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Vale of the White Horse – Discussion at Minety Parish Council Meeting on June 14th
June 14, 2022 @ 19:30 - 20:30
Hi everyone,
Tuesday evening (14th June) we have our Parish Council meeting. The meeting will start promptly at 7:30pm at the village hall.
Usually we don’t get many people to our meetings, however, on this occasion I expect that there will be a number of people joining us at the start of the meeting to discuss the planning application submitted for the closure, and conversion of Vale of the White Horse.
Having read previous comments on Minety What’s Happening regarding the closure, I think it is important to set expectations in advance of the meeting.
The Q&A session will begin promptly at 7:30pm, and will close at 8:20pm, after which the regular Parish Council meeting will continue. There will be a 10 minute gap in proceedings as everyone who wants to leave can depart. Everyone is, of course, welcome to stay to listen to the rest of the meeting.
Mr Denman, the applicant, will be joining us at the meeting, to answers questions about the proposed plan, and the prospects for the pub in his hands or others’.
I will start the meeting with my collated and specific questions to Mr Denman, gathered from inputs from the community, before I open up the meeting to members of the public to ask questions. The questions I open the meeting with will come from the community – and I would like to ask you to submit your questions to me through the “contact us” link on the home page.
I will inform Mr Denman of those questions I have selected at about 6:00pm, to give him a short amount of time to prepare an answer – in the interest of ensuring as full a response as possible for those present. I hope this will be a reasonable subset of questions that will capture the views of the community.
I will take the most commonly asked, and sensible questions, and put them to Mr Denman in the first part of the meeting, before taking questions and comments from the attendees. I will incorporate other questions on the list that I have been asked by people outside of this Facebook feed, and that I feel are pertinent.
I appreciate that I am not giving a huge amount of notice to collect questions – but as I am sure there will be many common questions, I expect I can capture some of the key points to raise from the community with your help. This will speed up the answers to the most common questions.
The meeting is an opportunity to ask questions and understand the position of the applicant, and to formally express support or objections to the Parish Council regarding the planning.
The Parish Council does not, on its own, have a significant influence on the outcome of the planning decision and therefore I encourage everyone who has an opinion – either in favour of the housing (flats) development, or has an objection to closing the pub – to comment on the planning web site. I also encourage everyone to read the planning application content prior to the meeting.
At the meeting I will remain impartial, and I will support parishioners in asking their questions, and I will also ensure that Mr Denman has an opportunity to answer, and that he, and everyone attending the meeting, is treated with respect.
There may be a lot of anger, frustration and emotion about this topic, and it may be that the approach I am adopting in chairing the meeting is not to everyone’s liking. I would like to ask in advance that the meeting remains civil and we do not make this a personal attack on anyone involved in this process.
In order to keep the process running smoothly, questions from those present should be directed to me, and I will present them to Mr Denman as part of the open question section of the meeting. Mr Denman will do his best to answer your questions, and to explain the business position of the pub today, the possibility of opportunities for the pub to remain open, and the forthcoming planning process that will either approve or reject the proposal, and some of the business reasons that are impacting the pub industry as a whole.
Please add your questions in the comments, and I will collate them to start the meeting.
Kind Regards
Andrew
Your Parish Council Chairman
(Please note that in order to make progress at our meetings, the part of the meeting after the public discussion/consultation is not for public involvement unless the chairman has invited a member of the public to participate in advance and an agenda item is agreed in advance.)