. Macgregor will investigate 4. Isobell Hanlin asked why the Crail Common Good Fund was used to purchase gravel for the Marketgate. Ian will be asked to investigate. She also raised the issue of manhole covers in
Marketgate being below the level of the surrounding area, therefore causing a potential accident. Victor Reynolds will investigate and attempt a fix. 5. There were more comments made about the increasing problem of dog fouling in Crail. John Docherty will follow up with Fife Council. 6. Concerns about the re-location of the Post Office were repeated. 7. Ronnie Webster asked that we should investigate the purchase of a new Notice Board for the village. He was asked to get quotes. Ronnie will be presenting an invoice to the Community Council for the materials used in the creation of a new backboard for the basketball court. 8. Victor Reynolds commented on the overgrown shrubs outside No 10 Calder Court. John Docherty has agreed to investigate. Next Meeting: Monday 23 rd February 2015 @ 7:15pm in Crail Town Hall
Appendix A Royal Burgh of Crail and District Community Council Financial Statement Main Account At end of Financial Year 2013/2014 6670.34 Income Expenditure April No transactions May Purchase of metal rake 30.00 Examiners fee for accounts for year ended 31 st March 2014 20.00 June St. Michael Tippers Ltd gravel for Marketgate 742.08 Grant to school for crowns for the King and Queen 60.00 July St. Michael Tippers Ltd gravel for Marketgate 1,528.32 August Admin expense by Treasurer 36.34 September From Fife Council annual administration grant 622.72 From Fife Council common good fund grant for Marketgate gravel 1,027.20 October Pathhead Nurseries top soil, compost etc. for Victoria Gardens 394.38 Subscription to the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland 30.00 November From Fife Council Common Good Fund grant for Marketgate Gravel 1,243.20 December Donation towards purchase of a bench for the village 150.00 2015 January To Green s shop for electricity for Christmas Tree lights 50.00 Totals 2,893.12 3,041.12 Total Funds as at end November 6,522.34
Appendix B Action Summary Cllr. Riches: Cllr. Docherty: Cllr. Mcgregor: Victor Reynolds: Ronnie Webster: Peter Salkeld: To communicate to Fife Council the concerns of the Community Council regarding the allocation / sale of properties at Caraille Green. To follow up the issue of lorries churning up Osborne Terrace. To investigate issues relating to poor mobile phone reception in Crail. To keep pushing for a solution to the flooding issues in Anstruther Rd. Will follow up the issue of the overgrown bushes in Calder Green. Will follow up issue of dog fouling with Fife Council. Will email Secretary with details of Delivery of Healthcare. Investigate the bin situation at Caraille Green. To carry out a survey of benches in Crail. To investigate solution to the sunken man-hole covers in Marketgate. To write a small article regarding dog fouling for inclusion in upcoming editions of About Crail. Investigate provision of new notice board. Follow up handrail issues at the Doocot with Crail Preservation Society. Write to the Post Office re relocation. Write articles about the proposals for the cemetery road and the pavilion to be published in About Crail.