You may recall that we have been working with EDDC in our attempt to gain more Powers to spend the funds accumulated by the Parish Meeting. As a result the attached paper went to the Council meeting on 16 July 2025. The paper was based on information that we had provided to the EDDC Monitoring Officer and Lawyer, and a subsequent Zoom meeting that we had with them.
Your Chair (Tony Dezell) and Vice Chair (Serena Sexton) attended the EDDC meeting on 16 July 2025 with Tony speaking for 3 minutes and then taking questions for nearly 50 minutes. The link to the meeting is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qagxBstWc_k. It starts with Tony’s 3min speech. If you then skip to 24mins into the download that’s where the application is debated and questions asked. Our item and the vote finishes at 1hr 13mins.
The outcome was that the requested Powers a) to h) were approved by a good majority; but Powers i) (s137) and j) (s111) were not approved at this time. Further work is required should we wish to reapply for those Powers. Overall, we believe this to be a good result allowing us to move forward. Tony and Serena also received good feedback from some councillors on the efforts of the Parish Meeting to take the initiative.
Our next steps are to tie-up some loose ends with EDDC and then to hold a Parish Meeting on 20 August 2025 to discuss future plans with you.
Jill Wardle
Clerk to Combe Raleigh Parish Meeting