Pluckley Parish Council

Pluckley Parish Council was set up in 1894 under the Parish Councils Act that allowed parishes to elect a council to be responsible for the running of the affairs of that parish under the jurisdiction of the local borough council, which at that time it was West Ashford Rural District Council. They were allowed to cover their operating costs by raising a precept on the local council.

Broadly speaking, the task of the parish council has remained unchanged over the years: namely to represent the interests of the village and its residents to both the local council (now Ashford Borough Council) and the county council and to assist in the provision of facilities such as the village hall, recreation ground, sports pavilion, tennis courts, etc.

The play area is constantly refurbished from funds raised in the community and by successful applications to grant funding agencies. The village appraisal reported that of those who had an opinion, 86% felt these acilities were either good or reasonable.

The play areas are checked weekly and RoSPA make an annual inspection. All items with a ‘high risk’ factor are dealt with as soon as possible. As soon as funding allows, other matters are put in hand when funding is available. A grant from Ashford Borough Council of £1,250 together with a donation of £250 from the Pluckley Recreation Fund contributed to the repairs in 2002. In 2006 a further grant of £4,844 from Awards for All allowed extensive resurfacing and renovations to take place.

One of the major problems has been the discovery of broken glass on both the children’s play area and the skate board arena. In addition youths have been riding motorcycles and go-karts around the ground to the danger of other users, especially small children. Whenever possible the parents of the youths concerned are being informed. The parish council now employs someone to keep the south side of the recreation ground clear of litter.

Currently the Pluckley Sports Association is fundraising to build a new Sports Pavilion near the tennis courts.

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Nick Mengham,Pluckley’s Tree Warden, was appointed by parish council in 1999. Since then he has received training in his own time.

The National Grid Tree Warden scheme is managed in Kent by the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers and its wardens are intended to gather information and encourage interest and practical projects relating to trees in the community. Their role is not to provide information on dangerous trees or to mediate in disputes.

Over many years trees, woods and hedgerows have been threatened by a variety of things ranging from diseases, neglect and new development. The storm of 1987 destroyed 15 million trees in south east England.

If you have any ideas for projects relating to the Tree Warden scheme or would like advice, please contact Nick on 01233 840660

In the autumn of 2004 Ros Rowan qualified as a Pond warden after attending lectures and site visits run by The British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV), who are sponsored by Southern Water. She loved every minute of the training and considered herself very lucky to be taught and led by enthusiastic and well qualified tutors. Ros enjoyed meeting the other students each with their own area of expertise or interest. They studied Pond Management, Design and Creation, Surveying and Assessment, Wildlife Monitoring, Identification of Amphibians, Dragonflies, Aquatic Invertebrates and Aquatic Plants.

A day was spent learning Risk Assessment, Fund Raising, and Community Involvement. Ros now knows a lot more than she did but certainly not everything so it is good to know that BTCV is always at hand for help and advice.

Ros also qualified as a Great Crested Newt surveyor. This qualification has to be renewed each year and this year's course starts in February and involves night time surveying. She was glad last year to have Joe Haskie to help her as surveying ponds alone in the dark can be quite dangerous. Also spotting and identifying newts in the torch beam and writing down the totals is definitely a task for two.
Ros continues to attend courses and sets out with her packed lunch, wellies, and note book as keen as ever.

Last summer she surveyed fourteen ponds in Pluckley. Each pond should be visited three to six times but she failed to manage this with all of them. Most of the ponds surveyed were field ponds which are in decline and suffer from lack of suitable habitat surrounding them.
Ros is happy to share what she has learned if anyone has queries about their pond. What she does not know she can probably find out. Contact her through the Clerk to the Council.

Recycling and Refuse

There are recycling bins for glass [clear, brown, and green], and paper to be found at the village hall. The parish benefits by approximately £1,200 per annum from the income.

At Pluckley Thorne there is a larger waste paper skip. This also takes cardboard. Income from this goes to Riding for the Disabled.

There are no other facilities for recycling in the village and residents are requested to take all other items to the Brunswick Road Civic Amenity Site in Ashford. This includes garden waste - the parish council constantly receive complaints from farmers about households throwing their garden waste (pruning, weeding, grass cutting, etc.) over their fences on to farmland.

The Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, which came into force on 7 June 2005, makes it an offence to "throw down, drop or otherwise deposit, and then leave, litter" and applies to all places that are open to the air, including private land and land covered by water. A person found guilty of the litter offence may be fined up to level 4 on the standard scale (currently £2,500) in a magistrate's court.

Day-to-day household waste is collected on Thursdays in Pluckley. Residents should make sure that their refuse is put out by 7am. Ashford Borough Council has facilities for collecting larger items of refuse and a small charge is made for this.

For more information on recycling please go to the Recycling Guide

Freedom of Information & Data Protection Regulations

A person who asks a public authority in writing for information on a given topic, is entitled to be told whether the authority has the information, and if it has, to be told what it is.
The authority must reply promptly, and in any case not later than the 20th working day after receiving the request.
There are, however, some commonsense exceptions, including 23 kinds of sensitive types of information such as personal material or matters which, if published, might prejudice the conduct of the authority’s functions.
The minutes of Pluckley Parish Council may be inspected by any elector for the area, who may make a copy or extracts from them. Such electors may also, free of charge, inspect and copy orders for payment and the financial statement or abstract of accounts. Such copies must be delivered to such electors upon payment of a reasonable sum (currently set at 10p per A4 sheet plus postage).
A document required by law to be deposited with the chairman or the proper officer of the council [the Parish Clerk] may be inspected at all reasonable hours by anyone interested in it, and who may make copies or extracts from it. He or she must, however, pay 10p for each inspection, plus 10p for each hour of an inspection after the first.

FOI Publication Scheme

Costs

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’, which is currently set at £450.
Costs are calculated on a standard rate of £25 per hour, based on estimating how long it takes to:

• Determine if the information is held;
• Locate the information or a document that may contain the information
• Retrieve the information, or a document that may contain the information; and
• Edit or extract the releasable information contained within a document.

This calculation does not take into account the time spent/costs of:

• Checking that a request for information meets the requirements of the FOIA;
• Considering the application of exemptions, prejudice and/or public interest tests;
• Obtaining legal advice;
• Obtaining authorisation to send out information;
• Calculating any fee to be charged; or
• Providing advice and assistance to the applicant for example in determining precisely what information they are seeking.

Based on the standard hourly rate of £25 the maximum time spent finding, retrieving, collating, and editing before exceeding the £450 cost limit is 18 hours.

If it is estimated that a request will take less than 18 hours to complete and there is no reason to withhold the information a public authority cannot charge for the staff time spent undertaking the types of activity outlined above.

However

The actual costs of communication information released to the applicant are recoverable. This includes the cost of printing, photocopying, postage and/or supplying the information in a particular form. The cost of informing the applicant whether the information is held can also be included.

Pluckley Parish Council therefore makes a charge of 10p per printed sheet of paper plus postage costs at the current rate.