Parish Council Precept for 2024/25
I wanted to let you know about the decision the Parish Council has made regarding its budget for next year. Each year we set a “precept”, which is money that is added to your Council Tax Bill. This pays for the staff and services that we provide to the community, at the Riverside with its gardens, toilets and car park; the Rhymes Pavilion and football pitch, and the playground. We also keep the village tidy, and look after the footpaths, and we try to make the centre of the village attractive throughout the year and especially at Christmas.
The amount each household pays depend on the Council Tax Band of the house. For next year, and for a property in the middle band, D, we have set this at £108.13 for the year, which is an increase of £16.78 on the current year.
We have increased the Precept to restore the Council’s reserves, and to enable us to take forward some exciting projects that we have initiated for the coming year and beyond. Amongst these are the following.
A substantial project to bring the Rhymes Pavilion up to date, substantially refurbishing it, or even rebuilding it, to meet the needs of our community for the next generation. We are consulting widely to establish what your priorities are and are keen to hear from you (see below for contact emails). By the summer, we aim to initiate a project to access grant funding to support this major project, but we will nevertheless need to allocate our own funds to get this project going.
The next phase of the refurbishment of the Playground: following the successful project last year, in which we replaced the equipment for the under-5’s, we need to move on, to provide better facilities for older children. You’ll hear move about this, but if you are interested in helping, please let us know.
Reconfiguration of the Car Park at the Riverside, to provide better facilities for disabled drivers, and space for car club and charging electric vehicles. For this last we have funding from the West of England Combined Authority, so we hope our investment will be modest.
In order to achieve these goals for the village we require funding and in order to obtain that funding we need additional support to work on these projects, whether that is professional help in turning these ideas into plans, obtaining outside funding for these projects and the day-to-day administration of these projects. It was with all this in mind that we took the difficult decision to raise the precept.
We are acutely aware of the current issues regarding the cost of living however we believe that by investing in local infrastructure for the benefit of the whole community that this will have a positive impact on the overall wellbeing of the residents of Batheaston. We will re-double our efforts to ensure that we make the most of every penny we spend – as we have recently by re-procuring our electricity contracts.
Finally, this is an excellent opportunity to invite you to join us. We are very keen for people to help as volunteers, to improve the playground and other facilities, and for people to join the Council by standing in the election which is coming up in May. If you are interested, please contact me, or the Clerk, clerk@batheaston-pc.gov.uk, to discuss how you can help.
Cllr Hannah Squire, Chair of Batheaston Parish Council
Hannah.Squire@batheaston-pc.gov.uk
1st March 2024