Street Parish Council held an open meeting this evening, as mentioned in a previous blog. I didn't count the number of Street residents who turned up, but it was more than the Parish Council expected - more than the number of chairs put out, and more than the copies of the relevant papers available. Even so, the Chairman upbraided us for not being more in number, and seemed to criticise us because several of us belong to the Street Society.

The chief paper in front of the meeting - which I was able to read only half way through the proceedings - was a proposal from the Trustees of Crispin Hall to hand over the Hall to a new group of Trustees. Here are the paragraphs about this:

A new community trust with charitable status be created. Trustees may include representatives of the community, users and the Parish Council, although the Parish Council may not be the majority.

The new trust will not be subject to the restrictions on usage, such as no alcohol. The existing Crispin Hall Trustees may give or sell at a nominal value the whole of the premises to the new Community Trust.

Read the whole paper here.

Most of us members of the public had come to the meeting expecting it to be about the future of Crispin Hall, but the debate turned out to be about more than this. There were three threads to it: whether Street needs a community centre, whether the Parish Council should have a permanent home, and whether the Crispin Hall Trustees' offer should be accepted.

Members of the public spoke mainly in favour of retaining Crispin Hall as a community centre, and did not address the issue of council meetings or an office for the clerk, because these only emerged as issues after the opportunity to speak had passed. In the event, Parish Council members seemed to be concerned chiefly with premises for their own use, and, worryingly, at least one councillor, admitting that it sounded selfish, put a clear divide between the needs of 'the Parish', by which he meant the Parish Councillors, and those of the community, which he implied were someone else's concern, not the Parish Council's.

I despair. Why did we elect the Parish Council, if not to represent us, the community?

Another councillor spoke strongly against the Trustees' offer, because, she said, the council was being asked to pay �450,000 towards the restoration of a building which it would not then control. This, despite the clear suggestion in the Trustees' paper that the new Trustees should consist of Hall users, the community, and the Parish Council. Which group does this councillor not trust: the users of the Hall, or the community? If the Parish Council does not trust the community that elected them, then the electors should consider this fact at the next local election.

Well, the councillors took two decisions. The first was to refuse the Trustees' offer 'in its present form', I think the motion said. The second was to look for a building for use as office for the Clerk to the Parish Council and for council meetings.

We were told that a loan of £500,000 for buying a building could be arranged in three days. Just think for a moment: five hundred thousand on a building which would not be for 'the community' but just for the council, when four hundred and fifty thousand would achieve for Street both council premises and a community centre in a prestige building in a prime site - the prime site - in our community.

Among the comments I heard from members of the public outside after the meeting were that the council were weak, that they did not want to take responsibility, and one man saying that he intended to write to the Trustees, offering to arrange a meeting with a small group of Street people to see if the generous proposals of the Trustees could not be taken up by people of a more positive frame of mind.

One final thought occurred to me. Much play was made during the meeting with the fact that a consultation on Crispin Hall, held at considerable expense a year or more ago, resulted in fewer than 300 questionnaires being returned. Quite apart from the probability that the consultation could have been devised much more cheaply and effectively by means of a small, carefully selected focus group interviewed in depth on the telephone, what response would the people of Street make to the suggestion that the Parish Council should spend £500,000 (if that turns out to be the sum) on a building of their own which would not directly benefit the community? Would many people respond? And would the majority be in favour, as they were for the Crispin Hall scheme? I wonder.