Gnosall Parish Council           

Sadly, the summer months are almost gone and autumn is beginning to make its entrance with a few trees already displaying beautiful autumnal shades of copper and days getting noticeably shorter.

In our last edition of GMK we were looking forward to an event packed GFest, the Fun Fair weekend, re-opening of the Boardwalk, opening of the Chippy Jumps new play area and judging of the Best Kept Village.  Updates on these events and other projects will be included in this edition of GMK.

You may remember that a leaflet was included in the last GMK inviting new members to attend Gnosall Patient Forum. I am pleased to report that membership has increased significantly and I would like to thank those who have decided to join the Forum as it is an excellent opportunity to help shape the future of health services and patients’ views are really important.

I will keep my introduction fairly short this time and let others bring you up to date on topics, news and events around the parish which I hope you will find informative and interesting.      

Cllr Pat Alker

Chair of Gnosall Parish Council

Readers will be aware that the Parish Council is informed about any planning applications within the Parish and may comment upon them as a statutory consultee, but the final decision lies with the Local Planning Authority – in our case, Stafford Borough Council.

It is often the case that residents have information about applications which can be very helpful in allowing the committee to come to a view. Therefore, we have always had Public Open Forum at the start of our meetings, so that people can come and have their say. In this way, worries may be eased and information shared with councillors before they make a comment on applications before them.

From time to time, certain applications provoke strong feelings and on occasions like these, the committee tries very hard to ensure that all voices are heard. However, it can be the case that there is lots of discussion at the start of the meeting which councillors then have to recall some time later in the evening! We have therefore decided to slightly vary our procedure. Instead of having all members of the public say their piece at the start of the meeting, regardless of where the application they are concerned about appears on the agenda, we have decided to take Open Forum comments immediately prior to the relevant application. In this way, comments will be fresh in the mind when the particular application is discussed.

Of course, if we were to have several contentious applications on one agenda, our meeting could become very long indeed! We therefore ask that members of the public try to arrange between themselves who is going to say what, so that there is no unnecessary repetition. This is in no way to curtail comments but simply to ensure efficient running of the meetings.  We will review how the new system is working after a few months to see whether it has worked as we hope it will.