HI to field 12 candidates in JPC elections

Campaigning for a better Henley-in-Arden

Mike Willmott, Chair of Henley Independents (HI), announced today that HI will be fielding 12 candidates in the Joint Parish Council elections on May 3rd.



"This is great news for Henley and Beaudesert’ he said, ‘we have submitted our nomination papers to Stratford District Council and I can confirm we have 7 candidates standing for Henley and 5 for Beaudesert. This means that we will be able to contest every seat on the Joint Parish Council.
 
"We have managed to recruit several younger people – the average age of our candidates is 52 (editor’s note: current JPC = 72), and we have 5 female candidates (editor’s note; current JPC = 3).

Our candidates are committed and enthusiastic people who have some excellent ideas for Henley and Beaudesert. Our aims are to make our town an even better place to live in, to reduce costs and bureaucracy (editor’s note: current JPC's admin = 42% of expenditure) and to engage with everyone who lives and works in the town – from young to old. With our excellent candidates in place, we are well on the way to achieving these aims.”

Highest Spending Council - Henley JPC

The Beaudesert and Henley-in-Arden Joint Parish Council was shown to be the highest spending council in the 2012 Survey of Stratford District Medium Sized Parish Councils (1,000 to 4,000 populations). 

Data source: Stratford District Council

- Our pledges to YOU -

We will:

Engage with ALL members of the community:

• We believe the Joint Parish Council must be open to ALL. If we do form the next JPC, we would welcome intervention from any member of the public who wishes to engage with us. We don’t want anyone to feel too intimidated to talk to us, or that we won’t listen to them. Apart from in a few exceptional circumstances, all our meetings and decision-making will be open to the public.
• We plan to have regular meetings based around specific local groups – for example: youth; the elderly; local businesses. These will provide the opportunity for those groups to discuss their issues, concerns and opportunities with us and other members of our community who attend the meetings.

Run the Joint Parish Council as efficiently as we can:

• We have identified a number of costs savings which we will endeavour to implement. The savings can then be reallocated to other important community projects.
• We work like to have just one Parish Council meeting per month and reduce the various sub-committee meetings, which take up a huge amount of time for little benefit. We feel that one efficient monthly meeting is all that a town the size of Henley requires (and is consistent with what happens in similar-sized towns). This means all JPC decisions will be taken at the single monthly meeting and, as we said above, you would be most welcome to attend.

Use the JPC funds wisely and fairly, across the whole community:

• The JPC spends its precept (which is the parish part of YOUR council tax) on the local community. This includes some fixed costs and some discretionary grants. We want everyone to be aware of the grant process and to invite more projects to apply for grants.
• We also want the community to advise the JPC which projects they think the JPC should support with a grant.

Work hard to make Henley an even better place to live:

• ‘Guerilla’ gardening projects – to grow fruit and vegetables in un-used local spaces.
• Consider making Henley a Fairtrade Town.
• Encourage and promote community volunteer projects – such a litter picks, sign cleaning, etc
• Investigate ‘time-banking’ so that projects and societies can trade time to help with one another’s projects.
• Work WITH the community to make sensible decisions regarding important local issues (such as The Hub, Croft Car Park and the Railway Station buildings)

So, if you like what you hear and feel we could make a difference,
please vote Henley Independents on May 3rd

Your Vote Counts!

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Why does the JPC clerk have to work around 37 hours per week?

Stratford Midweek Herald - Tuesday 20th March 2012

A great idea from a public spirited resident

Although I do not wish to be part of the parish council, I am happy to donate my time to support the council in a secretarial capacity. I feel personally rather than paying an outrageous amount for a parish clerk, the parish council could better use this money by asking for a group of volunteers to administer this role at no cost. 

This would help start to repair a lot of damage that has been done by the parish council, by showing that there is a solution and the residents do care. Anyway that's just my opinion, I think it's better to offer to help than to sit back and do nothing. 

There must be other like minded people living in Henley who may not want to take on the responsibility of becoming a parish councillor but would be happy to support in other ways, using their skills and experience to help make Henley a more community focussed beautiful place to live. 

Let us hope you get some others to step forward with suggestions. It's is nice to know people care about our community.

A Resident - Name and address withheld