Thank you to Brenda Lomas our Parish Clerk, for all the work she has done keeping the parish council informed and for supporting activities organised by the parish council and my work as chairman of the Parish Council. I’d also like to thank Georgina Bailey for her support work as vice chair, and indeed all councillors for giving up their time voluntarily to help support their community.
We have enjoyed having a full complement of 7 councillors up until the beginning of last month, when Richard Edwards stepped down due to other commitments. I would like to thank Richard for giving his time and support to the council since he first joined 2 years ago. We are currently looking for an individual in the village who would like to volunteer their time and join the council to help support our community. We have held four parish council meetings over the last 12 months in May, August, December and February and one extraordinary meeting in July this last year.
Our precept is only £2,255 and has remained at this level since 2020. We have not sought a rise given that the parish council had surplus cash on account.
Highways
We feel we are making some progress with pushing Cheshire Easy Highways to deal with the ongoing flooding issues on Bank Lane and Bramhall Hill. Highways drainage teams have carried out significant investigation and gulley and drain cleaning work on bank lane, uncovering gulleys and installing new jetting points. Gulleys have been re-opened on Bramhall Hill and contact made with landowners to clear ditches to enable flood waters to dissipate quicker. We will keep an eye on how well this works in wetter weather. We are currently pushing for action of a long standing leaking drain on Church Lane.
Buxton directional signage away from North Rode cut through was finally installed on the Congleton By-Pass in September 2024. This finalises the work promised by highways to reduce HGV’s and traffic passing though North Rode from the by-pass nearly 2 years ago, which included updating SATNAV companies and upgrading the HGV Signage for Bank Lane and Church Lane. The next step is to carry out a repeat traffic count exercise to judge the effect of these measures and press for further action to reduce traffic if required.
Whilst HGV traffic has reduced, the occasional truck does still pass through. Our beat PC David O’Connor, continues to respond to reports from the Parish Council of HGV’s passing through the village and has been contacting HGV owners to warn them not to use these roads as a cut through.
Our requests to Cheshire East Highways to tackle icy conditions on the dangerous sharp bend by the railway bridge on Shellow Lane has finally borne fruit with the arrival of a new grit bin in January. Hopefully this will reduce the number of incidents and help preserve Marilyn Ainsley’s wall in future!
Signage
Last year we reported that the parish council had decided not to pursue the installation of the remaining 3 parish boundary signs with Cheshire East Highways, due to their quote of nearly £7,000 and insistence they carry out the works. However, earlier this year we agreed with our local highways engineer that we could install the signs ourselves at locations approved by highways, provided that we carried out the work at quiet times and follow safety protocols. I am pleased to say that the remaining signs were installed late April this year by councillors and volunteers (Martin Lea) at a total cost of £800 for materials.
Parish Council Liaison Group
The Chair and Vice Chair have continued to attend the inter parish liaison group set up with parish councils near ourselves (Astbury, Brereton, Eaton, Hulme Walfield and Somerford Booths, Marton, North Rode, Siddington and Somerford). These meetings have proved useful for sharing information on defibrillators, first aid training and led to the initiative to install the North Rode boundary signs ourselves. This group has also made contact with the Cheshire Wild Life Trust and is working with them to produce a cross parish border report and map on wildlife corridors, that will be useful to decide on work we can do to support wildlife in these areas. This could entail the formation of cross parish working parties to carry out planting work manned by volunteers from interested villagers.
Police
I attended a meeting in February, organised for Town and Parish Councils by our new Police & Crime Commissioner, Dan Price. He presented his aims for the police and outlined support that can be given including Parish Councils funding their own PCSO’s, paying for Police attendance at Hot Spots and holding Citizens Assemblies selected by private companies. This was generally not well received by the small rural parish councils attending who felt that with an increase in Police precept we were already paying of their service. Having said that North Rode is deemed to be a low crime area.
We were also made aware of the Defending Democracy policing protocol (Operation Ford) set up last year, to protect elected officials on councils from incidents of intimidation or harassment that relate to their official position. Incidents can be reported to the police and will be assessed by the Elected Official Advisor.
Planning
Over the past year we have responded to a few consultations on planning applications requested by CEC. We have also informed CEC of possible planning infringements that we have been made aware of and have also chased up enforcement actions. With changes in planning policies recently introduced by the government, we continue to monitor the pros and cons of producing a neighbourhood plan to help inform planning decisions, bearing in mind the considerable amount of work that would be required by the parish council and villagers to produce.
Following the successful planning application for new village facilities by the Daintry Hall Management Committee, which was approved in December 2024 and supported by the parish council and many villagers, we understand that necessary reports are in progress and that work on the pavilion is expected to start in 2026.
Communication
The Parish Council website continues to be updated with upcoming events and pictures along with notices, minutes and agendas. It would be useful to find out how many villagers actually know about and look at the site. We have been posting flyers by hand and providing notices in the monthly parish newsletter to keep villagers informed of activities and events, however perhaps we should consider setting up a North Rode PC Facebook page for real time dissemination of information direct from the PC. The North Rode Parish Council WhatsApp group continues to be a useful tool for keeping councillors informed in a timely manner on council activities, events and incidents.
Events
It has been the parish councils aim over the last 2-3 years to organise at least one village event to encourage our dispersed rural community to get together. Recognising our very small precept and limited funds, these have to be self-funded or rely on a small amount of funding from the PC.
D-Day 80 Anniversary Commemoration – June
In June last year the Parish council organised an evening at St Michaels church to commemorate the 80th D-Day Anniversary. This event was enjoyed by many villagers and friends who turned up to enjoy the swing band playing and the opportunity to enjoy fish and chips in the church, watching slides and movies of D-Day. The evening was brought to a close by the lighting of our beacon, newly refurbished by the parish council with the help of many villagers.
Remembrance Poppy Displays – November
Following on from the D-Day commemoration, the parish council decided to create poppy displays around the village to commemorate the fallen on remembrance day. Poppies were planted around the church, Daintry Hall, at boundary signs and at junctions and roadsides where they would be most noted. Workshops were arranged in October for villagers, who made over 250 poppies for the displays. We intend to carry on with this event each year in the autumn with more workshops to make even more poppies.
Future Events
To continue our mission to put on events in 2025, we are arranging the North Rode Railway Fete on 14th June, to celebrate 200 years of the railway and the 176th Anniversary of the opening of North Rode Viaduct. We have organised a Brass band, marquee and duck racing. This will be a free entry event to encourage people to come along with a picnic and meet their fellow villagers. Any remaining proceeds from the Duck racing will help support future first aid training courses and defibrillator maintenance costs.
We are also in the process of organising North Rode’s very first Well dressing event in late summer. This will involve renovating the well on Church Lane with the help of volunteers and we will be setting up workshops for villagers to come along and participate in this ancient tradition. Workshops will be held the week ahead of the well dressing day, on which there will be a picnic and organised walks around the village.
The VE80 Celebration organised for today along with proactively inviting parishioners to our annual parish meeting will hopefully encourage villagers to take an interest in what their parish council is doing and come along to and join in with volunteering for events and other activities we arrange. We should also seek suggestions for other activities they think the parish council could be doing for the village.
We are making progress with tackling some of the longer standing issues in the village, but what else can we do in addition to events organised to help improve life in our community?
1. Pressure Cheshire East Highways to carry out a traffic count and to take further action to reduce traffic passing through our small lanes and continue to provide HGV data to the Police to follow up on and reduce lorry traffic.
2. Arrange further First Aid training courses for villagers and Event first aid courses for councillors.
3. Investigate setting up a parish council Facebook page to inform villagers in real time of events and highways issues.
4. Arrange litter picking events and equipment to improve our environment.
5. Arrange more events and be more active in encouraging support to improve community cohesion.
6. Continue to work with and support the Daintry Hall Management committee to help facilitate their development plans for a community hub.
7. Improve the environment by cleaning and painting signs
8. Be better at getting feedback from villagers on what they want us to do. We are their representatives.
Cllr Huw Williams,
Chair North Rode Parish Council, 8th May 2025