Annual Parish meeting: celebration of Ruscombe and Whiteshill

It is 10 days or so since the 22nd April meeting now and I was hoping to include lots here about the meeting as it is such a good celebration of the Parish - but I'm going to cheat and direct you to the minutes which should appear soon here.

Photos: Council nibbles afterwards and pic of Whiteshill School Walking from The Citizen

Just to say briefly that there were about 10 of us including the Parish Council chair asked to speak on various topics - I did a race through of what I'd been up to as a District councillor over the last year - amazing how much has happened when you start to look back - plus I did a bit updating the latest on Ruscombe Brook Action Group.

Others speakers included one on an appeal for people interested in allotments - an appeal I have supported - do please come forward if you are local and interested in an allotment as we are really keen to see this happen. There was also a presentation on The Warbler (newsletter) and the editor kindly made a special thanks to me re support over the A46 - the Parish also did lots re the A46 and I mentioned them specifically in my talk - also re pushing forward a 20 is Plenty scheme - infact the last few days I have been trying to set up another meeting on that for the two local Parishes to meet. Infact the A46 and 20mph are both Highways/County issues...the County councillor for the area wasn't in attendance for his slot.

Talking of the A46, during the Year Whiteshill School invited me to talk at the school as they had a project on the A46 going (see more here). One of the speakers at this Parish meeting was Whiteshill School Headmaster Robert Kempner - we are very fortunate to have such a dedicated team locally - after last years report on the school I wondered what he could say this year - but again the school has excelled - awards in healthy living, the setting up of the wonderful and by all accounts hugely popular Forest School (and more here from my blog) which is working wonderfully, a gold award in arts and their samba through the village and Stroud town was one of the highlights last year....plus walk to school programmes - indeed many is the time we have seen the school in The Citizen and SNJ - see the photo above of headmaster in the papers.

Anyway this is a flavour of the meeting - I think next year we need to advertise the event more as it is a great chance to talk about our local area - after the talk bits there was informal talk, nibbles, wine and more.