Fossoway and District Community Council
Minutes of AGM
6th October 2020 7.30pm
To be approved.

1. Attending: Community Cllrs: Angus Cheape, Trudy Duffy, Carol Farquhar, Carole Haigh, Michael Haigh, Nicola Marchant (Associate), Graham Pye and Rob Young; P&K Cllr Callum Purves; One Member of the Public.
Apologies: P&K Cllrs Mike Barnacle, Willie Robertson and Richard Watters; CCllr Sarah Bruce-Jones.

2. Minutes: Minutes of the 2019 AGM meeting were read, approved, and signed off.

3. Chair’s Report:

The elected members of the Community Council are as follows:
• Angus Cheape
• Graham Pye
• Trudy Duffy
• Carol Farquhar
• Sarah Bruce Jones
• Robert Young
• Carole Haigh
• Michael Haigh

Nicola Marchant joined us as an Associate Member.

I would like to thank all for their support.
This must have been one of the strangest CC years on record. March 2020 was our last physical meeting – from April we have been meeting on Zoom, without any members of the public present. This is not a satisfying situation: the public cannot hold the CC to account and there is little scrutiny. Since we as a CC are now fairly comfortable with Zoom meetings, we have invited the public to join us but so far nobody has taken up the invite. We intend to formalise the minutes once we can meet physically again but it could well be into 2021 before we can meet with the public present.
The Community Council has had another very busy year with eleven scheduled meetings, additional meetings and a large volume of correspondence.

• Police Service: Police officers are very seldom present at meetings. We get our information out of the bulletin. We appreciate that they may have more urgent things to attend to but a visit now and then would be beneficial to the relations between the police force and the public.
• Blairingone War Memorial: I can only repeat what I said in the last AGM and the AGM before that: it is now one of the longest running items on our agenda.
• A977 Mitigation Measures: Part of the original plan, in particular the re-alignment of the A977 turn-off to the B9097 has not been started. However, there has been a great improvement in the road through Powmill and through Crook of Devon. The road surface has been renewed. There will be more roadworks on the B9097 and the A91 – again to repair the road surface. We don’t know if and when the road alignment will take place or the upgrade of the crossing between the Village hall and the School road. In addition, there is a plan trying to limit vehicular access during school pick-up and drop-off times.
• Networking: The CC have been involved in several other organisations. Angus Cheape sits on the Kinross-shire Fund Committee; Trudy attends the Kinross-shire Forum, which has been looking into transport issues in the county. We hope to report on a recent survey done in one of the next meetings. Trudy sits on the Kinross-shire Local Action Plan, which has recently disbursed monies to local initiatives to combat inequalities and Kinross-shire Gigabit. Members of the CC have also been involved in the local Bloom groups and the Fossoway Gathering. Carol has been involved in the Sports Hub. We are hoping to set up a steering group for a Local Development Trust. Many of these meetings have now discontinued because of the pandemic.
• Fossoway Community Council Benefit Fund: We would welcome more applications from community groups who are working to improve our villages. Applications can be from constituted and non-constituted groups but must demonstrate community benefit.
• Rumbling Bridge Gorge Bridge: This project is slowly moving to the pre-planning application phase. There are plans being drawn up – the expectation is that we will have to do otter and tree surveys in order to get planning permission.
• Community Resilience: at the start of the pandemic a community resilience group has been set up and run, largely by Victoria Sutherland. The group has done remarkable work in getting supplies to vulnerable or shielding members of the community. Our heartfelt thanks to all who helped in this way.
• Bank of Scotland closure: Though the closure is temporarily halted due to the pandemic, the last bank in the whole county of Kinross is due to close. CCllr Marchant is working with other representatives to ensure solutions are acceptable to the community.
• Transport: Transport continues to be a source of concern. Stagecoach no 23 has now been withdrawn permanently. Fortunately, First Bus has taken over the route with a service much better than the 23 – it is a 2-hourly service Monday to Saturday. However, the service, though welcome, does not connect in any meaningful way to onward travel to Perth from Kinross. Other villages are still without any transport, even more so now the DRT is disrupted because of the pandemic.
• Crook Moss: it seems that there is now some movement on the delivery of essential services to the site. Currently only one family is living onsite; the ‘paddock’ part of the site is looking very unsightly.
• Covid19: Apart from the fact that all meetings have been either suspended or conducted online; the CC has supported the local Resilience Group with its financial dealings.

An important part of the job of the CC is to review planning applications. There have been less of those in the last year, but there have been several contentious applications. One in Powmill has been refused by the Local Review Body; another one in Crook of Devon has now been referred to the Reporter. The CC’s role in this is to scrutinise the Local Development Plan and to determine whether a planning application is permitted or contrary to the Development Plan. We also take into account local knowledge, for instance of flooding, access and the removal of trees. We generally do not get involved in planning disputes between neighbours but we review objections made on the application. In general we feel that there is a distinct lack of joined-up thinking in the planning department of Perth and Kinross Council. Developments of large, executive homes are generally permitted and there is no incentive for developers to build small homes for those who would like to downsize in their own community or those who would like to start out. Our community threatens to be a commuter area; where people reside for a few years and then move on.

Most of our correspondence is now by email. All the CC members have access to the email system and the Google documents. This works well for us. We have a Facebook page which is a valuable source for accessing information by people in our villages.

Thank you to my fellow Community Councillors for their support and for the very significant efforts they have made in dealing with their portfolios and attending external meetings. Many thanks also to our local Councillors Barnacle, Purves, Robertson and Watters for their significant support and assistance to the CC on numerous matters. Thanks also to our loyal MOPS - Members of the Public, who support us with their presence, their information and their questions.

4. Treasurer’s Report:
This report is for the period from 1st September 2019 to 31st August 2020, reflecting the new dates for the CC’s financial year. The Administrative Grant of £351.24 from PKC topped the CC’s funds back up to the maximum £700.00 allowed. Online access to the CC’s bank account has continued to make paying the CC’s bills much easier.

Rental of schools and halls to hold our monthly meetings came to only £44 this year, partly due to COVID-19 curtailing physical meetings, but also because some payments for Fossoway School were made in the previous financial year.

All Community Councillors are allowed to claim for any expenses they incur over the year for traveling to meetings, including regular CC meetings, and any other incidentals. This account period includes £169.58 claimed in expenses; again this would have been higher if CC members had been able to attend more physical meetings.

After all the transactions over the year have been tallied the CC has a closing balance at year end of £486.42 and I will be applying for this year’s grant once this meeting has approved the accounts.

The CC members unanimously voted to approve the accounts – Proposed: Trudy Duffy; Seconded: Rob Young.

5. Confirmation of Office Bearers:
The Office Bearers all resigned from their current posts, and new post holders are as follows:

Trudy Duffy, Chairperson – Proposed: Graham Pye, Seconded: Rob Young
Sarah Bruce-Jones, Secretary – Proposed: Trudy Duffy, Seconded: Graham Pye
Graham Pye, Treasurer – Proposed: Trudy Duffy, Seconded: Angus Cheape
Trudy Duffy, Data Controller – Proposed: Graham Pye, Seconded: Rob Young
Nicola Marchant, Vice Chair – Proposed: Graham Pye, Seconded: Trudy Duffy

The following posts are not formal offices, so were not covered at the AGM:
Rob Young: Planning Secretary
Graham Pye: Minutes Secretary
Michael Haigh: Deputy Minutes Secretary

With no other business, the date of the next AGM was set for 5th October 2021 and the meeting ended at 7:47 pm.